Batal Beli iPhone 6, Turis Ini Berlutut agar Toko Ponsel Singapura Kembalikan Uangnya

Pham Van Thoai, seorang pekerja pabrik asal Vietnam, yang merasa dikerjai saat berniat membeli sebuah iPhone 6 di Singapura.

Singapura (News Today) - Niat seorang turis Vietnam untuk memberi hadiah ulang tahun berupa sebuah iPhone 6 kepada pacarnya ketika keduanya melancong di Singapura berantakan, bahkan berujung pilu. 

Saat berbelanja di Sim Lim Square di negara kota itu, pria Vietnam bernama Pham Van Thoai tersebut bukannya mendapatkan ponsel pintar incarannya. Dia malah kehilangan uangnya, yang nilainya lebih dari tiga bulan gajinya, setelah membatalkan pembelian yang menurut pihak toko sudah disepakati.

Insiden tersebut merupakan sengketa terbaru yang melibatkan sebuah toko ponsel di tempat itu, yang sebelumnya menjadi berita utama di negara tersebut setelah dilaporkan mengembalikan uang pelanggan dalam bentuk uang koin sejumlah 1.010 dollar Singapura atau Rp 9,5 juta.

Straitstimes online, Selasa (4/11/2014), melaporkan bahwa Pham, seorang pekerja pabrik, sangat putus asa sampai harus berlutut saat memohon kepada karyawan toko itu agar mengembalikan uangnya yang diperolehnya dengan susah payah. Namun, dia hanya mendapatkan kurang dari separuh dari apa yang telah bayarkannya. 

Ceritanya bermula saat Pham, yang sedang berlibur dengan pacarnya di Singapura, ingin memberi pacarnya itu iPhone terbaru sebagai hadiah ulang tahun. Dia menyerahkan uang 950 dollar Singapura (Rp 8,9 juta) untuk mendapatkan sebuah iPhone 6 di Mobile Air. Dia sudah hendak meninggalkan toko ketika pegawai toko memintanya untuk membayar uang tambahan 1.500 dollar sebagai biaya garansi. Pham terkejut. Ia tidak bersedia dan membatalkan pembelian. Namun, pihak toko mengatakan, uang yang dibayarkan tidak dapat dikembalikan utuh.

Pria 30 tahun itu membeberkan rinci kasus itu kepada wartawan koran lokal berbahasa China, Lianhe Zaobao, pada hari Senin. "Saya hanya seorang pekerja pabrik, dengan penghasilan sekitar 200 dollar Singapura per bulan. Angka 950 dollar Singapura merupakan upah untuk beberapa bulan. Itu merupakan harga yang besar buat saya. Saya benar-benar sedih," katanya.

Dia mengatakan, dirinya telah diminta untuk menandatangani sebuah perjanjian, tetapi tidak menelitinya karena bahasa Inggrisnya tidak begitu bagus, dan dia berpikir Singapura merupakan tempat yang aman untuk berbelanja. "Ketika mereka bertanya, apakah saya ingin garansi satu tahun atau dua tahun, saya berasumsi bahwa garansi satu tahun itu gratis, jadi saya jawab satu tahun. Dia tidak mengatakan saya harus membayar," katanya kepada Zaobao.

Dia diberi tahu bahwa jika dia tidak membayar garansi, dia tidak bisa membawa ponsel itu.

Pham mengatakan, dia sampai berlutut dan memohon agar uangnya dikembalikan, tetapi mereka hanya menertawakannya. Mereka akhirnya sepakat untuk mengembalikan 600 dollar Singapura kepadanya, tetapi pacarnya menolak untuk pergi tanpa sisa uang itu dan kemudian menelepon polisi.

Ketika polisi tiba, staf Mobile Air mengatakan, Pham telah menandatangani perjanjian dengan mereka dan menawarkan untuk mengembalikan uangnya hanya 70 dollar Singapura.

Setelah ada intervensi dari Asosiasi Konsumen Singapura (atau Case), dia mendapat pengembalian sebesar 400 dollar Singapura, tetapi masih tersisa sebesar 550 dollar Singapura.

"Saya akan pulang dalam dua hari, dan saya tidak ingin ada masalah, jadi saya memutuskan untuk menerima pengembalian parsial itu," kata Pham. Dia menambahkan, dirinya tidak yakin Case akan bisa mendapatkan pengembalian penuh dari dananya itu. 

Mobile Air menjadi berita utama di Singapura pada pekan lalu karena membayar uang 1.010 dollar dalam bentuk uang koin kepada seorang perempuan yang telah memenangkan klaim terhadap toko itu di Small Claims Tribunal.

Source : kompas

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Missing iPhone case led to 'virtual strip-search'

(News Terupdate) - Search warrants have always been a blunt instrument for finding evidence of crime.

Think of television cop shows from the '70s and '80s: A police search of an apartment for drugs was, de facto, a license to ransack all closets, cabinets and dressers. A warrant to seize a letter or other specific document was a green light to overturn desks and dig through all files and writings, no matter how personal.

But on a scale of intrusiveness, the threat to personal liberties posed by search warrants in the pre-digital era was trivial compared to the virtual strip-search that a warrant has become today.

This is illustrated by the ongoing investigation into Apple Computer's loss, and eventual recovery, of a supersecret prototype for the next-generation iPhone, which ended up in the hands of Gizmodo, a gadget blog, after the blog reportedly paid $5,000 to the person who found the missing phone.

Jason Chen, an editor-reporter for Gizmodo (which is owned by Gawker Media), returned home after dinner April 23 to find San Mateo County sheriff's deputies hauling away his computers, external hard drive, cell phones and digital camera -- all on the authority of a search warrant, requested by the San Mateo district attorney and approved by a Superior Court judge, for evidence of unspecified crimes related to the missing iPhone.

Imagine the disruption caused by this search and seizure of virtually every document, file and byte of data in Chen's possession, from e-mails to phone numbers to calendar entries and working files.

For you, me and most people, a loss of this magnitude would be crippling, essentially bringing one's work to a complete halt for the duration of a police examination in which government agents will have access, not only to business records, but also to one's most private files (medical and financial records, communications with family members, etc.). But for journalists, particularly investigative journalists, the loss would be catastrophic.

This is so because journalists obtain sensitive information -- about government, big corporations, other powerful institutions -- from inside sources who, for reasons good and bad, will disclose the information only if their role in releasing it is never revealed.

Journalists must be able to promise confidentiality to these sources. Equally important, journalists must be credible in these representations -- their sources must be persuaded that the journalists not only intend to keep their promise of confidentiality, but that they are able to keep it.

Use of search warrants against journalists is devastating because it demonstrates that they can't keep this crucial promise -- it is beyond their power. And the damage is not confined to the journalist who is the subject of a warrant, but extends, logically, to all reporters who have confidential sources.

In this sense the Apple iPhone case is not about Jason Chen and Gizmodo. Their ethical and legal calculations about paying a news source, or the importance of their "scoop" (relative to the harm to Apple's business), are beside the point. The iPhone investigators' use of a search warrant highlights a grave threat to independent journalism generally.

It didn't have to be this way. The DA could have, and should have, served Chen with a subpoena for records relating to the iPhone story. Use of a subpoena, unlike a warrant, gives the recipient an opportunity to hire a lawyer, to consider his options, and to assert any defenses or privileges that might be available.

Even if those arguments fail, and the reporter is ordered to produce records and information, the harms from a search conducted pursuant to a warrant -- including the jeopardy to journalists' access to confidential sources -- are avoided.

For these reasons, two laws, one federal and the other a California statute, require prosecutors' use of subpoenas, rather than warrants, to obtain information from journalists in criminal investigations.

Less clear, however, is whether this prohibition applies if Chen or Gizmodo are targets of the criminal probe, as some bloggers speculate they may be (although the DA has given no clues about their status, and criminal charges would seem to be a stretch under the circumstances).

The federal law, The Privacy Protection Act, may bar search warrants in this type of investigation even if the prosecutor is planning to charge journalists with crimes. That application, however, may be vulnerable to the constitutional argument that the privacy law exceeds federal power to dictate state judicial proceedings.

Perhaps there is a more mundane explanation for the failure to use a subpoena in this case: The DA may have been under intense pressure (from whom? Apple, which reported the phone was stolen?) to act even before he could convene a grand jury to issue a subpoena.

If so, the DA may come to regret his haste: If a court rules he shouldn't have used a warrant, the DA's possession of evidence seized from Chen's home may undermine any possible prosecution of other, more culpable, parties.

Source : CNN

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iPhone finder regrets his 'mistake'

(News Terupdate) - The person who found and sold an Apple iPhone prototype says he regrets not doing more to return the device to its owner, according to a statement provided by his attorney Thursday in response to queries from Wired.com.

Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, says although he was paid by tech site Gizmodo, he believed the payment was for allowing the site exclusive access to review the phone. Gizmodo emphasized to him "that there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press," according to his attorney Jeffrey Bornstein.

Wired.com identified Hogan as the finder of the prototype by following clues on social network sites, and then confirmed his identity with a source involved in the iPhone find.

Hogan has been interviewed by law enforcement investigators but has not been charged with a crime. His attorney says he is willing to cooperate with authorities.

It's generally considered theft under California law if one "finds lost property under circumstances that give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner" and yet appropriates the property for his own use "without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him."

The person who found the phone "is very definitely one of the people who is being looked at as a suspect in theft," San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told Wired.com Wednesday. "Assuming there's ultimately a crime here. That's what we're still gauging, is this a crime, is it a theft?"

On April 19, Gizmodo, which is owned by Gawker Media, published a bombshell story about the iPhone prototype, which had apparently been left at the Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City. It was left behind by an Apple engineer named Gray Powell.

According to the statement from his lawyer, Hogan was in the bar with friends when another patron handed him the phone after finding it on a nearby stool. The patron asked Hogan if the phone belonged to him, and then left the bar. Hogan asked others sitting nearby if the phone belonged to them, and when no one claimed it, he and his friends left the bar with the device.

"Brian opened the phone onto a Facebook page but then the phone shut down," attorney Bornstein writes. "From that time on, the phone was inoperable the entire time Brian had it."

Hogan didn't know what he had until he removed a fake cover from the device and realized it must be a prototype of Apple's upcoming next-generation iPhone, according to Gizmodo's account of the find.

A friend of Hogan's then offered to call Apple Care on Hogan's behalf, according to Hogan's lawyer. That apparently was the extent of Hogan's efforts to return the phone.

After the friend's purported efforts to return the phone failed, several journalists were offered a look at the device. Wired.com received an e-mail March 28 -- not from Hogan -- offering access to the iPhone, but did not follow up on the exchange after the tipster made a thinly veiled request for money. Gizmodo then paid $5,000 in cash for it.

The owners of the bar told reporters that Hogan didn't notify anyone who worked at the bar about the phone. They also said Powell returned several times after losing the phone to see if anyone had found it and turned it in. Powell and Apple's outside counsel contacted the San Mateo County District Attorney's office last week to report the phone stolen, according to reports.

"He regrets his mistake in not doing more to return the phone," says Bornstein's statement. "Even though he did obtain some compensation from Gizmodo, Brian thought that it was so that they could review the phone."

Shortly after Gizmodo published its story, people identifying themselves as representatives of Apple appeared at Hogan's home seeking permission to search the premises, according to a source involved with the iPhone find. A roommate turned them away.

Records show a Redwood City address for Hogan about a mile from the bar where he found the phone. Nobody was at home when Wired.com knocked on the door earlier this week. Hogan previously lived in Santa Barbara, where he attended Santa Barbara City College as recently as 2008, according to his Facebook profile, which was deleted last week.

His attorney says he recently transferred schools and will resume his college education in the fall. He has been working part time at a church-run community center giving swimming lessons to children and volunteered at a Chinese orphanage last year while he was enrolled in a study-abroad program.

"He also volunteers to assist his aunt and sister with fundraising for their work to provide medical care to orphans in Kenya," his attorney says. "Brian is the kind of young man that any parent would be proud to have as their son."

In addition to Hogan, investigators have targeted Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, who received and reported on the phone. Last Friday, officers from California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team raided Chen's Fremont, California, home and seized computers and other equipment.

Gawker Media and others have said the search warrant violated state and federal shield laws protecting journalists from searches and seizures without a subpoena. The San Mateo County district attorney's office said this week that investigators will not examine the seized materials until the legality of the warrant has been resolved.

Hogan's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, is a former federal prosecutor, who is now a partner at the San Francisco law firm K & L Gates. As a defense attorney, Bornstein notably represented the captain who steered a container ship into the San Francisco Bay Bridge in 2007.

In an interview at his office Thursday afternoon, the lawyer said Hogan's family has relocated to an undisclosed location in anticipation of a media frenzy. "This thing has gotten completely, completely out of control," said Bornstein, referring to the public interest in the story.

"He made a mistake," Bornstein added. "He should have just immediately turned that phone in."

Source : CNN

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Israel reverses its iPad ban

Jerusalem (News Terupdate) - Israel has reversed a ban on the iPad, Apple's tablet computer, and said users can bring in the device without worrying that customs officials will seize it.

The country's communications ministry said it reached its decision after completing "intensive technical scrutiny."

"The scrutiny conducted by the ministry technical team vis-a-vis Apple's team, International laboratory and European counterparts confirmed that the device which could be operated in various standards will be operated in Israel in accordance to the local standards," the communications ministry said Saturday evening.

In the past two weeks, Israelis and tourists entering the country at Ben Gurion Airport have had their iPads taken by customs officials.

Israeli authorities said the devices' Wi-Fi standard does not match Israel's standard, which is also used in Europe.

At the time, Yechiel Shavi, spokesman for the ministry, said the ban only applied to iPads built for the American standard but would not apply to devices that match the European specifications.

Tech-savvy Israelis are known for grabbing up the latest high-tech consumer goods, including Apple's iPhone, which became a must-have item when it was released in Israel in the last year.

The ban was lifted after criticism from Israeli computer users. Government officials also contacted the communications ministry to get the ban reversed.

Source : CNN

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The leaked 'iPhone 4G': How did this happen?

(News Terupdate) - People lose their iPhones all the time. But it's not often that a super-secret prototype of a not-yet-released iPhone is carelessly left on the floor of a local drinking establishment.

But apparently that's what happened, according to two different gadget blogs. That this would happen to a company like Apple, which takes secrecy and security of its products very seriously, is surprising.

Apple has not yet said there even is an iPhone 4G -- although it's a safe bet there will be based on the pattern of the past three years. Steve Jobs has said that new iPhone software is coming "this summer," but the company has stopped short of acknowledging that new hardware is in the works.

Normally the first time we see a new Apple product it is in Jobs' hands while standing on a stage in front of an audience of geeks and journalists. So what happened this time?

To back up: Over the weekend, Engadget posted photos of what it said might be the iPhone 4G, or the next-generation version of Apple's phone. It said it was found on the floor of a bar in San Jose, Calif., and a tipster sent the photos into the gadget blog for posting.

The pictures are sort of blurry and the device is never shown powered up, so it didn't seem that hard to dismiss as yet another fake iPhone knockoff.

Flash forward to Monday morning. Engadget's rival blog, Gizmodo, ups the ante with its own photos and video of what appears to be the same device, though it claims it's from "someone" who found it on the floor of a bar in Redwood City, Calif. How Gizmodo got its hands on it is unclear.

There have been several suggestions that Gizmodo's parent company, Gawker Media, bought it. A tweet from Gawker boss Nick Denton on Monday appeared to confirm Gawker's willingness to pay for stories, though Gizmodo hasn't yet responded to a request for comment.

The company generated much publicity when Gizmodo's sister blog Valleywag announced a bounty on early access to an iPad. Denton has also considered paying for paparazzi-style photographs of sports stars for its sports blog Deadspin. It's not impossible that the company saw Engadget's pics and tracked down the person who sent it in and paid him or her for it.

Blogger John Gruber at DaringFireball.net says that, according to his contacts at Apple, the purported iPhone 4G is considered "stolen" by Apple.

Apple has not responded to a request for comment.

Assuming both Engadget and Gizmodo discovered the same device, there are some odd inconsistencies in the stories, such as the discrepancy between being lost at a bar in San Jose and Redwood City, as well as claims of seeing the device powered on, but not showing photos of it. Also, Gizmodo says it took the thing apart, yet it didn't post photos of the processor or the storage.

But more importantly, how did this happen? For a company for whom secrecy is sacrosanct -- consider the stories about the iPad prototypes that were bolted to tables for developers to work on and hidden under cloths -- something so careless as to leave one of the most anticipated consumer devices in a public place seems incredibly out of character.

Apple does give test versions of devices to employees to take home. And every once in a while there's a report of seeing one in the wild. In this case, however, the device was housed in a protective case that would make it look to a casual observer like an iPhone 3GS.

That could have been a measure to try to blend in a little better and prevent another incident like what occurred with the first iPhone, when multiple reports of employees seen using iPhones in public in Silicon Valley hit the Web.

But the difference between the original iPhone being spotted in the wild and this purported iPhone 4G being left at a bar is that Apple had already announced the iPhone in January at MacWorld.

So employees testing out the hardware weren't stealing any thunder from Steve Jobs introducing the world to his latest creation. In fact, it could be seen as a ploy to drum up even more interest from consumers. Losing a working prototype of an iPhone that has not been acknowledged by Apple to exist is, well, strange.

Of course this could be chalked up to carelessness, but there's something else entirely possible: it was done on purpose.

First, Apple has been known to give incorrect information to different employees or third-party partners to identify who leaked the information if it did wind up posted on a gadget blog later.

But the second possibility is that Apple leaked this to gauge consumer reaction. The company doesn't do official focus groups. So this would be a pretty efficient, though unofficial, way to poll the entire Internet on the new features and new design choices in this prototype.

You can see reactions already popping up everywhere. But as opposed to leaking photos, leaking hardware for Apple would be pretty rare, if not unprecedented. Gruber posted a tweet that says he's convinced it's not a purposeful Apple leak and if it was, would not go through Gizmodo.

In any case, it seems like more than a coincidence that both Engadget and Gizmodo ended up with "proof" of the iPhone 4G within a day or two of each other. Plus, when Apple actually does feel threatened by a publication posting pictures or images of an Apple device that has not yet been announced, the company isn't shy about issuing a cease and desist.

Gizmodo posted a story about the Apple engineer, reportedly named Gray Powell, who lost the iPhone. Short version: Powell left it in a German bar in Redwood City, Calif., a month ago, and it was picked up by an unnamed person who was sitting next to him. This person then gave it to Gizmodo.

This answers some but not all questions. Things we still don't know: how did Gizmodo get it? Where does Engadget come in? How much did Gawker pay for it? And the story says Gizmodo plans to give it back to Apple, but it's not clear yet whether it has.

Source : CNN

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