Apple Engineer Canned for Lending Wozniak His iPad

The Gizmodo/iPhone controversy sparked another interesting story. Steve Wozniak, in a message to Gizmodo editors, related the story of how an Apple engineer was summarily terminated for showing him an iPad after midnight on April 3, the day of the official product launch. Although the engineer had an email saying he had permission to take the iPad out to a secure area, apparently showing it was verboten, and he lost his job. It’s kind of ironic because the engineer who lost his iPad is still going to work in Cupertino everyday.

Steve Wozniak founded Apple with Steve Jobs back in 1976. Woz was always the engineer while Jobs was more of a hustler. Though Woz is still an Apple employee, he hasn’t worked there since 1987. He still remains an enthusiastic supporter of Apple products, showing up at the Apple Store near his home in Silicon Valley for every iPod and iPhone launch, waiting in line like everyone else.

Woz was in touch with an iPad engineer named A.J, a guy that Woz said “resembled myself and Steve Jobs when we were that age and my younger son who programs for NASA.” A.J got an email stating he could take the iPad out of its secure area after midnight on April 3. So he showed it to Steve Wozniak, who was waiting on line for an iPad of his own. Woz spent about two minutes playing with the app, Numbers, and gave the iPad back. When word got out A.J was fired. Woz hadn’t told anybody anything about the iPad before the official launch, and in fact, didn’t speak to anyone about it until now.

The whole story seems outrageous until you dig into the finer details. At first, A.J got a raw deal compared to Gray Powell, after all, he showed the iPad to Stephen Wozniak, an Apple employee, and the guy without whom there probably wouldn’t even be an Apple or an iPad. We all knew Wozniak was at the Valley Fair Mall at midnight on the 3^rd and there was even pictures taken of him using the iPad there. But there is a significant difference showing another Apple employee an iPad at Apple and taking it out of the company headquarters and driving down to the mall with it in the middle of the night. What’re more (though Woz says he didn’t realize it at the time), the iPad he was using was an unreleased 3G model, so there’s a bit more to the story that in appears.

Few would argue that Apple isn’t a very secretive company, and it’s usually not technical secrets they are protecting, but things like design and features they try and keep from the general public until they’re ready to announce it. It can be aggravating to read about people losing their jobs for breaking this cone of silence, but when you sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), you are legally bound by its terms