San Francisco DA met with Apple over phone thefts, hints next two iPhones designed under Jobs
The San Francisco Examiner reports on meetings between San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and mobile device makers regarding phone thefts. Because Apple's iPhone was reportedly involved …
Context & Ripple Effects
San Francisco DA George Gascón's confirmed meetings with Apple and other mobile makers over phone thefts extend a long Bay Area thread: police already probed an iPhone prototype lost in a bar back in 2010, and Apple faced a potential suit in 2011 over the search for that unreleased device. The iPhone has been a forensic and criminal-justice headache since at least 2007, when Wired reported it frustrating crime-lab examiners.
What makes this round different is who is asking: a district attorney rather than a carrier or insurer, treating theft deterrence as a design requirement. The Examiner's report traveled unusually wide for a local story — CNET, the Guardian, MacRumors and five more outlets picked it up within days. A separate claim that the next two iPhones were designed under Steve Jobs' direction remains unconfirmed, but if true it means any anti-theft response was being locked into hardware before Gascón's pressure.
First-order effects
- Apple now faces a named prosecutor publicly linking its product to a theft wave, putting direct pressure on it to ship anti-theft features such as remote lock or activation control rather than leave deterrence to users and carriers.
- Other mobile device makers in the meetings are pulled into the same conversation, since Gascón's framing targets the category of stolen phones, not one vendor.
Second-order effects
- If Apple moves first on theft deterrents, rivals face a forced-response choice: match the feature or absorb the reputational gap as the 'stolen phone' brand.
- Carriers and insurers, whose replacement economics depend on theft rates, gain a new constituency pushing hardware-level fixes they cannot mandate themselves.
Third-order effects
- A district attorney negotiating design changes sets a template for regulation-by-prosecution, where public officials shape product security without new legislation — a path that could formalize into state or federal requirements if the meetings become a standing forum.
- Anti-theft capability shifting from optional software to expected hardware behavior would make activation locks and remote wipes table stakes across the smartphone industry, changing what buyers assume a phone includes.
The trend: Smartphone anti-theft design is becoming a public-safety negotiation between prosecutors and device makers rather than a vendor feature decision.