I thought the piece from the “ex-Apple engineer“ sounded fake as anything, it’s written with the style of a 12-year-old. Doesn’t sound at all professional.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Ex Apple Engineer. Let go for using a Galaxy device as my main driver after 17 years.
- Thread starter Tig Bitties
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That "ex-Apple engineer" is talking bollox. If you are working as an Apple engineer is it so unreasonable for Apple to require him/her to use an Apple device for work purposes? Story's probably made up in the first place.
Agree story is made up. The desperation to repost a hoax story is hilarious by the OP.
And he whistleblows as a random user on a niche forum, instead of doing it properly and going to a media outlet 😂
This is the very first thing I thought when I read it!!! If he’s required to use an iPhone then his employer will provide him with one! He can use what he likes in his spare time !!!
He's correct that stainless steel costs less than aluminum, but if it was purely a cost cutting ploy they'd have changed it on the lower-end devices too. It was done because the public sees stainless as fancier, and Apple was trying to push upmarket and charge $999+ for a flagship. The problem with aluminum is that it's pretty common, and Apple uses it on everything.
A low-end engineer definitely knows component costs and the P&L.
Absolutely. I’ve always said on here that the clever marketing around stainless steel is one of Apples biggest triumphs. They took a material that was often cheaper than 7000 alloy depending on the raw material market and convinced consumers it is a more premium material. Shiny, heavier and more durable was the order of the day.
I’m surprised Apple aren’t promoting aluminium more with their environmental message seeing as it’s 100% recyclable, cheaper to recycle and maintains its mechanical properties for reuse in other products. It really is the most innovative material they use, yet they’ve done it an injustice in their gradual shift towards marketing cheaper materials in the past.
I wouldn’t assume that means they are fake. Someone left the company I used to work for and wrote a scathing account of our CEO and the state of the business on a Google review. The CEO managed to convince the shareholders and customers who saw it and were alarmed that was just a fraud trying to damage his reputation. Fast forward 2 years and long after I’d left, the company folded owing to £12m to creditors and customers in the thousands lost deposits of up to £8k. Internally we all knew the review was correct and some of us tried to warn customers we’d gotten close to that they should pull their money out.
I think everything should be taken with a pinch of salt, but often there is a bit of truth in there somewhere lol.
Your example is different because a review site was used not a forum. By their nature review sites are one posts sites, they are not designed for the original poster to get into continuous debate unlike a forum is, a person leaves a review and that's it. Others can leave posts with their own experiences but generally it is not something where the original poster communicates back and forth with other reviewers. Whereas a forum is just that, a place where people openly discuss/debate on topics with continuous back and and forth communications. The 'ex apple engineer' did just that, made a post on a forum and began a back and forth discussion/debate with other forum members and then just stopped posting.
The person could be genuine and then again the person could be a fake, we will never know.
Or how about excited over a customizable - with a HUGE 1 use limit - button?!
I almost fell for it.
Honestly I didn't care for the button in the 5 days I owned the iPhone 15 Pro. But I felt completely stupid to have to set it back to mute. Even by default ios 17 didn't implement it which was seriously pathetic move by Apple.
If the 13 mini was available for my carrier I would've still been with iOS but glad it worked out for S23 for me.
It’s funny you mentioned that because I was considering a 15 PM and I was going to assign the flashlight to the action button.
Android has something similar where you can customize the Lock Screen and assign 2 action buttons. Once I’m at the Lock Screen I have the choice of the flashlight button on the left and the QR scanner button on the right. I can change those actions to other actions.
The action button is awesome, I’ve got mine set to showing an overlay with smart home controls I want to run so I got much quicker access to them than before. Will probably make it so it shows different controls based on which room I am in or if I’m not home and such.
Sure it would be better if if you could set multiple uses for it natively (but you can fix that yourself) but even so having a button that can do just about anything is good.
So you're not just talking Apple's Home main page which control centre's you can get to right? That's good you've found a use for it - Shortcuts available was never much offered for what I had hoped to find. It's helpful if you know how to create your own but in doing so if the first slecrion you choose doesn't match with what you're hoping (in my.likitwd experience) it was a dead end.
Still having a "customizable button" on hardware at launch is limited to 1 action only felt like an insult from Apple. They do things like this far too often and with no idea when it'll be adjusted or increased snd worse Apple is very closed to end user feedback before considering a change or their mistakes. With such a loyal user base Apple should change their stance on this. Big time.
Nope, I’m rendering a template and what I’m choosing from it gets sent to home assistant and from there I can make it do just about anything I want. So instead of having to launch the app to run things I can do it from my lock screen easily.
It isn’t really limited to one action though since you can make it contextualised based on loads of factors with just using shortcuts. It wouldn’t be bad to be able to have a double press option as well but it can be made to be very usable as it is.
It’s kind of the way Apple does it a lot of times, it is very little to configure for the average user but a more advanced user can do a lot more things with it.
Not too suspect for me to see.
Apple let go a TOP engineer as even tho he was allowed to take home a prototype iPhone X before launch, his daughter took a picture and posted on social media (less than 400 followers) he was fired the next day!!
No warning no request to have his daughter remove the post no communications known to IG to remove all pics of it from all accounts. Nothing. Pretty suspect actions.
Ever notice at ALL Apple events since the products launch evrr presenter - Inc those not involved with it - were an Apple watch?! I've seen only 1 whom didn't and that was at the last event and no watch was worn at all by 1 person!
1. Even if Apple management overreacted (did they?), the guy was not faultless. He started the issue by not having the relevant equipment on him to do his job. Fire-able offense? Maybe not on first offense, but hard to argue against it if it happened repeatedly, as he admits. In fact, management seemed lenient and patient about something like this for someone who worked there for freaking 17 years and didn't know better than to have an iPhone on him for testing.
2. He quit. He was not let go. He did not try to resolve the issue or comply with reasonable and relevant demands, but seemingly had a chip on his shoulder.
Perhaps there is more context to it. But as it is, seems deserved. The same would apply if he was working on Android but never had an Android phone on him for relevant tasks, like testing.
He let his daughter post a picture of a prototype online! That’s grounds for dismal.
Presenters wear the Apple Watch while presenting which is part of work. Apple can ask people to wear the watch and use an iPhone while at work. Outside of work I highly doubt they would ask that, even if they did, no one has to comply since it’s your own person time and not work hours.
Yes the toggle exists in Control Center (the pulldown menu) - it is there by default in iOS 17.x for the iPhone 15 Pro models due to the action button not being set to anything.
I'm sure engineers with access to unreleased hardware have very strict expectations and requirements to follow. You don't get a warning...you were likely given that 'warning' numerous times before you were able to take any hardware for use testing. Nothing suspect here at all, especially in regards to what's arguable the most popular product being sold today.
And the expectation to wear and use Apple products for these massive Apple events? Of course they're expected to. Go watch the latest Google event...every single presenter who didn't have sleeves covering their arms up to their hands had either a Pixel Watch or Fitbit Charge on. I'd wager that the two presenters with long sleeves were told to do so if they weren't wearing a Google watch.