iPad Test Engineer Fired
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It appears that you can’t even show the Woz secret Apple hardware without getting fired. Steve Wozniak, one of Apple’s original cofounders, recently commented on Gizmodo about his experience with a new 3G iPad. Woz was shown the unreleased 3G iPad model on April 3rd and the test engineer who showed him the device was subsequently fired by Apple.
“I can tell you that the test engineer who showed me an iPad after midnight, for 2 minutes, during the iPad launch was indeed fired. … I was not told that it was a 3G model and I had no way to know that. I was told that this engineer had to wait until midnight to show it outside of Apple’s secure area. And I’m an Apple employee who he was showing it to. My guess is that he was allowed to take the iPad outside of the secure area but still not supposed to show it.”
There has been a lot of discussion regarding Apple’s obsessive secrecy with unreleased products. Gizmodo recently purchased a lost Apple prototype device reported to be the next generation iPhone due out later this summer. This prompted Apple to send Gizmodo a letter asking for the devices return and the California police opening an investigation into the matter.
Bottom line, if you’re an Apple employee, don’t take your work outside of Apple and don’t show anything to anyone, even if they are an Apple cofounder. Failure to to follow these simple rules can get you fired!
[via Gizmodo]
