Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
IOS Jailbreaker Turned Apple Intern Loses Job (pcmag.com)
14 points by aynlaplant on Oct 21, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments


I can't decide whether I should be happy or embarrassed from the attention. It was just an internship, and I couldn't exactly have a proper job in the middle of the semester in the first place...


It was very smart of Apple to have picked up Comex; an even slightly less savvy firm might have made an enemy out of him instead. But just because it was smart for Apple doesn't mean it was the right role for Comex, who probably has his pick of any security, software protection, or low-level infrastructural kernel-hackey type job the industry.

It's hard to keep anyone in our field for longer than a year or two, and with the reputation that Comex has built, it's probably much harder to hold on to him.

So this seems like the closest thing to a happy ending there was going to be from his direct employment at Apple, at least this time around.

(I know nothing of the particulars here!)


I would be surprised if he went back to iOS jailbreaking— I feel that he may have signed some papers when accepting to work for Apple that guarantees he would be sued like crazy (and lose) if he did.

(Heck, why anyone somewhat active on open-source/community projects would go work at Apple is beyond me, as it is basically a forfeiture of your hacker rights. When I interviewed there, they made it clear to me that I would not be able to work on anything (or talk publicly for that matter) that didn't have an Apple-approved stamp on it, and then it would just belong to the company. Also see: Bret Victor's take on it: http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple )


Bret Victors Apple quote is a bad example in this context. He was in R&D, where chances of nothing being released in the end are common and secrecy is high in almost every larger company.

His important quote on this topic is this one: http://worrydream.com/#!/Freedom


Any contract he may have had with apple terminated the day he left.


That's not true, or trade secret theft would be unprosecutable.


Wow, that has to be one of the worst user interfaces I have ever seen for a mobile device since the old extremetech.com site.

If you visit the site from an iPhone and have it in landscape orientation, a black overlay is shown with a message that the site is only designed for portrait mode. Tilt to that mode, overlay goes away but then none of the content is usable because they've overridden native scrolling with some mixture of CSS and javascript. And it's broken.

To top it off, they've disabled copying so there's no easy way to even share the ridiculous message

To all designers: STOP. Quit being clever with mobile versions of your site. Just display your normal site with your normal content.


Nothing can be worse than the new extremetech/onswipe combo


Apple trying to get kids to leave college early?

"Loses job"? Do they mean "job opportunity"? He's a student.

And I'm sure he could get another offer if he set his mind to it. Though I'm not sure it's worth his time. Looking to the future, his talents might be better applied elsewhere.

Apple, at the rate they're going, is soon enough a lost cause. They might seem great today. But just wait.


I wouldn't be surprised if the next non-apple modification he works on is adding homebrew to the WiiU, seeing he helped with "jailbreaking" the Wii to add the homebrew channel.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: