How Apple catches leakers: From color changes to comma placement

It’s gotta be somehow automated like that - can’t imagine any other way it would be scalable to the entire engineering base at Apple.

It's actually what is happening all the time, but this exactly what Apple wants. After all this is not way of protection from industrial espionage, but protection from journalists and press leaks.

Imagine you are a journalist and being retold a same secret by 3-4 different sources rewritten by different degree. Figuring what facts are correct and what sources can be trusted is much harder than if you would just been given access to original document.

Because if they were smart, they would go employ their talents in a different way than spoiling Apples product announcements.

Of course they can, but two or three copies might not be enough. And chances of keeping some conspiracy a secret with more than two people for extended periods of time are diminishingly small.