Got him!

About a week after the iPhone was released in stores, Andy and Paul were biking up 9 on their way to Santa Cruz. Up a particularly hard hill (because, let's face it, the whole first half is a particularly hard hill), Andy saw an iPhone on the road and stopped to pick it up. Not only had it been dropped, but it had also been run over. The front panel was smashed, the buttons crushed. The back, however, looked just fine.

I'm told, the first question he asked himself was, "Who can I prank with this?"

Somehow the phone made it into Doyle's hands, and he shared with me Andy's suggestion of asking to borrow Mike's iPhone while he's driving, then "accidently" drop the newly found, broken iPhone out the window, or say, "Here, catch!" and throw it out the window in front of him. Expecting lots of fun with this, we waited for a good chance to do the iPhone exchange.

Mike's been at a client's for the last two, three weeks, so we haven't had much of a chance to talk to him, much less sneak his phone away from him. Today, however, he was in the office and, as chance would have it, on the office phone with a client as his iPhone lay on his desk.

I picked it up, never having done much with an iPhone except lick Cal's phone to claim it as mine (didn't work, he kept it anyway), and started looking at it, as Mike talked on the phone.

Doyle looked at me, and subtly, oh so stealthily, moved to his desk and pulled the broken iPhone out of his desk drawer. Using the distraction of this client call as cover, I pulled Mike's white, silicone iPhone cover off his phone, and put it on the broken phone, then put the good phone in Doyle's desk drawer.

My heart was pounding. How do I leave this disguised phone where Mike could find it?

Doyle pointed to the floor, and I subtly set the phone on the floor next to Mike's chair (the one with roller feet), as he was leaning away, concentrating on his screen, talking with the client.

Doyle and I continued to participate in the client call as best we could, then went off to our desks to work. Doyle asked a bit later if I had turned off Mike's ringer, which could blow the whole prank if it rang at an inopportune moment. I hadn't, so we were risking Mike wouldn't receive a call before he found his new iPhone.

He took long enough to find it.

A half hour or so later, he looked around for his phone. When he found it on the floor, he was pissed at me. I took his phone, then left it on the floor? What was I thinking?

What was I thinking, indeed.

He picked it up, then screamed, "What happened to my phone?!"

I looked up startled, and then glanced at the iPhone with the broken screen in his hands, the one he was showing me, as he glared at me in anger.

"this can't be."

"What did you do?" I yelled back. "You broke your phone?! You rolled over your phone with your chair?" I asked back, incredulously.

He looked stunned. He here was, standing there with his broken iPhone, angry at me for leaving it on the ground, receiving my accusations that he was the one who broke it, all while thinking I was the one who left it on the floor.

Meanwhile, Doyle was hiding behind his monitor, snickering.

Mike and I continued with the back and forth accusations for a bit, as he started to remove the silicone cover off the phone. I don't know why he started to remove it, but he did. When he looked at the phone again more closely, he exclaimed, "Hey! This isn't my phone! It's a 4 gig. Mine's an 8 gig!"

Doyle and I burst out into laughter. Mike relaxed as he realized his phone wasn't completely broken, and Doyle started telling him the story of Andy's iPhone find. He eventually laughed, and thought about pulling the same prank on Kate.

Alas, I forgot to set up my computer or iSight to record the events. A video of Mike's rage would have been one for the youTube highlights.