A few weeks back I found an Apple watch on the street in DC. There was nobody around and only office buildings around, so there was no place I'd feel comfortable leaving a lost item of this kind of value, so I took it home with me. Unfortunately, by the time I remembered it the next day, it had run out of battery.

Fortunately, I had a friend visiting who owned an Apple watch and loaned me his charger, so we could see if there were some way to get identifiable information from it and contact the owner. Once it had charged up, I was able to get into it and find a single email still living on the phone, and the To: field contained an iCloud address.

Unfortunately, I have not heard back from that user, my friend has left town, and I don't really know anyone handy with an Apple watch. I'm hesitant to leave this at an Apple store, but I'm not sure what other recourse I have for this thing. I don't know if this guy is just bad about checking his iCloud account or what... Any ideas?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205009

Activation lock may be on, which prevents it from being paired to another phone. Sounds like the owner didn't have PIN lock on though since you were able to get into it. Hopefully they don't have any credit cards activated with Apple Pay on it.

Odds are it won't connect to WiFi for you to be able to reach out to any contacts or other info also possibly stored on the device. WiFi on Apple watches works by remembering what networks the paired phone joins. With the watch on the watch screen, slide up from the bottom, then slide left to right till you can't anymore. That screen should look similar to this:



(from this support article: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204562)

Best path is to go to Apple with it. They may have registration information from the owner tied to the serial number. Apple can also see more information on who set up the possible activation lock detailed in the support article above.

There's a good ol' American expression..."Finders: keepers, losers: weepers."

I kid, I kid, but only to a certain extent. If you take it to an Apple store and they can't find an owner, I'd say you've done due diligence and it becomes yours. If you don't own an iPhone and don't need it, I'd like to publicly exercise another great American tradition: "Dibs!"

John, I don't appreciate you trying to use this board to claim property that is not yours, nor is likely to be usable by anyone outside the original owner or Apple refurbishing it (due to activation lock).

Sorry dude. Was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. I didn't expect Matt to respond. Feel free to remove the post if you like.

I'm not sure I appreciate what you implied about my integrity either. To be perfectly clear: I would never try to steal or keep property of another person without exhausting every known option to find the owner, nor would I condone others doing so. Upon re-reading my post above, that may not have been as clear as I intended.

Although, it does bring up the question - what is the moral thing to do if you exhaust all options to find the owner? Destroy it?

Thanks for the info. I'll probably end up taking it to the Apple store.

And I'm pretty sure I took your post in the spirit you meant, John.

Besides, if I couldn't find the guy I'd totally sell it first

In Sweden, I'd say the Police Lost&Found. If the owner doesn't claim it within, IIRC, three months, it's yours. MMV depending on locale...

My philosophy tends to agree with yours ("if you've done everything you can, it's yours now!"), but Tom is right, this watch won't do me any good anyway, and I'm happy about that. It's a good deterrent for thieves.

I'll be taking a week away from these boards at least after this post. Other folks with admin access, you have my phone number if I need to be reached if the server falls over.

Well, that was an unexpected personal attack.

I'm with John in this thread -- nothing wrong at all with what he has posted.

Well John, it was nice meeting you. I've always enjoyed your posts. Good luck!

I think I'm the last republican conservative here and will probably be on my way out as well.

Wow. Sorry. I didn't even realize I had offended you. That certainly wasn't the intent.

I certainly didn't state any position (pro or con) concerning marriage between same-sex individuals (I think the final outcome was the correct one), nor did I imply in any way that you are unworthy of 14th amendment protection (I wholeheartedly believe you are.) I didn't intend to sour the mood of the celebration.

I simply posted a thought on the judicial process and how I believed the judges were overstepping their stated powers.

I'm also sorry that you've been deeply hurt in the past, but that wasn't me.

Sounds like a good idea. Can't see what John has done wrong here.

I have been on the receiving end of your ill thought out and misinformed judgements of my moral character on here in the past. Didn't feel great then, and I suspect it doesn't feel great for John now.

I didn't get a proper apology from you then, so maybe turn over a new leaf and apologise to John as I think that attack was wholly uncalled for in a thread about a lost watch!

Cheers

Cris

No worries. I can put on my big-boy pants and take a lick or two. I think it's just a misunderstanding anyway. I've met Tom at one of the meets and he's a good guy.

On another note. Sometimes it's best to just leave the item where it is spotted.

An iPad was left on a shelf in a room at work. The owner returned for it a few mins. later. There wasn't large risk of it disappearing from that location. Except from the employee who wandered by and picked it up "for safekeeping". That person was almost accused of theft.

An excellent point. However, this was early in the morning and I spotted the watch in the gutter. I only dared touch something in a Washington DC gutter because I was pretty sure someone would miss it, so I grabbed a napkin out of my glove box and threw the watch on the passenger side floor until I could wipe it off.

As for the rest of this thread, I think things might have gotten a bit out of hand here. I took John's post as tongue in cheek, but it seems some buried resentment might have boiled up here. I'm sorry to hear you were feeling that way, Tom, and encourage you to stick around. I'm looking forward to your post in the FBI thread.

Not quite.

I reached out to John in private to apologize earlier, and he graciously accepted it. I'm now back here to apologize to the community as a whole.

I'm sorry for the way I handled myself in this thread. It's not behavior I'm proud of, and it was very unfair to John as the target, and unfair to the community as a whole.

And there's no excuse for it either, so I'm not going to try and justify it.

I will say that I appreciated that John took the high road here and defended me in this thread after my statements. His reaction speaks volumes to his general character. Thank you again John for that and for what you conveyed in our private discussion.

A prime reason I stepped away after that post is that I realized it coming from an admin could have a chilling effect on other members posts. It does disappoint me that a member chose to use my time away as a reason to pour further fuel on this fire.

This community still means a lot to me, and it's been a great honor to be trusted with hosting it for the past 13.5 years. I still plan to be active and around for a bit, while the continued plan to transfer the boards moves forward. Due to personal matters on both my side and Andy's, progress is slow at times with this transition. At this time we don't have a formal date to announce though it is likely close. I do want to thank Andy for still being willing to take on the duties of hosting. I also want to thank a community member here for a donation that came in recently which will help pay hosting costs for another 45 days on my side.

I have gone ahead and demoted myself in preparation for the transition ahead. I retain moderator powers to be able to interact with a Moderator's only forum where aspects of the transition are still being planned out. The reason for this change is more tied up in my general desire to hand off duties here and this incident and time away became a point to do it. I do want to make it clear though that my actions of stepping down are not tied to my behavior in this thread nor the commentary that followed. It's been a desire to do so since late 2014.

Fixed... goodbye. It has been interesting visiting this site to see how people with views totally opposed to mine come to their beliefs and opinions. You should try visiting a community with opposing beliefs sometime. It is enlightening but just listen. However in the end diversity is discouraged and like minded people regardless of their standings prefer to only hear and talk to like minded people. Even in casual conversation. While apologies are great they never fix the core problem, in this case acceptance of opposing views (apparently my issue as well when it becomes personal). Well goodbye and enjoy.