Ya if they bought the domain from the guy before the made the announcement, they would of got it off him for 1K.
Yeah, haha... They could have saved $999,000... Stuff like that in the business world baffles me... If you're releasing a product called iPhone, make sure you own iPhone.com... jeez...
So Apple comes along suddenly and tries to buy the iphone domain that you have had for 10 years for no apparent reason. Don't you think this guy might have guessed they were about to release an iphone?
They could have given the Apple mail-room-attendant 10k to say his name was "evan iphone" (must be foreign) and buy the domain... haha... But seriously, there's plenty of ways they could have acquired it before hand without raising any red flags...
Hmm... maybe they were going to use another domain and then Steve Jobs said "I want iphone.com!" and there goes $x million to one lucky bastard ... lol.