I would guess the only time Apple leaks stuff on purpose is when the rumors start getting way too unrealistic and the reality would only be disappointing, or for damage control such as that one Apple exec recently getting assigned to clean up Siri.
Anyone who has worked for Apple will tell you that loss prevention is taken *incredibly* seriously. The sums of money at stake are astronomical.
Last year, we reported that Apple sued its former software engineer Andrew Aude for providing journalists with confidential information about the company's future plans, including details about the Journal app, Vision Pro headset, and more.
As reported by 9to5Mac, the Superior Court of Santa Clara County on Thursday dismissed the lawsuit after Apple and Aude reached an agreement to resolve this matter. The court document for the case's dismissal does not provide any specific details about the agreement, but Aude issued a public apology on the same day.
In a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Aude said leaking information was a "profound and expensive mistake."
Aude's full apology:Aude joined Apple in 2016, to work on optimizing battery performance, and the company fired him in 2023 after learning of his wrongful disclosures. For more details about the situation, read our previous coverage of the lawsuit.
Article Link: Apple Leaker Issues Apology: 'Profound and Expensive Mistake'
But it’s technically illegal to write about unannounced products which information you got from an insider. Or maybe it’s not illegal when you work for the media but I’m sure it’s unethical. I worked for several big high tech companies and in our training it was made very clear to us that if we learned about unannounced competitive products we needed to treat that information as if we didn’t know about it. Us using it to our advantage would have been illegal and ground for termination.
Steve personally harassed Jason Chen, the editor at Gizmodo, then AFTER Jason gave the phone back, Apple had police raid his home, confiscating computers, hard drives, phones, etc.
To be fair, they both bombed.
It did ruin the rest of his life. No company will hire this guy knowing he can’t be trusted with confidential or proprietary information. No second chances when you screw up this big. He’ll be stocking shelves at the local grocery store or flipping burgers at Freddy’s for the rest of his life.
well, Apple's suppliers are under contractual agreements/NDAs to not disclose certain information, so, if/when Apple finds out that a specific leak came from an employee at a certain supplier, they can and most likely will go after them.
Apple punishing an employee who violates an employment contract by leaking confidential information is legal while pursuing journalists might be difficult as they would claim Apple was violating their First Amendment right.
