Apple fires iPhone X engineer after daughter's hands-on video goes viral
Apple has reportedly dismissed an engineer after his daughter's iPhone X hands-on video went viral on YouTube. Brooke Amelia Peterson published a vlog earlier this week, which included a trip to the Apple campus to visit her father and see an unreleased iPhone X. Peterson's video was quickly picked up by sites like 9to5Mac, and it spread even further on YouTube.
Peterson now claims her father has been fired as a result of her video. In a tearful video, Peterson explains her father violated an Apple company rule by allowing her to film the unreleased handset at Apple's campus. Apple reportedly requested that Peterson remove the video, but it was clearly too late as the content spread further and further.
From the follow-up video (at 2:14):
"He takes full responsibility for letting me film his iPhone X. Apple let him go. At the end of the day, when you work for Apple, it doesn't matter how good of a person you are. If you break a rule, they just have no tolerance. They had to do what they had to do. I'm not mad at Apple. I'm not gonna stop buying Apple products. Rules are in place for the happiness and for the safety of workers."
Will Mr. Peterson get sued if he tries to work somewhere else in Silicon Valley?
Also at Engadget.
Related: iPhone X screen repair: That'll be $275
Previously: Apple's New iPhone X will let You Control the Poo Emoji with Your Face
Apple and Belkin's $35 Dongle Brings 3.5mm Headphone Port Back to the iPhone
Apple Sued Over "Animoji" Trademark
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The $999 iPhone X costs more than many laptops. Among the changes in store is the ability to project face movements onto emoji.
Apple's new iPhone X will allow users to do something we never dared dream would be possible with a handheld device.
It lets you take control of the poo emoji with your own face.
That's right, the animated pile of excrement, which is among the most popular methods of communication for millennials, can be controlled with the tech giant's new Face ID feature.
The fine article has an example of animoji demonstrated at an Apple conference.
Check YouTube for an example of the Face2Face algorithm — published on Mar 17, 2016 — where real-time face movement is projected onto George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.
There's a new dongle in Apple land:
Apple ditched the headphone jack on the iPhone with the iPhone 7. The company's latest and greatest iPhones, the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and the iPhone X also don't have the headphone jack. The only way of listening to music on Apple's newest iPhones is to use a wireless headphone or use the lightning connector on the phone. But if you are charging your phone and want to listen to music with your wired headphones on the iPhone at the same time, that's obviously not possible.
Apple already sells a $39 dongle that lets you charge your phone and listen to music via a lightning connector at the same time, and it's now selling a new dongle that'll let you use a 3.5mm headphone jack instead. The Verge reports that Belkin has released a new version of its Rockstar adapter for the iPhone which lets you charge your phone via a lightning connector and listen to music via a 3.5mm headphone jack at the same time for $34.95.
Apple has been sued over its use of the "Animoji" trademark. Apple uses the name for its iPhone X feature that allows users to control and send emoji using their own facial expressions. Apple claims that the trademark is invalid:
A Japanese company, which owns the trademark for "Animoji" in the US, is suing Apple for using the word to name its iPhone X feature. The Tokyo-based company, Emonster, filed the suit on Wednesday in US federal court, saying, "Apple made the conscious decision to try to pilfer the name for itself." The company's CEO, Enrique Bonansea, is a US citizen living in Japan.
Emonster owns an iOS app called Animoji that launched in 2014, which lets people send emoji that are animated in a loop like GIFs. The app asks you to compose the message kind of like how you would format a line of code in Python or Javascript, with parentheses and brackets that separate the kinds of effects you want to add to text or emoji. The app costs $0.99 on iTunes.
Emonster claims that Apple knew about the trademark and offered to buy it, but was turned down. Emonster has owned the "animoji" trademark since 2015, but Apple filed a petition to cancel the trademark on the grounds that EMONSTER, INC. was dissolved in the State of Washington in 2004 and did not exist when the trademark application was filed on August 20, 2014 by Enrique Bonansea, who identified himself as the President of EMONSTER, INC.
Also at Reuters and AppleInsider.
Previously: Apple's New iPhone X will let You Control the Poo Emoji with Your Face
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @06:33PM (3 children)
The only thing that stood out to me was this: "I'm not gonna stop buying Apple products." It's like a religion; people have to publicly re-affirm their commitment to "the cause".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @06:45PM
Yeah, that made me want to vomit a little.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 30 2017, @06:59PM
It was worth it to transcribe that part of the video.
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(Score: 1) by nekomata on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:37PM
I found this to be far worse: "Rules are in place for the happiness and for the safety of workers."
This sounds like something straight out of 1984. I realize that both sentences can be understood without any dark undertone. However this one still jarred me quite a bit while reading it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @06:37PM (1 child)
An NDA is an NDA. And helping his daughter with her video didn't help his situation.
(Score: 4, Funny) by bob_super on Monday October 30 2017, @06:46PM
True. You need to get on Apple's "approved leakers and free advertisers" list first...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Uncle_Al on Monday October 30 2017, @06:37PM (14 children)
"Rules are in place for the happiness and for the safety of workers"
Bullshit. They are there to make sure what the Corporation does is kept secret.
Same happens at Google. You squeal, they cut your nuts off.
Poor guy has zero chance for another job in the Paranoid Valley
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @06:50PM
Exactly, I had the same reaction to that part of the reply. For the happiness and safety of workers you can't film a phone? Give me a break. That's like saying "the re-education and extermination camp is there for the happiness of those inside it". BULLshit!
This sounds a lot like a Stockholm-syndrome [wikipedia.org] victim talking...
(Score: 3, Informative) by jcross on Monday October 30 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
I mostly agree with you but there's a case to be made for it. If it were known that an employee could disclose details of a product in development without major repercussions, that might increase pressure on them to leak stuff. For example, what if a blogger were willing to bribe and/or blackmail employees to get a scoop? If the penalty for leaking is higher, employees will be that much less willing to do it, and general knowledge of that fact could protect all employees from being harassed by bribers and blackmailers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Uncle_Al on Monday October 30 2017, @07:38PM
"happiness and for the safety of workers"
"If the penalty for leaking is higher, employees will be that much less willing to do it"
I have no idea what goes on in Apple, Inc during employee training.
Hopefully, they tell them that if you work on a high-profile project, make damn sure no one on the outside
ever finds out you do, because enemy spies will hunt you down or torture your family to get you to talk.
Oh, and by the way, you'll be fired if they break you.
Good thing too, since AAPL makes things so critical to the survival of the civilization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @07:30PM (7 children)
Still, Apple is perhaps one of most secretive (if not the most secretive) consumer electronics companies in the world. And they take their secrecy very seriously.
Getting fired for violating his empoyer's policies is not going to look good on this guy's résumé. But at another company he probably would not have been fired just for this.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday October 30 2017, @07:38PM
I don't know, I think it depends what he leaked and how, whether they would, as opposed to Apple likely to fire you for leaking anything whatsoever.
If it were a similar situation to this, quite a few companies that see themselves as "market leaders" (regardless of whether it's true) would probably have taken it as seriously. This is their flagship product and they plan campaigns around sharing information about it that span 1.5 years or more, and involve teams of people.
He probably should have just gotten in touch with the marketing people and got his daughter onto the internal list to be a confirmed leaker. They may have been willing to throw her some crumbs of some sort to share.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 30 2017, @08:37PM (3 children)
I don't even remember how many times I've been in the slammer.
But that doesn't matter because I'm self-employed. You wouldn't run a background check on the people at the office supply store would you? Rather than being paid HR, I get paid the same way they do for printer ink.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @11:14PM (2 children)
In which of your delusions does coding device drivers to a specification provided by your employer equate to being self-employed? You are getting a paycheck from your employer in exchange for doing work for hire. You are not your own boss. The boss is signing your paychecks. Stop pretending that you own a business. A business has customers.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:45AM (1 child)
And I have my own project [soggy.jobs].
I've always deducted my technical books. The IRS has never complained. I also deduct my computers, iPads and iPhones.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:01AM
that's right.
pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered. You are allowed to get fat. but take too much and they will find you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday October 30 2017, @11:36PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:16AM
Knowing stories about how Jobs locked down the stage where iPhone 1 was going to be presented, this one looks like totally unusual behavior. So I'm suspecting it's staged. Maybe the guy wanted to retire anyway and the "new" iPhone needed a hype, so... staged!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Monday October 30 2017, @07:38PM (2 children)
I'm going to say rightly so, but I hope somebody else gives him a second chance. It was fairly innocent and not like the guy was talking with Google engineers behind a Denny's someplace.
Business data is business data. It does need to be protected, and trade secrets are important. What he did was unacceptable since he was not the one in the position to determine if it was okay to release that business data. You need some Ivy league college fuckface that earns $250k/year for doing not much of anything except cocaine and hookers to release the business data. If, and when, those guys are ever terminated they flow to the next company like communicable cancer.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @08:24PM
Everything is "fairly innocent" until it happens to you. Sure some drunken actor climbing all over a 14 year old boy is "fairly innocent", until you are said boy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:35AM
The guy had worked there for over 4 years, so he knew how things worked at Apple. This isn't 'ignorance'.
He would have to have known that showing his daughter a pre-release iPhone X was stretching the rules. But to then allow (even encourage?) her to film an unreleased product and publish online?
I don't think anyone wants to hire someone who so readily abandons his NDAs. If I were an employer, I could not trust him to work on anything that needed discretion. Perhaps there's a job for him in sales then?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by goodie on Monday October 30 2017, @07:22PM (3 children)
Seriously, I am supposed to think that this comes from the mouth of a teenage girl? I have a hard time believing that Apple would let you come in with a phone in a unit where the have the prototypes unless they need to build the hype around the product... Anyway this stinks so badly of a PR stunt to me that it's laughable...
You hear that Foxconn workers?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @07:50PM (1 child)
"Have your daughter read this press release and we won't sue you for everything you've got."
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Monday October 30 2017, @08:03PM
The New Apple iSIS
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday October 30 2017, @09:08PM
Sure. Straight out of the Hitlerjugend textbook.
Slave mentality breeds slaves. The father was proud enough to bring his daughter to work in the worst tax-avoiding corporation in America that specializes in separating consumers from their money by selling closed-source proprietary plastic junk. They long since substituted their family values as well as their national, religious and tribal identities for corporate values. They're the advertisers that smoke and the coal miners that send their sons to take their place as their lungs turn black and they get sent home with no health insurance.
Seeing how most of Silicon Valley is composed of the sorts whom think not wearing a tie to a 10 hours shift for just enough financial reward to send one own towards the same 10 years career-path is freedom and success, what did you expect?
compiling...
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 30 2017, @08:31PM (2 children)
We went to an offsite once. It was just like going to summer camp.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Uncle_Al on Monday October 30 2017, @08:39PM (1 child)
If it's so great, how come it NEVER comes up on the "XX Best Companies To Work For" lists?
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Monday October 30 2017, @09:14PM
Because that's a trade secret. They signed a NDA not allowing them to disclose how great is to work for Apple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 30 2017, @08:41PM
I was on a debugging team for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.
Only the people who knew what it looked like were permitted on the second floor of a four-storey building. They were very concerned that a competitor might find out that it came with a Sony gamepad that would slide out.
The elevator had a card key reader.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:58AM (2 children)
Apple pretends to fire engineer in order to build hype for latest new shiny.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:19AM (1 child)
I also think so.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:25AM
Doesn't make sense. They have plenty of normal ways to build hype and they have a 34% market share. A bizarre vlog-firing incident is not a good way to build hype.
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