What really matters is the claim that Apple never raised those issues in the lawsuit with them. OpenAI claims the emails prove this, but to me all the emails prove is Apple sent an email that said “please see the attached letters”. We don’t know what is in the attachments but I imagine those were the relevant issues they raised.
Moreover OpenAI says, “[Apple] now admits that Apple employees reached out to him and asked for his help to locate this information”, but the transcript they cite seems to me to show the opposite? It’s Chang Liu asking for someone to help him copy data. The part where Apple employees reach out is later and it’s not for copying data to a hard drive… it’s basically “who should I talk to about this project?” Which makes sense because when he was contacted it was after he left (so he wouldn’t have access to data)
Can someone please tell me what am I missing? None of this makes sense with what they’re saying. The fact that the lawyer emailed the wrong person is moot if they caught it and resolved it days later.
The timeline OpenAI wants to present looks like this to me:
- Leaving employee (LE) needs a USB stick to copy data off their Mac to give to their Manager (MA) so someone at Apple still has access
- After LE left, MA has access to LE Mac and iCloud to still access some data
- At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account on that Mac as they suspect they'll get OpenAI-related messages soon and don't want Apple/MA to see them
- Eventually, MA deletes the Apple files in LE's iCloud
This should tell you how unserious these "companies" are when they consider themselves the grand harbinger of the one and true "AGI" because their frontier models were able to solve (with great assistance) some sort of conjecture that was never taken seriously in the mathematical world but somehow is significant now because ???
Full self driving teslas on the moon any day now. AI data centers in space! We’re all going to be rich! What a whacked out timeline where this is the richest man.
Setting aside the presented evidence, it feels weird for somewhat emotionally charged complaining like this to go on an official company blog. Companies are generally pretty tight-lipped about active litigation outside court documents, right? This just seems a bit amateurish, down to the title. Is public opinion about this case so important to them?
Yea that’s what strikes me as weird too. I had to look up at the web site bar to really confirm this was OpenAI and not some employee blog site. Particularly, the whole Asian last name bit was so shoehorned in to imply Apple is racist I guess? Not something I have seen in a statement from a company like OpenAI. Just weird energy. Also, that text exchange made Apple look like a fun place to work.
I mean we've had Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress make various below-the-belt comments about their competitors and other companies, something tells me that they're not the only CEO who acts in such a childish manner.
I'm sure saner heads like their legal people would prevail at some point, but until then...
Yeah this is the cloest a corporate company can get to drunk texting their ex at 3 am and reiterating how it wasn't their fault. But I mean its OpenAI, it loves drama
Haha omg what if someone at openai prompted a model to write this and the model could only come up with this unhinged version. It reads like a 3am manic text fest cuz that's what the model figures it should be.
Is public opinion important to an industry whos future depends on datacenters being built for hundreds of billions of dollars, while the people all around them, whos utilities get more and more expensive in no small part because of datacenter buildouts, experience a constant cost of living crisis...
What I don't understand that if two companies are in legal battle, can they discuss the case and try to influence public swing by doing a blog post or sharing evidence that is not verified by anyone other than the party sharing them.
OpenAI, even after raising this much capital, had never anticipated that something like this could happen yet keeps digging it's own grave.
At this point all that's left is for them to kiss and pay else they're done.
Apple vs OpenAI will be the war of legacies, trust and innovation.
When I look at the imessage conversation, one thing strikes me: that guy looks to be using the same icloud account he used when working for Apple with OpenAI. Is he using his own personal account? Why do both Apple and OpenAI allow that in the first place, this look so amateur. I would have assumed each company would have opened a different account for him and locked him when leaving.
Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?
Apparently Apple encourages their employees to use their personal iCloud accounts for company information, because their own OS doesn't support one iPhone, multiple iCloud identities.
Always found it odd that Apple don't let you have a second separate business profile to switch your phone to for work - especially when you don't necessarily want to be bringing browser history/personal apps into your workplace or wifi. Having your iphone locked to your personal account also hobbles their continuity features if you work on a business computer with its own work account (as most businesses do).
Facebook is equally bad on this front - requiring you to use your personal account to administrate business pages (don't even get me started on how they forced large businesses to use a custom 2FA method they then phased out - locking people out of their personal accounts forever).
however, it is quite neat for Apple if employees are "voluntarily" giving up their privacy by merging their accounts and indirectly allowing Apple to monitor their whole digital identity.
Apple is then "just" monitoring the corporate user account for security reasons, it was the employee who decided to use the same account for private purposes...
Apple can give employees an iphone which will have an iCloud account in apples’s corp domain and can be used only for work. Many other companies do this.
Even Microsoft lets you use your personal iCloud account on corp laptops. They can’t snoop your personal data without disabling SIP or showing system level privacy prompts or recording indicators.
Either with a single local account that accesses multiple Google accounts, or multiple local accounts. Though this is device specific, it may be disabled by your manufacturer/provider.
As mentioned elsewhere though, an enrolled phone is an enrolled phone so corporate wiping will wipe the entire phone and not just the profile.
It's been a while, but at a previous job (maybe 8 years ago) I was responsible for managing mobile devices and using Blackberry's MDM suite, you could have segregation of personal and private data, where you couldn't move data from one "container" to the other, including clipboard data.
I'm out of the loop now, though.
Android did have better support at the time, but if I remember correctly, devices that had a work managed profile on them could still be completely wiped, including the personal/private container.
A bit of a pain, but I've always preferred (where possible) to have separate work and personal devices.
Yeah, I had an Android phone at work with separate personal/work profiles, but using the phone to begin with required one main account that had to be my personal. Might've been possible to remove after, but I was afraid to mess with it.
Wouldn't want one phone to be both personal and work though. They owned it, idk if I could've put my own sim in without unforeseen issues, it could've been wiped like you said, and it ofc got wiped when I quit.
I've heard multiple times directly from Apple employees that there is no way to login to iCloud on your work machine using a company-controlled account. Many people create new Apple ID's which they only use while working there, but others just use their personal iCloud accounts. You are, of course, not supposed to store company data in iCloud. But thanks to Apple's own efforts, it's difficult to use a Mac without being logged into iCloud (for example if you want to use the App store), and some data can easily spill into the iCloud account.
If accurate, it is of course patently absurd that Apple has left this an unsolved problem.
You can log into your personal account and have iCloud file sync disabled. I mean what does that prevent that you couldnt do by some other means? I could also just use a browser to drag and drop anything to my personal google drive. Or use a usb stick.
I don’t understand people that create separate Apple accounts for work.
I’ve always used my personal account on corp laptops, including MFAANG. It’s awesome being able to use side car on my personal machines, hand-off on my AirPods, or screen mirroring to my Apple TV during conference calls. What are you gaining from isolating your account? Why even bother making a fake account at all?
Yes, that's correct - an Apple account is tied to a person. A person can have multiple Apple accounts, if they wish. But there is no such thing as an organizationally controlled Apple account.
This is what gets people subpoena'd and their entirely private messages scrutinised. Happened to a lot of people, including a friend of mine who's affair became a matter of public record after his company was investigated for anti-trust issues. Super unprofessional and legally dangerous.
I keep two phones, one for work, another for private life, and also two laptops for the same reason. The support for multi-identity is very inconvenient on apple[1], and very poor with whatsapp, signal and, really, most apps except for Google's. Shame, really, considering how well funded Apple and Meta are, and how little effort would be needed to implement the 80% of what people need: the ability to chat using different identities, without touching the rest of the OS wiring.
[1] on macos, its possible to create users with multiple apple id associations, but not on iphone
> Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?
This doesn't seem out of line with common practices at other big tech firms. If you go work at Meta, your personal Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp/Oculus accounts become intrinsically linked to your work login identity (though a few employees created a secondary account on of all those to prevent this).
Although there are better controls than there used to be, it's not all that uncommon for sensitive work data to leak through this linkage into the public products...
Did employees get official approval to create secondary accounts?
-
Someone went on Reddit to ask if they really had to use their personal Facebook account to manage the company page as they said their boss pushed back against the idea, saying, “Do you think when Disney manages their Facebook page that Disney marketing execs have to use their personal Facebook accounts?”
And it seemed like the answer may well have been yes. There must be some value to Zuckerberg in tying it all together.
Google allowed iMessage until a few years ago, when they banned all non-work messaging apps for exfiltration reasons. But you can still sign into a personal iCloud, which iirc you need to do for certain Mac App Store apps that are corp-approved.
On the phone with some App Store support person I was told they don't like people having multiple Apple IDs. That's why I use my personal one for work as well.
Correct, because other companies are not in a position to certify the security of iCloud meeting their own standards. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Apple trusts Apple more than other people trust Apple.
Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out.
I'm not Apple's biggest fan either (I got super upset when they conveniently wiped out all information about the person comiting suicide in one of their conference rooms and TMZ caught the police line and the sherif said "there is a gun, next to a dead person, we can't say much at the moment" and that was it). But it is unlikely that Apple would depriortize its brand on a fake story.
Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out.
I think you're right, but let's not forget that Apple's goal isn't to protect themselves or to get a fat payout here. Their goal is to make their current employees less likely to leave for an offer at a company like OpenAI. This suit is telling everyone Apple employs "Hey, if you leave and we can find anything that looks a bit dubious, we're happy to screw you over."
Apple aren't a loving and caring company that nurtures people. They're as ruthless as the next trillion-dollar unicorn.
Many years ago, back when I was a junior, I wrote something like this to my manager, complaining about another employee who has wronged me. I eventually decided not to send it because it just seemed so unprofessional.
Wild that a company this big would post this on their official, public blog.
Yep, that's exactly what i thought at first look. This looks like one of those "letting-steam-off" mails you bin after thinking it through after cooling off.
Odd, regardless, OpenAI is spreading itself too thin, trying to fight wars on the enterprise, consumer, and hardware fronts, and will likely end up losing them all.
>They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention.
I find it bizarre that they felt the need to specify "Asian". What does that have to do with anything?
They are definitely trying to get you to think that Apple (the company perhaps single-handedly responsible for developing Chinese manufacturing) is racist
This feels like a trumpian tantrum from someone at openai. If they’re innocent, just win the lawsuit. Is this quibbling over details supposed to win the public over? Because afaik the public doesn’t know or care about this, and publicizing it just makes it worse.
Corporate posting in the weeks immediately surrounding a legal case or ruling impacting tech companies is definitely my favorite brand of written text. Despite not paying full attention to EU legislation, I get reliably notified by Google about every tiny bit of antitrust from them posting a "Google brings millions into the EU's [field they are getting hit with antitrust in] ecosystem" vagueblog about it.
Does US law prevent (or frown upon) defendant from publicly publishing evidence, even when the plaintiff publicly published the accusation and their evidence first? If so, how is the defendant supposed to protect their public reputation when a lawsuit is ongoing for years? Or maybe I’m missing your point on what wouldn’t be looked upon kindly?
Yeah, based on their track record (I mean, even their name is a bad joke at this point) I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. Turns out there's downsides to conducting yourself with little integrity.
> Apple now tries to shift the blame to “residual access”, but they also don’t disclose that this is a common issue with Apple which is caused by them failing to properly manage system access when people leave.
I have been fixated on this topic for some time. Most people behave in a regulated and lawful manner to be on safer side. They do not trespass into some ones home just cause the owner happened to leave the door open.
Companies are using LLMs to hack into other organizations and giving it a spin about agent escaping the sand box. I am surprised how the impacted organizations are not filing lawsuits for damages unless they themselves have something to hide, (probably their reputation). Interestingly from what I remember there is a law that binds the public companies to reveal any intrusion, unless I am missing the names of impacted companies by LLM agent great escape has not been revealed fully.
It would be a wild defense strategy to make the point that "apple is bad at locking doors for ex-employees" (the argument to save the employee) to save them from hiring one of those ex-employers just to use his key.
You can carelessly leave employee access on the confidential and private company data and in nearly all cases depending on employment agreement it will be against the law to share that data after your employment
It doesn't sound to me like Apple is pursuing individuals that merely had company data on their computers but rather these individuals then went on to share said data with other individuals.
>> Based on their track record this lawsuit is not unexpected at all.
Their track record, and the narcissistic tone where they talk so confidently about how they are morally superior companies than others, and all they care about is public good.
> Apple also accuses Tang Tan of trying to get and use their trade secrets. However, Tang has always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies.
> Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.
What is this kind of unprofessional blog-style rant doing on OpenAI’s website? Shouldn’t this be settled between the two companies themselves rather than trying to play the court of public opinion?
Besides, I have absolutely no idea what this is about or whether I should care.
Can’t trust anything OpenAI says anymore. Seems like they’ve been acting in bad faith for far too long. Feels like a company run by ruthless lying sociopaths. And I used to be a fan and a customer. Not anymore.
How shitty you must be as a company to go out and write this. Kindergarteners have better public policy. I have not seen any gathering of people (other than Trump's whole whatever that circus is called) this openly and easily tell lies. Gathering non profit funds then becoming for profit, Being built to do open source development and not shipping one result, going to the congress and saying "I'm not making any profit of this company" and rigging the world's economy... Now this shit "hey I was the nice person! I said nice things to Apple, look these are facts"
> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier.
The veiled implication here is hilariously petty. This entire document is hilariously petty. And apparently, ignorant of the news cycle.
This does not build more trust in OpenAI. If it's-totally-a-misunderstanding and Apple-should-have-communicated-better is the best they can offer, well, good luck in court.
Also a completely meaningless statement. Essentially “You didn’t need to file because your lawsuit is wrong” er… yea of course you’d say that or there wouldn’t need to be a lawsuit.
“They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention.”
What a fucking a joke - throw some cheap shots in there trying to stir things up by pointing out they were Asian
Everything I read about OpenAI makes me dislike them more and more - really can’t stand that company’s culture - I have “friends” who work there and it makes complete sense
Reading through this, the Apple side of the story is actually the more fascinating one. It's frankly bizarre that a company of that scale had to rely on a former employee's (Chang Liu) personal iCloud access. It exposes a massive flaw in Apple's offboarding and internal system management. Combine that with their legal team confusing an Asian surname and emailing the wrong person, and publicly, Apple just ends up looking incompetent and deceitful.
By choosing to release these receipts to the public instead of saving them for court, OpenAI is executing a very deliberate PR strategy. They are effectively framing Apple as a sloppy, legacy company. As with most corporate litigation PR, information is selectively released. Here, OpenAI is trying to reframe Apple's own operational failures as the root cause, rather than any actual technology theft by OpenAI.
Looking at the bigger picture, it's clear who is actually at a disadvantage: OpenAI.
Whether Apple's tech was copied or not is almost secondary. The real existential threat for OpenAI is the legal discovery process, which could expose their internal AI architecture and training data to the public (and to Apple). That risk is exactly why OpenAI is playing this out in the court of public opinion—to force Apple's hand.
Ultimately, both sides have a lot to lose. Apple has always marketed itself on 'privacy, security, and perfection,' but this incident pulls back the curtain on how sloppy their internal operations can be. OpenAI has their own black boxes to protect. In the end, this isn't about truth; it's a pure media management war to see who blinks first.
Apple is getting everything wrong these days. I am so disappointed after buying a Mac mini M4 last year how everything is sandboxed and behind insane numbers of security layers. I will be moving to Linux as soon as my wallet allows it.
What really matters is the claim that Apple never raised those issues in the lawsuit with them. OpenAI claims the emails prove this, but to me all the emails prove is Apple sent an email that said “please see the attached letters”. We don’t know what is in the attachments but I imagine those were the relevant issues they raised.
Moreover OpenAI says, “[Apple] now admits that Apple employees reached out to him and asked for his help to locate this information”, but the transcript they cite seems to me to show the opposite? It’s Chang Liu asking for someone to help him copy data. The part where Apple employees reach out is later and it’s not for copying data to a hard drive… it’s basically “who should I talk to about this project?” Which makes sense because when he was contacted it was after he left (so he wouldn’t have access to data)
Can someone please tell me what am I missing? None of this makes sense with what they’re saying. The fact that the lawyer emailed the wrong person is moot if they caught it and resolved it days later.
The timeline OpenAI wants to present looks like this to me:
- Leaving employee (LE) needs a USB stick to copy data off their Mac to give to their Manager (MA) so someone at Apple still has access
- After LE left, MA has access to LE Mac and iCloud to still access some data
- At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account on that Mac as they suspect they'll get OpenAI-related messages soon and don't want Apple/MA to see them
- Eventually, MA deletes the Apple files in LE's iCloud
Is it normal for a company this big to make a public blog post like this with almost no introduction to what they’re on about?
I would expect them to start out with something like Apple is suing us for yada yada yada, but instead it reads like the diary of a hurt teenager.
Ironically (?) I am immediately reminded of Steve Jobs by reading this.
Specifically Thoughts on Flash, but there were probably more such press releases.
[0] https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history/steve-job...
This reads like a mypillow CEO type post.
Its insane this is coming from a company with as much scope as openai. Scope may not be the right word.
This should tell you how unserious these "companies" are when they consider themselves the grand harbinger of the one and true "AGI" because their frontier models were able to solve (with great assistance) some sort of conjecture that was never taken seriously in the mathematical world but somehow is significant now because ???
they assume if someone wants context, they'll just ask chatGPT for it
I find it refreshing that they are skipping the typical hedged corporate speak.
Straight to unhinged speak is definitely refreshing /s
> it reads like the diary of a hurt teenager.
Yep, down to the pages of iMessage screenshots
It reads direct and unrehearsed, instead of like something where all humanity has been sanded off by legal and PR departments.
Nop, that’s extremely weird
They spend a lot of the investors’ money on that. All the videos they put out are extremely high quality.
They literally have communication experts sitting there, breaking their heads over how to influence the public opinion in the company’s favor.
I guess they learned it from Elon: if people like you, they’ll just hold your stock forever, even if you don’t make much money.
Full self driving teslas on the moon any day now. AI data centers in space! We’re all going to be rich! What a whacked out timeline where this is the richest man.
> I guess they learned it from Elon: if people like you, they’ll just hold your stock forever, even if you don’t make much money.
Is that the Elon lesson? I see him behave terribly and suffer little consequence. Much like his political buddies.
Yeah, I think it’s backward, people like Elon because they know hi will boost their stock. Not the other way around
Maybe it should be "if the right people like you"
Every company does that. It's literally a whole industry: Public Relations
Not to that extent though. For OpenAI the PR investment is disproportionate.
Regular companies have people that talk to the media or maybe run some ads. OpenAI is trying to have in-house media.
For a frontier lab it’s striking just how much energy (and dough) goes into this.
You’re right of course that PR exists elsewhere, but that obviously true assertion misses the finer details of how PR works at OpenAI.
It’s supposed to be subtle. Or at least, more subtle than whatever that is
I see it as the Anti-AI aesthetic. When you write using this style it is obvious this isn't LLM generated and you signal this is well thought out.
If you noticed Sam Altman's latest posts he moved to all lower case, including "I", which I see as due to the same reason
The content does not read like it's well thought out to me, but I am at least convinced it's human.
Setting aside the presented evidence, it feels weird for somewhat emotionally charged complaining like this to go on an official company blog. Companies are generally pretty tight-lipped about active litigation outside court documents, right? This just seems a bit amateurish, down to the title. Is public opinion about this case so important to them?
Yea that’s what strikes me as weird too. I had to look up at the web site bar to really confirm this was OpenAI and not some employee blog site. Particularly, the whole Asian last name bit was so shoehorned in to imply Apple is racist I guess? Not something I have seen in a statement from a company like OpenAI. Just weird energy. Also, that text exchange made Apple look like a fun place to work.
I mean we've had Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress make various below-the-belt comments about their competitors and other companies, something tells me that they're not the only CEO who acts in such a childish manner.
I'm sure saner heads like their legal people would prevail at some point, but until then...
Yeah this is the cloest a corporate company can get to drunk texting their ex at 3 am and reiterating how it wasn't their fault. But I mean its OpenAI, it loves drama
Haha omg what if someone at openai prompted a model to write this and the model could only come up with this unhinged version. It reads like a 3am manic text fest cuz that's what the model figures it should be.
They might be head hunting other Apple staff and wish to control the narrative to avoid scaring them off.
Is public opinion important to an industry whos future depends on datacenters being built for hundreds of billions of dollars, while the people all around them, whos utilities get more and more expensive in no small part because of datacenter buildouts, experience a constant cost of living crisis...
...yeah, that's a tough one...
What I don't understand that if two companies are in legal battle, can they discuss the case and try to influence public swing by doing a blog post or sharing evidence that is not verified by anyone other than the party sharing them.
OpenAI, even after raising this much capital, had never anticipated that something like this could happen yet keeps digging it's own grave.
At this point all that's left is for them to kiss and pay else they're done.
Apple vs OpenAI will be the war of legacies, trust and innovation.
> OpenAI, even after raising this much capital, had never anticipated that something like this could happen yet keeps digging it's own grave.
Hubris.
When I look at the imessage conversation, one thing strikes me: that guy looks to be using the same icloud account he used when working for Apple with OpenAI. Is he using his own personal account? Why do both Apple and OpenAI allow that in the first place, this look so amateur. I would have assumed each company would have opened a different account for him and locked him when leaving.
Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?
Apparently Apple encourages their employees to use their personal iCloud accounts for company information, because their own OS doesn't support one iPhone, multiple iCloud identities.
Source: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/08/03/confidential-appl...
So yeah.
Always found it odd that Apple don't let you have a second separate business profile to switch your phone to for work - especially when you don't necessarily want to be bringing browser history/personal apps into your workplace or wifi. Having your iphone locked to your personal account also hobbles their continuity features if you work on a business computer with its own work account (as most businesses do).
Facebook is equally bad on this front - requiring you to use your personal account to administrate business pages (don't even get me started on how they forced large businesses to use a custom 2FA method they then phased out - locking people out of their personal accounts forever).
however, it is quite neat for Apple if employees are "voluntarily" giving up their privacy by merging their accounts and indirectly allowing Apple to monitor their whole digital identity.
Apple is then "just" monitoring the corporate user account for security reasons, it was the employee who decided to use the same account for private purposes...
Apple can give employees an iphone which will have an iCloud account in apples’s corp domain and can be used only for work. Many other companies do this.
Most companies give you a company phone with a company iCloud account.
Even Microsoft lets you use your personal iCloud account on corp laptops. They can’t snoop your personal data without disabling SIP or showing system level privacy prompts or recording indicators.
So iOS is essentially unprofessional. A toy for those who have either no job or no private life. How does Android score in that respect?
You can have multiple users on a single device.
https://source.android.com/docs/devices/admin/multi-user
Either with a single local account that accesses multiple Google accounts, or multiple local accounts. Though this is device specific, it may be disabled by your manufacturer/provider.
As mentioned elsewhere though, an enrolled phone is an enrolled phone so corporate wiping will wipe the entire phone and not just the profile.
It's been a while, but at a previous job (maybe 8 years ago) I was responsible for managing mobile devices and using Blackberry's MDM suite, you could have segregation of personal and private data, where you couldn't move data from one "container" to the other, including clipboard data.
I'm out of the loop now, though.
Android did have better support at the time, but if I remember correctly, devices that had a work managed profile on them could still be completely wiped, including the personal/private container.
A bit of a pain, but I've always preferred (where possible) to have separate work and personal devices.
Yeah, I had an Android phone at work with separate personal/work profiles, but using the phone to begin with required one main account that had to be my personal. Might've been possible to remove after, but I was afraid to mess with it.
Wouldn't want one phone to be both personal and work though. They owned it, idk if I could've put my own sim in without unforeseen issues, it could've been wiped like you said, and it ofc got wiped when I quit.
Well, aint no way I'm working with a realtor over green bubbles, and they probably have two phones.
I've heard multiple times directly from Apple employees that there is no way to login to iCloud on your work machine using a company-controlled account. Many people create new Apple ID's which they only use while working there, but others just use their personal iCloud accounts. You are, of course, not supposed to store company data in iCloud. But thanks to Apple's own efforts, it's difficult to use a Mac without being logged into iCloud (for example if you want to use the App store), and some data can easily spill into the iCloud account.
If accurate, it is of course patently absurd that Apple has left this an unsolved problem.
You can log into your personal account and have iCloud file sync disabled. I mean what does that prevent that you couldnt do by some other means? I could also just use a browser to drag and drop anything to my personal google drive. Or use a usb stick.
I don’t understand people that create separate Apple accounts for work.
I’ve always used my personal account on corp laptops, including MFAANG. It’s awesome being able to use side car on my personal machines, hand-off on my AirPods, or screen mirroring to my Apple TV during conference calls. What are you gaining from isolating your account? Why even bother making a fake account at all?
Yes, that's correct - an Apple account is tied to a person. A person can have multiple Apple accounts, if they wish. But there is no such thing as an organizationally controlled Apple account.
I have used a Macbook at work for 5 years without signing into any iCloud account ever.
I suppose this is harder when the company hosts everything in icloud though...
Yes this seems incoherent and incompatible for a company that supposedly care about their trade secrets.
This is what gets people subpoena'd and their entirely private messages scrutinised. Happened to a lot of people, including a friend of mine who's affair became a matter of public record after his company was investigated for anti-trust issues. Super unprofessional and legally dangerous.
I keep two phones, one for work, another for private life, and also two laptops for the same reason. The support for multi-identity is very inconvenient on apple[1], and very poor with whatsapp, signal and, really, most apps except for Google's. Shame, really, considering how well funded Apple and Meta are, and how little effort would be needed to implement the 80% of what people need: the ability to chat using different identities, without touching the rest of the OS wiring.
[1] on macos, its possible to create users with multiple apple id associations, but not on iphone
Somewhat relevant from yesterday.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/03/apple-icloud-sharing-ex...
> Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?
This doesn't seem out of line with common practices at other big tech firms. If you go work at Meta, your personal Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp/Oculus accounts become intrinsically linked to your work login identity (though a few employees created a secondary account on of all those to prevent this).
Although there are better controls than there used to be, it's not all that uncommon for sensitive work data to leak through this linkage into the public products...
Did employees get official approval to create secondary accounts?
-
Someone went on Reddit to ask if they really had to use their personal Facebook account to manage the company page as they said their boss pushed back against the idea, saying, “Do you think when Disney manages their Facebook page that Disney marketing execs have to use their personal Facebook accounts?”
And it seemed like the answer may well have been yes. There must be some value to Zuckerberg in tying it all together.
>Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?
Yes.
Google allowed iMessage until a few years ago, when they banned all non-work messaging apps for exfiltration reasons. But you can still sign into a personal iCloud, which iirc you need to do for certain Mac App Store apps that are corp-approved.
On the phone with some App Store support person I was told they don't like people having multiple Apple IDs. That's why I use my personal one for work as well.
I have never worked at a place where they gave us corporate Apple accounts.
We’ve always been asked to use our personal Apple account to install apps used for work.
Whereas I never worked in places where IT would not see that as a security violation.
Correct, because other companies are not in a position to certify the security of iCloud meeting their own standards. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Apple trusts Apple more than other people trust Apple.
Same here
Which is the point I've created a work Apple id unless they specifically set it up to prevent it.
Which has happened. Bonkers configuration.
Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out.
I'm not Apple's biggest fan either (I got super upset when they conveniently wiped out all information about the person comiting suicide in one of their conference rooms and TMZ caught the police line and the sherif said "there is a gun, next to a dead person, we can't say much at the moment" and that was it). But it is unlikely that Apple would depriortize its brand on a fake story.
Can you clarify the information deletion/wipeout?
RIP https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Ed_Mackowiak - Apple’s statement is linked there (and the bit about the woman in the Wiki might be outdated per TMZ correction https://www.tmz.com/2016/04/27/apple-campus-body-found-cuper... )
Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out.
I think you're right, but let's not forget that Apple's goal isn't to protect themselves or to get a fat payout here. Their goal is to make their current employees less likely to leave for an offer at a company like OpenAI. This suit is telling everyone Apple employs "Hey, if you leave and we can find anything that looks a bit dubious, we're happy to screw you over."
Apple aren't a loving and caring company that nurtures people. They're as ruthless as the next trillion-dollar unicorn.
> the person commiting suicide in one of their conference rooms
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/apple-...
Many years ago, back when I was a junior, I wrote something like this to my manager, complaining about another employee who has wronged me. I eventually decided not to send it because it just seemed so unprofessional.
Wild that a company this big would post this on their official, public blog.
Yep, that's exactly what i thought at first look. This looks like one of those "letting-steam-off" mails you bin after thinking it through after cooling off.
Odd, regardless, OpenAI is spreading itself too thin, trying to fight wars on the enterprise, consumer, and hardware fronts, and will likely end up losing them all.
Models are a lost cause anyway - https://open.substack.com/pub/taikhooms/p/why-openrouter-can...
Yay for more cherry-picked information.
A substantial amount of evidence in Apple's complaint isn't addressed, but what's shown here throws a decent amount of shade and doubt.
I have my popcorn ready for discovery. I hope it gets to that point, and I hope it proceeds to trial...
Spot on, while reading this post I couldn't help be wonder "but what about the prototypes"?
>They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention.
I find it bizarre that they felt the need to specify "Asian". What does that have to do with anything?
They are definitely trying to get you to think that Apple (the company perhaps single-handedly responsible for developing Chinese manufacturing) is racist
Roughly one in five Koreans have surname "Kim".
Upward of 40% Vietnamese have surname "Nguyen".
"Li" is quite popular in China.
Specifying "Asian last name" in this context is quite apt.
This feels like a trumpian tantrum from someone at openai. If they’re innocent, just win the lawsuit. Is this quibbling over details supposed to win the public over? Because afaik the public doesn’t know or care about this, and publicizing it just makes it worse.
Any self respecting lawyer would normally tell you to stfu and not post stuff like this. Judges don't like trial by press.
I think they are hoping what they did with Elon will work with Apple.
Corporate posting in the weeks immediately surrounding a legal case or ruling impacting tech companies is definitely my favorite brand of written text. Despite not paying full attention to EU legislation, I get reliably notified by Google about every tiny bit of antitrust from them posting a "Google brings millions into the EU's [field they are getting hit with antitrust in] ecosystem" vagueblog about it.
OpenAI knows that the court of public opinion is more dangerous than a fine from a real court.
I can't see a judge looking kindly on this being published prior to trial.
It's in court already, fight it there. Even if you win public opinion with your point of view you can still lose in court.
Does US law prevent (or frown upon) defendant from publicly publishing evidence, even when the plaintiff publicly published the accusation and their evidence first? If so, how is the defendant supposed to protect their public reputation when a lawsuit is ongoing for years? Or maybe I’m missing your point on what wouldn’t be looked upon kindly?
Two wrongs don't make a right, even if the plaintiff is playing dirty it doesn't give you the right to join in.
Assuming the exhibits aren't sealed they're publicly available as soon as they're entered by the court during trial.
If they're sealed there's probably a good reason they shouldn't be published until the trial is over (or ever in some cases)
To me, this looks like OpenAI is terrified and tries to come out ahead of the public opinion to control the narrative. Such a shit company.
They built their whole business model on stolen data and act surprised when another company has zero trust in them.
Based on their track record this lawsuit is not unexpected at all.
Yeah, based on their track record (I mean, even their name is a bad joke at this point) I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. Turns out there's downsides to conducting yourself with little integrity.
> Apple now tries to shift the blame to “residual access”, but they also don’t disclose that this is a common issue with Apple which is caused by them failing to properly manage system access when people leave.
I have been fixated on this topic for some time. Most people behave in a regulated and lawful manner to be on safer side. They do not trespass into some ones home just cause the owner happened to leave the door open.
Companies are using LLMs to hack into other organizations and giving it a spin about agent escaping the sand box. I am surprised how the impacted organizations are not filing lawsuits for damages unless they themselves have something to hide, (probably their reputation). Interestingly from what I remember there is a law that binds the public companies to reveal any intrusion, unless I am missing the names of impacted companies by LLM agent great escape has not been revealed fully.
Hugging Face straight up asked for $100M in compute or something from OpenAI in response to the hack, if I remember correctly.
It would be a wild defense strategy to make the point that "apple is bad at locking doors for ex-employees" (the argument to save the employee) to save them from hiring one of those ex-employers just to use his key.
Two things can be true: OpenAI can be an aggressive company with serious credibility problems, and Apple can still have handled this case carelessly
You can carelessly leave employee access on the confidential and private company data and in nearly all cases depending on employment agreement it will be against the law to share that data after your employment
It doesn't sound to me like Apple is pursuing individuals that merely had company data on their computers but rather these individuals then went on to share said data with other individuals.
Such reason deprives people of the passion to take sides and argue emotionally.
>> Based on their track record this lawsuit is not unexpected at all.
Their track record, and the narcissistic tone where they talk so confidently about how they are morally superior companies than others, and all they care about is public good.
One thing is probably true: airdrop failed
> Apple also accuses Tang Tan of trying to get and use their trade secrets. However, Tang has always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies.
> Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.
Well, I guess that settles it, then! Case closed.
Seriously, what is point of this?
It’s a real Goliath vs Goliath thing we’ve got going here.
More like Goliath vs wannabe Goliath
What is this kind of unprofessional blog-style rant doing on OpenAI’s website? Shouldn’t this be settled between the two companies themselves rather than trying to play the court of public opinion?
Besides, I have absolutely no idea what this is about or whether I should care.
I don’t really understand this, Apple obviously wants to force discovery and publishing stuff seems like it’d just widen the net there.
so why it should be publicly posted?
“Hi, this is highly irregular, please remove me from this thread”
Oops.
Why do American corporate PR statements read like a teen drama novel nowadays?
It feels weird doesn't it? It's because it is. Don't buy the story, we'll see what the court says.
Absolute cinema. OpenAI writing “100 reasons why it’s not my fault” post.
Glad to see everyone dispassionately awaiting the adjudication of this dispute in the official venue!
I'm glad I don't have any ~~bookie~~ prediction app accounts, because I'd now be willing to put money on an incoming settlement.
Small digression. Silicon Valley never ceases to deliver top quality entertainment. We desperately need Season 2 of Silicon Valley series.
On a serious notes, this seems like a desperate attempt to sway public opinion, but hey, Apple is no saint either. This will be a fun season.
Season 7 you mean
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/episodes/
a very strong piece of evidence that apple is absolutely right, oai trying to do damage control already.
It reads like OpenAI has been taking PR tips from the king of juvenile, ill-advised blog posts during legal proceedings — one Matt Mullenweg.
Guys, just stop posting. Listen to your counsel.
I wonder if they are throwing a public tantrum because GPT said that the were absolutely in the right and that it had the smoking gun to prove it
Can’t trust anything OpenAI says anymore. Seems like they’ve been acting in bad faith for far too long. Feels like a company run by ruthless lying sociopaths. And I used to be a fan and a customer. Not anymore.
How shitty you must be as a company to go out and write this. Kindergarteners have better public policy. I have not seen any gathering of people (other than Trump's whole whatever that circus is called) this openly and easily tell lies. Gathering non profit funds then becoming for profit, Being built to do open source development and not shipping one result, going to the congress and saying "I'm not making any profit of this company" and rigging the world's economy... Now this shit "hey I was the nice person! I said nice things to Apple, look these are facts"
Keep your garbage for the court.
This is fucking awesome lmao, now we just need a hundred page google docky from Apple, and a 2 hour video from Mudan breaking it all down.
Finally some proper gen-z representation. Maybe a Cluely-like office comedy web series next? I sense potential.
> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier.
The veiled implication here is hilariously petty. This entire document is hilariously petty. And apparently, ignorant of the news cycle.
This does not build more trust in OpenAI. If it's-totally-a-misunderstanding and Apple-should-have-communicated-better is the best they can offer, well, good luck in court.
Also a completely meaningless statement. Essentially “You didn’t need to file because your lawsuit is wrong” er… yea of course you’d say that or there wouldn’t need to be a lawsuit.
> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.
Is also rather funny when hiring HUNDREDS of their engineers.
Scam Altman at it again.
PR is not a moat buddy.
> after confusing two Asian last names
What a fucking a joke - throw some cheap shots in there trying to stir things up by pointing out they were Asian
Everything I read about OpenAI makes me dislike them more and more - really can’t stand that company’s culture - I have “friends” who work there and it makes complete sense
Reading through this, the Apple side of the story is actually the more fascinating one. It's frankly bizarre that a company of that scale had to rely on a former employee's (Chang Liu) personal iCloud access. It exposes a massive flaw in Apple's offboarding and internal system management. Combine that with their legal team confusing an Asian surname and emailing the wrong person, and publicly, Apple just ends up looking incompetent and deceitful.
By choosing to release these receipts to the public instead of saving them for court, OpenAI is executing a very deliberate PR strategy. They are effectively framing Apple as a sloppy, legacy company. As with most corporate litigation PR, information is selectively released. Here, OpenAI is trying to reframe Apple's own operational failures as the root cause, rather than any actual technology theft by OpenAI.
Looking at the bigger picture, it's clear who is actually at a disadvantage: OpenAI.
Whether Apple's tech was copied or not is almost secondary. The real existential threat for OpenAI is the legal discovery process, which could expose their internal AI architecture and training data to the public (and to Apple). That risk is exactly why OpenAI is playing this out in the court of public opinion—to force Apple's hand.
Ultimately, both sides have a lot to lose. Apple has always marketed itself on 'privacy, security, and perfection,' but this incident pulls back the curtain on how sloppy their internal operations can be. OpenAI has their own black boxes to protect. In the end, this isn't about truth; it's a pure media management war to see who blinks first.
I like how this addresses very little of Apple's core complaints. OpenAI are totally fucked.
I'm looking forward to see that with popcorns and great pleasure.
Apple is getting everything wrong these days. I am so disappointed after buying a Mac mini M4 last year how everything is sandboxed and behind insane numbers of security layers. I will be moving to Linux as soon as my wallet allows it.
The F does this have to do with anything?