[patmorgan23]

Only if you were an employee of apple (or one of its vendors working on the iPhone).

If you independently discovered it, any other member of the public could have discovered it (assuming they had the skills and time).

[pavlov]

This is basically how professional short sellers like Citron Research and Muddy Waters work.

They spend months doing research and if it’s promising they first build their short positions, then publish the research. Often just being targeted by these famous short sellers will crash the stock. But it’s not insider trading because their research was independently sourced.