This isn’t the first time something like this happens and I always wonder how are these seemingly smart people earning good money so dumb.
> Liu celebrated the exploit, according to the filing. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he said in a message to a former colleague who was still employed by Apple.
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-sec...
Steve declared thermonuclear war on Google because Android re-skinned to use BUTTONS.
Was there ever a point in time where Google was not the default search engine on iOS?
No. Steve's rage was justified, IMO. It was because Eric Schmidt was on Apple's board while simultaneously being Google's CEO and Google was surreptitiously building Android at the time. Mother of all conflict of interests.
There was a recent story that reminded me of it. Mike Krieger was on Figma's board and Anthropic's CPO, while Anthropic was surreptitiously building Claude Design.
Nice, albeit implausible story. Apple had been working on multi touch screens for a long time before that. They applied for a patent on it from 2004[1]. And TBF, neither Apple nor LG invented capacitive touch screens. Multiple discovery is a thing.
If I remember, there was a former Apple employee, who was quite influential with The House of Mouse…
The surprise in their eyes is always very genuine.
I replied (on Workplace) “Absolutely the fuck NOT.”
And then he managed to turn that into a negative $50 million net worth.
And also he briefly started a religion based around having an AI inventing a Christian god or something because his story wasn't crazy enough.
I always assumed this was a tax-avoidance scheme
If you don’t believe in IQ consider agency and conscientiousness
(Einstein would have had an unexceptional score on an IQ test, had he ever taken one. His schoolteachers thought him destined for failure.)
To put it another way, polymaths are unusual but idiots are everywhere. And people who are outstandingly good at say, computer engineering can be mediocre at philosophy or business administration.
Psychometrists distiguish between crystallized and fluid intelligence. Expertise is a combination of knowledge and ability. But ability itself is multifaceted, and raw talent goes untapped without the motivation to study and the opportunity to work.
For most areas of human endeavor, being smart enough is all that is required. Being a genius helped Albert Einstein reimagine physics, but did not make him a better patent clerk.
> stupidity is very general
So then what do you call the general ability of the absence of stupidity?
Einstein does have a high IQ.
> Expertise is a combination of knowledge and ability
Yes expertise is not the same as intelligence.
Specific measures of ability tend to cluster at the low end more than they do at the high end. This explains both the correlations among abilities, and the fact that high abilities tend to be domain-specific.
An IQ score over 70 has a clinical meaning: it defines the absence of mental retardation. Scores of 90 and 160 are equivalent for this purpose.
"Giftedness" in a domain-general sense is an abstract concept that may or may not map onto something real. The validity of IQ testing derives from measuring the other end of the scale.
Wisdom seems like making good choices for long-term positive outcomes, where there are no rulebooks, lots of uncertainty, and the incentives thrown in your face to act in one direction are only a tiny fraction of the whole picture.
Intelligence seems like an aptitude to grasp concepts that lend itself to wielding a specific thing to a certain utilitarian end.
I'm sure others have said it better than me. But the folks I've met who are obviously intelligent seem to lack the ability to understand the consequences of their choices, and have already predetermined they're not only justified in their myopia, but somehow assume/ presume social support from everyone around them no matter how short-sighted their ideas are that come with obvious negative consequences if you look even one-step beyond their immediate outcomes.
Something like that. All to support your point.
But, I don't work in Silicon Valley.
- Steve Jobs
joke
But thats very different than scheming to steal actual property, which these files are.
The idea behind the quote most likely came from T.S. Eliot: Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
I was more surprised by how they managed to keep using work devices after termination. This sounds to me like a failure of their manager to do their job to follow the standard exit process.
It's very safe to assume Apple has a standard exit process, for low level ICs.
Tan was Apple's vice president of iPhone and Apple Watch product design. This person worked for Apple for 25 years and likely a friend of top executives. I wouldn't be surprised if he just hugged everyone and casually walked out on his last day.