Katie Marsal
The revelation was widely disclosed in Adam Lashinsky's new book "Inside Apple" and further corroborated by a former Apple engineer during the author's appearance at LinkedIn last week.
"A friend of mine who's a senior engineer, he works on — or did work on — fake products I'm sure for the first part of his career, and interviewed for 9 months," the employee said. "It's intense."
The exchange between Lashinsky and the former employee was captured, below, by Fortune's Philip Elmer DeWitt.
"Inside Apple," which was first previewed by AppleInsider earlier this month, also tells of a secret room at Apple devoted solely to designing product packaging and what users experience when opening a new product
It also offers details on Steve Jobs's interest in a startup camera company before he died late last year.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Mike Wuerthele
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
47 Comments
OK. So am I supposed to be surprised? IIRC, it is fairly well understood that Apple engineers continue to work on fake projects as a matter of course. Fake projects help to quickly identify the source of leaks. Notice how there have been few if any real leaks since the leaks of the Power Mac G4 Mirror Double-Doors case? Leaks of the Power Mac G5 had virtually no similarity to the real G5.
What better way to assess skill they claim without mucking with the real code. Reverse compilers would look down on Hello World occurrences scattered throughout OSX.
Guilty until proven innocent?!
That's all it is. If this were politics, imagine the furor from the outraged people and the indignant press!
/
/
/
Guilty until proven innocent?!
That's all it is. If this were politics, imagine the furor from the outraged people and the indignant press!
/
/
/
There's plenty of companies that have workers work on things that don't see the light of day. Sometimes it's reversed, in that it's the minions know it's not going anywhere yet the leaders thought all along it was a strategic move.
What is the big deal, they don't get a fake salary do they? I thought that only happens to hospital interns and masters' students.
So you get paid Apple-money for a spell and they gauge your performance. Oh, the humanity! Many companies have a probationary period during which your skills on the ground are assessed and then a decision is made for continued employment. Skills in an industry like this would include technical expertise, communication skills, teamwork, people skills and the ability to abide by the NDA portion of your work contract and to not leave prototypes in a bar when you flash them as part of your macking routine. It's not that difficult, nor too much to ask of a skilled professional in a highly competitive corporate environment.