Leaked Apple Memo Warns Apple Employees to Stop Leaking Information - The UpStream

Leaked Apple Memo Warns Apple Employees to Stop Leaking Information

posted Saturday Apr 14, 2018 by Scott Ertz

Leaked Apple Memo Warns Apple Employees to Stop Leaking Information

Over the past few years, Apple has had a problem keeping its secrets. Long before a product is officially announced, the market knows the name, the looks and most of the features. In the case of the iPhone X, everyone even knew as early as July that Apple was having design issues with the iPhone, both with the Apple AirPower Qi charging pad (which has still not launched) and the TrueDepth sensor, which ultimately delayed the iPhone X by months.

Since then, Apple has managed to contain information within the company - at least enough to keep analysts guessing about their plans. This has come, at least in part, from Apple's internal attitude towards leakers, and their response when it happens. Last year, the company caught 29 leakers, which resulted in terminations and 12 arrests. Obviously, with a termination for leaking information or any arrest, getting another job in the tech industry will be nearly impossible.

This information comes to us care of possibly the best irony of the week: a leaked internal memo. In the memo, which was published to the company's internal blog, they outlined a number of examples of leaked information, including a meeting in which Craig Federighi informed employees about feature delay. The memo follows a company meeting in 2017 where they tried to deal with the issue. Since then, hundreds of articles have been published about devices that have been unannounced and internal issues.

This change is definitely a win for Apple. Leaked product specs, and unannounced products, can have a negative effect on device sales. People are less likely to purchase current generation devices if they consciously know that a replacement device is on the horizon. Apple saw this behavior with information that they kind-of leaked themselves, when they announced the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, but said that the iPhone X would not come out for several months after the iPhone 8. That move negatively affected sales of the iPhone 8 until the iPhone X released, when people could make an educated decision (and usually skipped the iPhone X).

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