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Jon Stewart takes a bite out of Apple (1 Viewer)

mattCR

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Saw it. He makes some good points, there were some elements here that went very wrong, and it s a bit creepy for a company to raid someone's house.. even if they committed a crime... that's law enforcements job.

I also tend to agree that while you should be able to sack employees for breaking NDA, breaking NDA by showing the founder of your company (and still an employee) a product he's been made aware of already, a product for a few minutes AFTER it's official release, but showing the 3G (which isn't official release) should not get you canned.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003384-37.html

Apple's secrecy bit is fine, but there are times when the zealousness has led to their sub contractors doing crazy things.

I mean it wasn't but last year that a FoxConn employee killed himself after the company raided his apartment hunting to see if he took a prototype iPhone 3GS, and he committed suicide because he reportedly couldn't deal with the intimidation:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124827762524772555.html

So, having all of the sudden some guy who sold the iPhone's phone raided by a company here is way creepy :(
 

DaveF

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Quote:Originally Posted by mattCR Whose house did Apple raid? The police executed a search warrant on the Gizmodo's guy's house. But I've not heard of Apple doing any trespassing.


As for the iPad guy: he willfully violated the terms of his employment. He didn't lose the iPad. He purposefully showed a product that had not been revealed in public. It's not surprising he was fired.

Apple is especially good at secrecy in a hot, rumor-filled industry. But they are not unique: read about the product development of seemingly mundane products like the Zipper-lock plastic bag of the 3-blade disposable razor. They worked in utter secrecy (secrecy impressive to people in an industry that deal with "Secret" & "need to know" info).
 

mattCR

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Originally Posted by DaveF Whose house did Apple raid? The police executed a search warrant on the Gizmodo's guy's house. But I've not heard of Apple doing any trespassing.


As for the iPad guy: he willfully violated the terms of his employment. He didn't lose the iPad. He purposefully showed a product that had not been revealed in public. It's not surprising he was fired.
There was a (corrected) error in a story this morning that mixed together the raid on the FoxConn employee's house in China with this story, and so I read it incorrectly. It had implied that a home was raided by the company (which happened in China) . So my bad.

As to the "willingfully violated the terms of his employment" hogwash. One employee showed a model to another employee, and not just an employee, but someone, whether real or not, still draws an apple paycheck and is listed on their "Technology advisory committee". I mean, I've been under numerous NDAs. But if say, (XYZ boss) came in, whether or not he's my direct boss or not, we're both still under the same umbrella. That firing I can't even comprehend. It's not like Jobs wasn't aware of the device was in development. He's also covered under NDA in his position with the company, which both he and Jobs have confirmed. So, showing him a finished product after you're already shipping model #1, and you show him the 3G version, which has only that difference and then.. you're canned?

I don't know, I'd view that as a legitimate mistake by an employee, rather then some intentional malice to hurt the company.
 

Ken Chan

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There's that photo of Woz holding the 3G iPad in a mall (in San Jose, where Woz's local Apple store is); i.e. it was shown in public, which could certainly be a violation of NDA.
 

DaveF

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Quote:
Originally Posted by mattCR

As to the "willingfully violated the terms of his employment" hogwash. One employee showed a model to another employee, and not just an employee, but someone, whether real or not, still draws an apple paycheck and is listed on their "Technology advisory committee".
It's not uncommon to be required to keep information secret not just from non-employees, but also from fellow employees not working on the project. Had this happened in a closed room, perhaps he wouldn't have been fired. But he violated policy publicly, so that Woz was photographed with it! (as Ken pointed out). It was certainly not done with malice, but it was a huge error. I'm not surprised he was fired.
http://www.redmondpie.com/ipad-3g-spotted-9140599/
 

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