Remember the last week’s iPhone X hands-on video that was recorded on Apple’s campus? Well, it turns out that Apple really didn’t like that stunt, as that iPhone belonged to an iPhone X engineer. The video was quickly pulled from YouTube, and the father of the teenager who uploaded was fired.
It doesn’t matter that the iPhone X was already unveiled when that video was shared and that it all happened just a few days before preorders started. For Apple, that is. The engineer shouldn’t have allowed his daughter to record a video of the phone like that.
Brooke Amelia Peterson confirmed in a video update that her father no longer works at Apple because he broke the rules:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQzGKwjr_js
One could argue that what Peterson did isn’t such a big deal. But non-disclosure agreements are still enforceable. And Apple is exactly the kind of company that would not tolerate such actions from its employees.
Per The Verge, the video, which Peterson quickly removed from YouTube when Apple asked her to, contained sensitive information. A Notes app showing codenames of unreleased Apple products was shown in that video.
From the sounds of it, the engineer is quite a father figure, but rules are rules, and Apple can’t but fire him. He apparently worked at Apple for four years, on iPhone RF and wireless circuit design, and he’ll hopefully be able to continue his career somewhere else.
The moral of the story is pretty clear, children and parents, do not record footage of devices protected by complex NDAs to share it with the world unless you’re willing to deal with the consequences.
