Woz Accidentally Gets Apple Engineer Fired For Showing iPad

Leander Kahney ()

Woz Accidentally Gets Apple Engineer Fired For Showing iPad

Here’s a interesting story about secrecy and making mistakes at Apple. The story is told by Woz, Apple employee number one (check out his hilarious shirt).

While Woz was waiting in line to buy the iPad last month, an Apple test engineer showed him a prototype iPad. It was just a few hours before the device went on sale. Woz, who is still an Apple employee, fired up the Numbers app. Little did he know, the unit was 3G test prototype, and was not to be shown or used outside of secure areas at the company HQ. Unfortunately, Woz’s playing with it must have somehow sent up a warning flag at 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 opted to spend 2 minutes with Numbers on this iPad, trying some stunts I’d seen on Apple’s website demo video. 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.”

The test engineer was fired for betraying Apple’s ironclad rules on secrecy. The device was not to be shown to anybody — not even Woz. (And worse, Woz told Steve Jobs about seeing the iPad that night. Jobs himself said it was “no big deal.”)

On the other hand, Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who lost an iPhone 4G prototype at a bar, is still employed at Apple.

“Product secrecy is good for Apple and should be strictly enforced, but maybe 10% of niceness and 90% of strictness is OK too,” writes Woz.

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14 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in Apple, iPad, iPhone, News, Woz |

  • Tommy T

    I want Woz’s shirt.

  • TRRosen

    OK if your not authorized to show something don’t hand it to the most well known person in the Apple community at a Apple event with tons of people snapping pictures. Everybody in the world saw Woz with that test unit and everybody knew it was a 3G unit as the black window on the back for the 3G is pretty obvious.

    Note this would have been after the iPhone incident and I can imaging that everyone had been reminded about security protocols.

  • TRRosen
  • s4ndm4n

    Best shirt evah!!! Well maybe not ever, but it’s still a sweet shirt nonetheless. GO WOZ!!!!

  • mr-ed

    Didn’t the Apple engineer get caught out because someone took that photo linked above? And didn’t the engineer believe Apple had approved taking the device out of the secure area after midnight?

    From what I understand he’d assumed it was okay to let people see it, but apparently that wasn’t part of the release, just to use it privately outside of Apple.

    Or something.

  • http://web.me.com/giosaccone GioSaccone

    That shirt is very very very funny! =)

  • Fred M.

    I have a strong suspicion that the iPhone 4G prototype may not have been accidental at all. Apple is rumored to be ready to release it soon. Android is getting some market buzz. Apple’s current iPhone 3GS is getting to be close to a year old. So the 27 year old engineer whose life is developing iPhones forgets that his secret iPhone 4G prototype is on the bar stool (apparently he was trying to hatch it the whole evening) and just leaves. Gizmodo gets it, dissects it, documents everything about it. There’s buzz all over the net about the new iPhone. And the engineer isn’t fired? I could be totally wrong on this, but it sure looks like a planned fake leak.

  • Howie Isaacks

    I’m really tired of Woz.

  • robinson

    I enjoy Woz every time I see him or read about him. He really jump started the home computer business and has a great, wonderful zeal for life.

    I love the comment– 10% niceness, 90% strictness. I’ll have to remember that when I deal with organizational rules, manage others, and evaluate student and underlings work. Some forgiveness is really good.

  • Allan

    Seems like a pretty damn harsh penalty for showing the 3G iPad to one of the Apple gods before it sent on sale. It’s not like he posted pictures of it on the interwebs two weeks before it went on sale or let someone get his mitts on it to disassemble and play with before it went on sale. Woz ought to intervene with his old buddy Steve to get the dude’s job back.

  • charli

    when you work on such projects you sign a contract with the rules spelled out. And if the rule was that you don’t take it out of X location for any reason, you don’t. Period.

    Given what happened just a couple of weeks before with the iphone (which I still think was either a plant or someone picked his pocket) you really really don’t.

    And it’s not Apple that is like that. When I worked for a chain bookstore we had had to have a secured room where all street dates were put, boxes sealed until they were inside. Only two staff members had the security code to get inside (myself being one of them) so we could go in and unbox them, price tag them etc to go out. They were not allowed to leave that room until the release date. period. Real headache when we had to stuff 1200 copies of the new Harry Potter in there along with all the regular releases

  • Chris K

    It’s more likely that Gray Powell lost it on purpose because Apple told him to as a publicity stunt.

  • mike

    I thought only the 3G has the black patch on the back…how did he not know?

  • steve

    Woz is down to earth. He almost exclusively is the balance jobs needs to do what he does. Woz wields far more power than he recognises – but then again – he dosent seem to need or want it. Mr Happy.