Calling the owner (in the company sense) is better than handing a device in to some dodgy bartender. If I lost an item belonging to my current employer, we would both certainly prefer that.
I don't know much about east coast US police but the NY ones certainly don't give a shit about stuff left in public places by drunk people.
I honestly don't buy that. You find an iPhone lying on a street-corner? Then maybe you go through your own methods. You find an iPhone at a bar? The first place that person is going to look is at that bar. The sensible thing is to turn it into the bartender, not take it home, attempt to track down the person, then explain why exactly it is you have their iPhone/wallet/etc.
(EDIT: Put another way: according to the original story, the finder claimed to think there was nothing special about the iPhone at that time. If you're at a decent bar in the middle of Silicon Valley, do you really think it's that sketchy to turn an iPhone 3G into the bartender or management?)
Exactly this situation happened to me here in Houston with my 1st generation iPhone. I left it by the DDR machine. The result? I went to the barkeep, and someone had turned it in!
I found cellphones on several occasions, never gave it to anyone. I always tried (and was successful) in finding the owner by calling people on the phones address book.
Actually giving the phone to a stranger, never really crossed my mind, and call NYC police? HA.
I agree with you on trying to return it directly, I found a blackberry while skiing and called the "home" number and was able to get it back to the guy. Keeping it would have been a nice upgrade (maybe if it were a Droid I would have).
However, they obviously knew the owner SINCE HE WAS CONTACTED AFTER THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE, and they failed to return it. They did the equivalent of checking the address book when they went on Facebook and then didn't do anything to return it.
Given that the people he spoke to wouldn't even be aware of the existence of the lost prototype, I don't think you could call that an honest attempt to return the phone at all.
Even sending an email to sjobs@apple.com would've been more likely to get the phone back to Apple.
You're right, sjobs@ would have been better, but whoever received the call at Apple and didn't route it to the right people (or whoever ignored it for a week) seriously let the company down.
