The fact that Apple developers I've spoken to spend their personal coding time (on the rare occasion it exists) on work projects only reinforces all of this.
(All that said, my sample size is seven people, so I could be quite wrong in the end.)
I faced similar in my last company (not with Apple). Now find it very difficult to get working on a side project or similar at home after having not done anything in that regard in a few years.
Ideas I once had to develop are long gone. Bleh.
When we got notice of the acquisition a group of devs had a lawyer come in and from what I hear the lawyer basically said "don't sign this if you want to do anything outside of work ever".
I just thought this was common for these megacorps. Is that not the case? I also wonder if they can actually enforce something like that in California.
Your article:
Is five years old, and never claims about that the person mentioned in article was still developing apps after being hired by Apple. In fact:
The picture displayed is from a now-defunct Seattle-centric business social networking website, and Phillip is mentioned as being part of the "Seattle Community," but a resident of "San Jose California."
It seems totally sensible that Apple would want to hire someone with experience building iOS apps, and would then make them give all of those up as soon as they're hired. Which would be identical to the experience that the people I know have had.
I did some more digging, and:
“Apple employees are generally prohibited
[from publishing apps in the App Store],”
[Evan] Doll told Wired.com. “You have to
get a special exception from a VP.
Otherwise, big no-no. If he was doing it
pre-Apple then he’d have an easier time
getting an exception,” he added.
I certainly have. I was going to bring it up if no one else did.