Apple likes to surprise the market with innovative technology no one expected. As a result, it likes to protect both the products it will release next year, as well as the products Microsoft will release in two years.

So when Apple loses three iPhone prototypes in a few months, Wired asks Apple Has Lost 3 iPhones. Is It Losing Control, Too?

Wired, one of those magazines that perpetually fails to recognize that 1998 was 12 years ago, continues to confuse wacky fonts and craaazy Photoshopping with useful news, wonders what the heck is up with Apple? Why the sudden lack of security? Why the sloppy attention to protocol?

Evidently, if fails to occur to them, to talk to people in security. Dude, which is a term most Wired people respond to, remember the oft-repeated phrase in loss prevention: once is a mistake; twice is a coincidence; three times it’s intentional.

There are many reasons one could theorize that Apple might intentionally leave a product behind at a bar. For one thing, the original iPhone was revolutionary in concept, and is equal to the iPod in social upheaval. However, there is a key difference: the iPhone is not nearly as popular as the iPod. The public perception is that the iPhone is expensive to buy, closed to easy application development, and not well supported by its primary carrier. None of these need be true, of course—but the perception exists and has helped push the Android phones well further in sales.

Disclosure: GorT and Volgi are iPhone users; the Mandarin and the Czar use Droids. Ghettoputer uses a hand crank phone with a funnel-shaped mouthpiece. The first four are great phones. The Czar cares not a whit which one wins market dominance five years from now since his phone is doing a million things right now, today, the way he likes.

But Apple could benefit immensely from leaking a dummy prototype out. Already, Vietnamese hackers have produced detailed drawings and schematics of the software structure. Apple can see how the public reacts before committing to a new design. Apple can see what Droid apps appear in response, and then move a different direction. And seriously, how unique is the prototype? There won’t be anything too revolutionary in it by this point.

The bad apple in this story may well be Apple. And good for ‘em, if indeed this is a bizarre ploy.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.