8 ms·

Apple is getting this wrong

290 points by meetpateltech 2mo ago

dannyw 2mo ago
Yay for more cherry-picked information. A substantial amount of evidence in Apple's complaint isn't addressed, but what's shown here throws a decent amount of shade and doubt. I have my popcorn ready for discovery. I hope it gets to that point, and I hope it proceeds to trial...
- random__duck 2mo ago
  Spot on, while reading this post I couldn't help be wonder "but what about the prototypes"?
MagicMoonlight 2mo ago
[dead]
cube00 2mo ago
I can't see a judge looking kindly on this being published prior to trial. It's in court already, fight it there. Even if you win public opinion with your point of view you can still lose in court.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- gene91 2mo ago
  Does US law prevent (or frown upon) defendant from publicly publishing evidence, even when the plaintiff publicly published the accusation and their evidence first? If so, how is the defendant supposed to protect their public reputation when a lawsuit is ongoing for years? Or maybe I’m missing your point on what wouldn’t be looked upon kindly?
  - cube00 2mo ago
    Two wrongs don't make a right, even if the plaintiff is playing dirty it doesn't give you the right to join in. Assuming the exhibits aren't sealed they're publicly available as soon as they're entered by the court during trial. If they're sealed there's probably a good reason they shouldn't be published until the trial is over (or ever in some cases)
prmoustache 2mo ago
When I look at the imessage conversation, one thing strikes me: that guy looks to be using the same icloud account he used when working for Apple with OpenAI. Is he using his own personal account? Why do both Apple and OpenAI allow that in the first place, this look so amateur. I would have assumed each company would have opened a different account for him and locked him when leaving. Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?
- h05sz487b 2mo ago
  On the phone with some App Store support person I was told they don't like people having multiple Apple IDs. That's why I use my personal one for work as well.
- wodenokoto 2mo ago
  I have never worked at a place where they gave us corporate Apple accounts. We’ve always been asked to use our personal Apple account to install apps used for work.
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Whereas I never worked in places where IT would not see that as a security violation.
    - prmoustache 2mo ago
      Same here
    - simondotau 2mo ago
      Correct, because other companies are not in a position to certify the security of iCloud meeting their own standards. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Apple trusts Apple more than other people trust Apple.
  - happymellon 2mo ago
    Which is the point I've created a work Apple id unless they specifically set it up to prevent it. Which has happened. Bonkers configuration.
kennywinker 2mo ago
This feels like a trumpian tantrum from someone at openai. If they’re innocent, just win the lawsuit. Is this quibbling over details supposed to win the public over? Because afaik the public doesn’t know or care about this, and publicizing it just makes it worse.
- thiht 2mo ago
  This reeks of MAGAt communication style. It's tacky, classless, and completely irrelevant. Why is this a public blog post? It should be presented in a proper court, not on the internet
gr_norm 2mo ago
Setting aside the presented evidence, it feels weird for somewhat emotionally charged complaining like this to go on an official company blog. Companies are generally pretty tight-lipped about active litigation outside court documents, right? This just seems a bit amateurish, down to the title. Is public opinion about this case so important to them?
- jiggawatts 2mo ago
  They might be head hunting other Apple staff and wish to control the narrative to avoid scaring them off.
- altmanaltman 2mo ago
  Yeah this is the cloest a corporate company can get to drunk texting their ex at 3 am and reiterating how it wasn't their fault. But I mean its OpenAI, it loves drama
  - chneu 2mo ago
    Haha omg what if someone at openai prompted a model to write this and the model could only come up with this unhinged version. It reads like a 3am manic text fest cuz that's what the model figures it should be.
    - madeofpalk 2mo ago
      Is there any doubt this is exactly what happened?
- NewsaHackO 2mo ago
  Yea that’s what strikes me as weird too. I had to look up at the web site bar to really confirm this was OpenAI and not some employee blog site. Particularly, the whole Asian last name bit was so shoehorned in to imply Apple is racist I guess? Not something I have seen in a statement from a company like OpenAI. Just weird energy. Also, that text exchange made Apple look like a fun place to work.
- 2mo ago
int_x 2mo ago
To me, this looks like OpenAI is terrified and tries to come out ahead of the public opinion to control the narrative. Such a shit company. They built their whole business model on stolen data and act surprised when another company has zero trust in them. Based on their track record this lawsuit is not unexpected at all.
- gr_norm 2mo ago
  Yeah, based on their track record (I mean, even their name is a bad joke at this point) I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. Turns out there's downsides to conducting yourself with little integrity.
  - sandeepkd 2mo ago
    > Apple now tries to shift the blame to “residual access”, but they also don’t disclose that this is a common issue with Apple which is caused by them failing to properly manage system access when people leave. I have been fixated on this topic for some time. Most people behave in a regulated and lawful manner to be on safer side. They do not trespass into some ones home just cause the owner happened to leave the door open. Companies are using LLMs to hack into other organizations and giving it a spin about agent escaping the sand box. I am surprised how the impacted organizations are not filing lawsuits for damages unless they themselves have something to hide, (probably their reputation). Interestingly from what I remember there is a law that binds the public companies to reveal any intrusion, unless I am missing the names of impacted companies by LLM agent great escape has not been revealed fully.
    - jtfrench 2mo ago
      Hugging Face straight up asked for $100M in compute or something from OpenAI in response to the hack, if I remember correctly.
      - sandeepkd 2mo ago
        The messaging is what questionable here. This just opens up the door to commit hacks openly if other party has not secured properly. The definition of being a bad actor gets diluted here.
bulder 2mo ago
Corporate posting in the weeks immediately surrounding a legal case or ruling impacting tech companies is definitely my favorite brand of written text. Despite not paying full attention to EU legislation, I get reliably notified by Google about every tiny bit of antitrust from them posting a "Google brings millions into the EU's [field they are getting hit with antitrust in] ecosystem" vagueblog about it.
- simondotau 2mo ago
  OpenAI knows that the court of public opinion is more dangerous than a fine from a real court.
  - Traster 2mo ago
    That is absolutely not true in this case. If what Apple alleges is true, the closest example we can look to is Waymo vs Uber. Where Uber ended up settling, they paid Google a quarter of a billion in stock, agreed not to use the IP they had stolen and fired the engineer involved. This could very easily just kill OpenAI's hardware product, they might literally not be able to release what they've built. At that point they have to decide whether they start again from scratch, with monitoring to ensure they aren't using any of the IP or they just give up on this expensive distraction from their core business in the run up to an IPO.
mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago
I wonder if they are throwing a public tantrum because GPT said that the were absolutely in the right and that it had the smoking gun to prove it
pertymcpert 2mo ago
I like how this addresses very little of Apple's core complaints. OpenAI are totally fucked.
- pmkary 2mo ago
  I'm looking forward to see that with popcorns and great pleasure.
picafrost 2mo ago
> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier. The veiled implication here is hilariously petty. This entire document is hilariously petty. And apparently, ignorant of the news cycle. This does not build more trust in OpenAI. If it's-totally-a-misunderstanding and Apple-should-have-communicated-better is the best they can offer, well, good luck in court.
- jaccola 2mo ago
  Also a completely meaningless statement. Essentially “You didn’t need to file because your lawsuit is wrong” er… yea of course you’d say that or there wouldn’t need to be a lawsuit.
- NorthSouthNorth 2mo ago
  > we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. Is also rather funny when hiring HUNDREDS of their engineers.
jbverschoor 2mo ago
One thing is probably true: airdrop failed
- aa-jv 2mo ago
  If nothing else, this case definitely points out the flaws in various architecture decisions that Apple have made, in terms of iOS multi-user functions. It is extremely smelly that Apple doesn't isolate personal versus business accounts in its HR practices. Its also pretty lame that a multi-user operating system has been lobotomized to sell more hardware in that sense.
efnx 2mo ago
Is it normal for a company this big to make a public blog post like this with almost no introduction to what they’re on about? I would expect them to start out with something like Apple is suing us for yada yada yada, but instead it reads like the diary of a hurt teenager.
- gr_norm 2mo ago
  > it reads like the diary of a hurt teenager. Yep, down to the pages of iMessage screenshots
  - jbverschoor 2mo ago
    They aren't screenshots
    - tuoret 2mo ago
      Which, somehow, confused me even further. I get that it's a stylistic choice to make them easy to read or whatever, but my first thought was "wait, they just posted screenshots with the names censored like a bad Reddit post?"
      - dannyw 2mo ago
        Semantic HTML and CSS for text is infinitely better than screenshots for accessibility, as well as cheaper to process for LLMs/agents reading it. For the first reason alone, it's worth it when you can.
    - xg15 2mo ago
      They did keep the emoji though
  - justonepost2 2mo ago
    oh my god did you see brian’s hat?
- chneu 2mo ago
Taikhoom2010 2mo ago
Odd, regardless, OpenAI is spreading itself too thin, trying to fight wars on the enterprise, consumer, and hardware fronts, and will likely end up losing them all. Models are a lost cause anyway - https://open.substack.com/pub/taikhooms/p/why-openrouter-can-be-the-next-great?r=2pgab7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://open.substack.com/pub/taikhooms/p/why-openrouter-can...
dbgrman 2mo ago
Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out. I'm not Apple's biggest fan either (I got super upset when they conveniently wiped out all information about the person comiting suicide in one of their conference rooms and TMZ caught the police line and the sherif said "there is a gun, next to a dead person, we can't say much at the moment" and that was it). But it is unlikely that Apple would depriortize its brand on a fake story.
- zombot 2mo ago
  > the person commiting suicide in one of their conference rooms https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/apple-death https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/apple-...
- Barbing 2mo ago
  Can you clarify the information deletion/wipeout? RIP https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Ed_Mackowiak https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Ed_Mackowiak - Apple’s statement is linked there (and the bit about the woman in the Wiki might be outdated per TMZ correction https://www.tmz.com/2016/04/27/apple-campus-body-found-cupertino/ https://www.tmz.com/2016/04/27/apple-campus-body-found-cuper... )
- onion2k 2mo ago
  Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out. I think you're right, but let's not forget that Apple's goal isn't to protect themselves or to get a fat payout here. Their goal is to make their current employees less likely to leave for an offer at a company like OpenAI. This suit is telling everyone Apple employs "Hey, if you leave and we can find anything that looks a bit dubious, we're happy to screw you over." Apple aren't a loving and caring company that nurtures people. They're as ruthless as the next trillion-dollar unicorn.
Barbing 2mo ago
“They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention.” Stunned they’re playing the racism card.
eurleif 2mo ago
>They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention. I find it bizarre that they felt the need to specify "Asian". What does that have to do with anything?
- pastel8739 2mo ago
  They are definitely trying to get you to think that Apple (the company perhaps single-handedly responsible for developing Chinese manufacturing) is racist
  - derangedHorse 2mo ago
    I’m not saying they’re racist but I will say that them using Chinese manufacturing isn’t an argument against it. Most top level leadership, which include the people who would have initiated this investigation, actually have a small representation of Asians [1] compared to the rest of the business [2]. [1] https://www.apple.com/leadership/ https://www.apple.com/leadership/ [2] https://www.apple.com/diversity/ https://www.apple.com/diversity/
- bob1029 2mo ago
  Roughly one in five Koreans have surname "Kim". Upward of 40% Vietnamese have surname "Nguyen". "Li" is quite popular in China. Specifying "Asian last name" in this context is quite apt.
  - vostrocity 2mo ago
    The odd thing is one of the guys has the first name Chang, and the other guy has the last name Chang.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - dgellow 2mo ago
    But what makes that necessary context? That can be communicated clearly without specifying Asian, „Apple confused 2 people with the same name“. Adding Asian sort of excuse Apple for the mistake, which is strange for OpenAI to do? I would tend to believe they are implying some casual racism
pmkary 2mo ago
How shitty you must be as a company to go out and write this. Kindergarteners have better public policy. I have not seen any gathering of people (other than Trump's whole whatever that circus is called) this openly and easily tell lies. Gathering non profit funds then becoming for profit, Being built to do open source development and not shipping one result, going to the congress and saying "I'm not making any profit of this company" and rigging the world's economy... Now this shit "hey I was the nice person! I said nice things to Apple, look these are facts" Keep your garbage for the court.
sidcool 2mo ago
Small digression. Silicon Valley never ceases to deliver top quality entertainment. We desperately need new iteration of Silicon Valley series. On a serious notes, this seems like a desperate attempt to sway public opinion, but hey, Apple is no saint either. This will be a fun season.
- jorisw 2mo ago
  Season 7 you mean https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/episodes/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/episodes/
  - sidcool 2mo ago
    Yes. Corrected.
Terratrader 2mo ago
Apple is getting everything wrong these days. I am so disappointed after buying a Mac mini M4 last year how everything is sandboxed and behind insane numbers of security layers. I will be moving to Linux as soon as my wallet allows it.
- jorisw 2mo ago
  The F does this have to do with anything?
EagnaIonat 2mo ago
Any self respecting lawyer would normally tell you to stfu and not post stuff like this. Judges don't like trial by press. I think they are hoping what they did with Elon will work with Apple.
- amelius 2mo ago
  This is a different class of lawyers, though.
brap 2mo ago
Many years ago, back when I was a junior, I wrote something like this to my manager, complaining about another employee who has wronged me. I eventually decided not to send it because it just seemed so unprofessional. Wild that a company this big would post this on their official, public blog.
- bergen 2mo ago
  Yep, that's exactly what i thought at first look. This looks like one of those "letting-steam-off" mails you bin after thinking it through after cooling off.
- kilroy123 2mo ago
  I think this is a good way to vent. I've done that a few times. Typed up a long, angry rant. Only to delete it. Just make sure this is on your computer and not in a Slack DM or draft email. Don't want to accidentally hit send.
cung 2mo ago
Why do American corporate PR statements read like a teen drama novel nowadays?
mcintyre1994 2mo ago
I don’t really understand this, Apple obviously wants to force discovery and publishing stuff seems like it’d just widen the net there.
gxs 2mo ago
> after confusing two Asian last names What a fucking a joke - throw some cheap shots in there trying to stir things up by pointing out they were Asian Everything I read about OpenAI makes me dislike them more and more - really can’t stand that company’s culture - I have “friends” who work there and it makes complete sense
cloudie78 2mo ago
Scam Altman at it again. PR is not a moat buddy.
- kotaKat 2mo ago
  Some day Ann will get her justice and Sam will get thrown in prison. There's only so much smokescreen the golden child can throw out there.
rpunkfu 2mo ago
Absolute cinema. OpenAI writing “100 reasons why it’s not my fault” post.
iammjm 2mo ago
Can’t trust anything OpenAI says anymore. Seems like they’ve been acting in bad faith for far too long. Feels like a company run by ruthless lying sociopaths. And I used to be a fan and a customer. Not anymore.
dotmariusz 2mo ago
a very strong piece of evidence that apple is absolutely right, oai trying to do damage control already.
anon373839 2mo ago
> Apple also accuses Tang Tan of trying to get and use their trade secrets. However, Tang has always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies. > Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. Well, I guess that settles it, then! Case closed. Seriously, what is point of this?
gobip 2mo ago
It feels weird doesn't it? It's because it is. Don't buy the story, we'll see what the court says.
jdw64 2mo ago
Reading through this, the Apple side of the story is actually the more fascinating one. It's frankly bizarre that a company of that scale had to rely on a former employee's (Chang Liu) personal iCloud access. It exposes a massive flaw in Apple's offboarding and internal system management. Combine that with their legal team confusing an Asian surname and emailing the wrong person, and publicly, Apple just ends up looking incompetent and deceitful. By choosing to release these receipts to the public instead of saving them for court, OpenAI is executing a very deliberate PR strategy. They are effectively framing Apple as a sloppy, legacy company. As with most corporate litigation PR, information is selectively released. Here, OpenAI is trying to reframe Apple's own operational failures as the root cause, rather than any actual technology theft by OpenAI. Looking at the bigger picture, it's clear who is actually at a disadvantage: OpenAI. Whether Apple's tech was copied or not is almost secondary. The real existential threat for OpenAI is the legal discovery process, which could expose their internal AI architecture and training data to the public (and to Apple). That risk is exactly why OpenAI is playing this out in the court of public opinion—to force Apple's hand. Ultimately, both sides have a lot to lose. Apple has always marketed itself on 'privacy, security, and perfection,' but this incident pulls back the curtain on how sloppy their internal operations can be. OpenAI has their own black boxes to protect. In the end, this isn't about truth; it's a pure media management war to see who blinks first.
- Melatonic 2mo ago
  I mean it makes sense. They somehow still don't have a proper product for businesses to manage Apple devices and accounts. Instead people have to rely on third party integrations. What happens if someone is fired and had kept info only on their personal account that is highly valuable ? Or wants to steal corporate info?
  - Good4boothee 2mo ago
    > They somehow still don't have a proper product for businesses to manage Apple devices and accounts I am not sure why that should matter. If company can handle BYOD model then they should solve that on hardware level - by issuing work phones (and other devices).
stingraycharles 2mo ago
What is this kind of unprofessional blog-style rant doing on OpenAI’s website? Shouldn’t this be settled between the two companies themselves rather than trying to play the court of public opinion? Besides, I have absolutely no idea what this is about or whether I should care.
asimpletune 2mo ago
What really matters is the claim that Apple never raised those issues in the lawsuit with them. OpenAI claims the emails prove this, but to me all the emails prove is Apple sent an email that said “please see the attached letters”. We don’t know what is in the attachments but I imagine those were the relevant issues they raised. Moreover OpenAI says, “[Apple] now admits that Apple employees reached out to him and asked for his help to locate this information”, but the transcript they cite seems to me to show the opposite? It’s Chang Liu asking for someone to help him copy data. The part where Apple employees reach out is later and it’s not for copying data to a hard drive… it’s basically “who should I talk to about this project?” Which makes sense because when he was contacted it was after he left (so he wouldn’t have access to data) Can someone please tell me what am I missing? None of this makes sense with what they’re saying. The fact that the lawyer emailed the wrong person is moot if they caught it and resolved it days later.
- bartman 2mo ago
  The timeline OpenAI wants to present looks like this to me: - Leaving employee (LE) needs a USB stick to copy data off their Mac to give to their Manager (MA) so someone at Apple still has access - After LE left, MA has access to LE Mac and iCloud to still access some data - At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account on that Mac as they suspect they'll get OpenAI-related messages soon and don't want Apple/MA to see them - Eventually, MA deletes the Apple files in LE's iCloud
  - AceJohnny2 2mo ago
    Granted, Apple does do this weird thing where you're invited to use your personal iCloud (/Apple) account for work-related things (I suspect because they're just bad at supporting multiple accounts simultaneously). As part of the deal, your iCloud account gets upgraded during your employment. But they're also quite explicit and repeat the directive (including during the exit interview) about removing Apple files from your account when you leave, and logging out of iCloud from the Apple devices you leave behind. Also: > At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account You can sign out remotely, so this would've been stupid of everyone involved. Then again, this whole situation demonstrates a level of stupidity from supposedly competent people that I wish I could say was unbelievable. Add "Making a public post about a topic under litigation" under that category too.
mthoms 2mo ago
It reads like OpenAI has been taking PR tips from the king of juvenile, ill-advised blog posts during legal proceedings — one Matt Mullenweg. Guys, just stop posting. Listen to your counsel.
haritha-j 2mo ago
It’s a real Goliath vs Goliath thing we’ve got going here.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  More like Goliath vs wannabe Goliath
  - Melatonic 2mo ago
    Turns out one of the Goliaths was actually just 5 copies of Siri in a big trench-coat
wilg 2mo ago
Glad to see everyone dispassionately awaiting the adjudication of this dispute in the official venue!
- kajman 2mo ago
  I'm glad I don't have any ~~bookie~~ prediction app accounts, because I'd now be willing to put money on an incoming settlement.
celltalk 2mo ago
“Hi, this is highly irregular, please remove me from this thread” Oops.
- vostrocity 2mo ago
  Seriously, that was the only person with a level head. When has it ever been okay to discuss work details with an ex-coworker months after they left?
vednig 2mo ago
What I don't understand that if two companies are in legal battle, can they discuss the case and try to influence public swing by doing a blog post or sharing evidence that is not verified by anyone other than the party sharing them. OpenAI, even after raising this much capital, had never anticipated that something like this could happen yet keeps digging it's own grave. At this point all that's left is for them to kiss and pay else they're done. Apple vs OpenAI will be the war of legacies, trust and innovation.
- matwood 2mo ago
  > OpenAI, even after raising this much capital, had never anticipated that something like this could happen yet keeps digging it's own grave. Hubris.
- nicce 2mo ago
  > can they discuss the case and try to influence public swing by doing a blog post or sharing evidence that is not verified by anyone other than the party sharing them. With Trumps era, anything is possible
- dannyw 2mo ago
  OpenAI always has the option of transforming themselves to a 'national security corporation' as I'd like to call it. I mean, just look at Kim Dotcom or Aaron Schwartz.
perching_aix 2mo ago
This is fucking awesome lmao, now we just need a hundred page google docky from Apple, and a 2 hour video from Mujin breaking it all down. Finally some proper gen-z representation. Maybe a Cluely-like office comedy web series next? I sense potential.
- pmkary 2mo ago
  Your "I sense potential" was the best thing I read all month :))))
donkeylazy456 2mo ago
so why it should be publicly posted?
shevy-java 2mo ago
> Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time I stopped right there. I am sorry but I can't deal with promo articles that begin with incorrect claims made.
f6v 2mo ago
Controversial opinion: I don't care about disputes between trillion-dollar companies.
- actionfromafar 2mo ago
  Do you live outside the environment? :)
  - f6v 2mo ago
    I'm a simple man, all I care about is ChatGPT usage reset.
minraws 2mo ago
Maybe there is a point but I don't see it, people in this or any community will support Apple. Publicity doesn't help at this point, the truth is the truth in this case I expect the case after discovery to be quite cut and dry. Or maybe it isn't and stuff really is complicated like OpenAI makes it sound like. Or maybe I am cynical enough to believe OpenAI made this public post as a legal way to collude and make sure all involved parties can get their stories aligned without having to do secret communication that could be tracked and used as evidence of collusion. (This last one is truly an unfounded claim, and just there to complicate OpenAI's narrative but the point is I don't see the point in making this public).
vostrocity 2mo ago
Maybe someone could help me understand what this message means. > I think I’m going to have to hit the workday button before I’m complete. I just got a weird message that is making me nervous (see below), so I am going to go hit the workday button now.
dgellow 2mo ago
Looking at the messages, we are basically at the level of twitch streamers drama? Will we see a google doc manifesto next?
surgical_fire 2mo ago
In a fight in between OpenAI and Apple, I am cheering for the fight.
CoolestBeans 2mo ago
This is a company that's planning on going public soon. Imagine having your eggs in this basket, a basket which is already being zip lined across the Grand Canyon, and they're posting adolescent slam pieces about an ongoing lawsuit against the most valuable company in the world. The chance that any legal team has seen this yet has to be nothing because the second they see it they're going to scream to take it down. Even if OpenAI is right they look like amateurs.
Traster 2mo ago
This looks really bad for OpenAI. Honestly, do not post text messages on the web, you look like a messy bitch. At this point I really don't see this company going public under Altman, they're going to have to bring someone in to bring some professionalism here. Altman seems to have badly mismanaged pretty much every corporate relationship they've got going. OpenAI is such a natural fit to be a partner with Apple, yet somehow they've managed to completely burn those bridges in the most public and messy way possible.
thot_experiment 2mo ago
"800 billion" dollar companies making callout blog posts now, truly this is the dumbest timeline. I want to get off Mr. Bones Wild Ride.
throwawayffffas 2mo ago
My favorite thing about this is in 2026 it's still a major hurdle to move 200GB around.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
apimade 2mo ago
Data theft (i.e. taking corporate IP) was normalised until very recently (I'd say the last 2-3 years with the rise of the adoption of DLP and public litigation). A few examples I can think of thing I've heard _just_ in my own career; terabytes of client data taken by a former consultant, sales reps that joined _solely for the purpose_ of taking this quarter's leads and then ghosting the company, execs forcing the use of their buddy's startup/consultant/vendor (and then they later join the startup/consultancy/vendor). The latter being _the most common_. If you're a large company, your sales pipeline is so valuable to startups -- and from a single consultant perspective the ROI of ripping off your sales data is _insane_. I think back to the questionable things _I've_ done that _don't_ amount to data theft, but _should have_ caused someone to probably kick off an incident/investigation.. But they didn't. - git cloning every repository in the company (who am I kidding, I do this in _every_ company - airdropping stuff to my personal phone (my profile photo, but it could have been the aforementioned git repos) - using sharedrop/similar services (to copy my RSS/news feeds, favourites bars) from my work laptop - enumerated staff/ops dashboards/tooling to get shit done (think: enumerating the CRM before Lazarus and Lap$u$ made it cool)
- greatgib 2mo ago
  It used to be a thing that dev were keeping source code and all in old time. I remember a manager during an internship telling me to do clean code because later I might have to reuse piece of code in further work experiences. It was the time when code was shared with zip and so or net shares. At that time there wasn't that many "software shop" and it was just a way to do things in other company like hardware manufacturers. Obviously you would have been trusted not to take or disseminate or reuse company trade secret or coffee things like expected by your non competition clause in your contact anyway. Since then, a lot of company became like "software production" company and developers are now considered like factory workers. And in some way I would say that you are nowadays robbed of your code and there isn't even attribution anymore. Look, in the 80/90s it was more common to know the name of the main dev of major companies, and their contributions were clearly attributed to them. But now you will very very rarely know the dev that did the code for anything. Top manager/architect/... Might be recognized but not really for their code contributions.
sscaryterry 2mo ago
Prejudicial, wouldn't surprise me if someone gets gagged. But then again, I think they're into it (OpenAI).
cellover 2mo ago
Is this just me or this is always a bad look when a company needs to get to these dirty little details publicy in what I consider an amateurish manner? This looks like PR disaster to me, but of course I am only a pair of eyes and a brain without accelerated reinforcement learning.
tomburgs 2mo ago
Despite whether what OpenAI alleges in the blog post is true or not, it's super odd that a company of their size would make a blog post about it. This looks like a company that's in a downward spiral. They're doing anything they can to attempt to salvage their reputation, maybe because when the court date finally rolls around it might already be too late.
- tokioyoyo 2mo ago
  A few years ago Epic made a whole event out of deliberately breaking AppStore rules, writing blog posts and suing Apple. Public opinion matters, and narrative control is important if you don’t want to be perceived as “morally wrong company”.
- Supermancho 2mo ago
  > super odd that a company of their size would make a blog post about it. There is no "non-company blog" that wouldn't have to trace it back to OpenAI for verification anyway. This looks like a personal message to a specific audience, which may include the employees who are nervous about the company's positioning. It's unusual, but this is a blog. It's literally a web log and this is something that is going on with the company.
senordevnyc 2mo ago
Honestly pretty funny watching all the Sama haters throw a tantrum in this thread, now that their little fantasy of OpenAI being killed is going down the drain. Particularly enjoying the pearl clutching over a company putting all these facts out there in public. Somehow I suspect the people whining about it wouldn't have a problem if those facts were in Apple's favor. I certainly didn't see anyone complaining when Apple dumped their side in public. Sorry y'all, but this case will settle out of court for peanuts, OpenAI will still release their hardware (which very well might flop), and they'll still IPO.
xnx 2mo ago
Just astounding how immature a company supposedly worth billions can be. Add "no-context public legal rant" to the collection of red flags for OpenAI: CEO/"nonprofit" drama, undetected hacking, etc. This is the kind of post I would expect from Matt at WordPress.
barelysapient 2mo ago
Poor judgement, open ai
kittikitti 2mo ago
[flagged]
v5v3 2mo ago
A lot of negative comments, but I read it and said the usual social. media response of "damn they got the reciepts".
baxtr 2mo ago
The number 1 rule of the powerful: never ever admit anything. Deny, deny, deny.
mplanchard 2mo ago
This is an insane thing to publish, and I can’t believe their legal team signed off on it. Save it for the courts.
7e 2mo ago
OpenAI protesting too much.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
cube00 2mo ago
I wondering how they'd do the iMessage transcript in the voice version they've posted, spoiler: they don't, they just skip over it and the emails too.
maieuticagent 2mo ago
I searched for "chips", "local", and "hardware" and realized wrong is right.
VCFundedGenYer 2mo ago
Yikes. Big yikes. This is only showing with more clarity just how weak Altman actually is. It almost feels as if they wanted the same clout received from the "Thoughts on Flash" Jobs article from nearly 20 years ago and thought ChatGPT could do better. Lawyers would not have advised posting this.
fwlr 2mo ago
I guess there is something big about to happen and the Apple lawsuit situation needs to be visibly/publicly addressed in order to unblock it. And this thing is big enough that the objection “there is no good way to address the lawsuit” gets overruled with “then address it in a bad way”. So I guess it’s the IPO, closing a new funding round, or the hardware launch?
hashstring 2mo ago
> after confusing two Asian last names The addition that the last names are Asian is insane and just put there to make the opposite party look bad. Ironically, all it does is reflect the spirit of OpenAI.
lern_too_spel 2mo ago
Why does everyone think this is out of the ordinary? OpenAI did exactly the same thing with Musk's lawsuit. I was waiting for them to post this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611484
Barbing 2mo ago
Controversial! (and possible followup) Post off front page, down onto third page. Rank 78, 248 points, +10hr, 244 comments Almost wish the thread could get locked instead, but maybe only almost… - Also, for coverage: FT picked this up, syndicated here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/openai-says-apples-trade-secrets-lawsuit-is-aggressive-and-oddly-personal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/openai-says-appl...
thrill 2mo ago
We're living through the history of how OpenAI became AppleAI, told in a teenager's diary tone - we just need some doodles in the corners.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 2mo ago
OpenAI quotes from iMessage communications between Liu and Peng But Apple's motion states that their communications occurred "through the Line messenger app to avoid detection by Apple" https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.474095/gov.uscourts.cand.474095.49.0_5.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.47...
- Melatonic 2mo ago
  Saw that - what the hell is "Line" messenger? It also does specifically state that they use that to avoid detection (and only between those two people) so they could have been using multiple communication mediums. That document has a lot of more interesting stuff, however. They also talk about an "apple proprietary metal finishing process" made by a supplier - could they have tried to steal Liquid Metal? edit: They also state this below which may have some more specifics on what technology is in question: "Documents sufficient to show hardware development at OpenAI involving (1) bat- tery technology, including can size, flange specifications, and manufacturing toler- ances; (2) the metal finishing process, including surface preparation and anodization"
  - sufficientsoup 2mo ago
    It's a messenger app used in Japan and supposedly some other Asian countries (but I can only vouch for the former).
  - sunnybeetroot 2mo ago
    Typing in “line messenger” on Google reveals it’s a Japanese messaging app.
  - turtlesdown11 2mo ago
    > Saw that - what the hell is "Line" messenger? An Asian super-app with a few hundred million DAUs
keeda 2mo ago
Lots of comments about how OpenAI is posting this informal response to a lawsuit on a company blog, but ehh, they've been doing this forever: https://openai.com/index/the-truth-elon-left-out/ https://openai.com/index/the-truth-elon-left-out/ https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk/ https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk/ https://openai.com/index/court-rejects-elon/ https://openai.com/index/court-rejects-elon/ https://openai.com/elon-musk/ https://openai.com/elon-musk/ https://openai.com/index/response-to-nyt-data-demands/ https://openai.com/index/response-to-nyt-data-demands/ https://openai.com/index/mental-health-litigation-approach/ https://openai.com/index/mental-health-litigation-approach/ (The Elon ones also have redacted screenshots as receipts.) Indeed, they are litigating in the court of public opinion but let's not be naive to think that this is NOT what the other parties have also been doing.
keeda 2mo ago
Apple: OpenAI brazenly ignored our lawyer when he contacted them about this treacherous industrial espionage. OpenAI: Sorry but your lawyer never really contacted us because he was incompetent and maybe even racist. More entertaining than anything on TV /popcorn Which makes me wonder, is it normal for giant corporations to very publicly lob lawsuits after just a couple of failed attempts to connect with the other party?
alberth 2mo ago
Why does the iMessage screenshot look “off”. Something about the line-height, fonts used, etc don’t look like a real iMessage chat. Am I alone on this?
- maxutility 2mo ago
  It’s not a screenshot. It’s a formatted reconstruction from a transcript.
suobset 2mo ago
They are genuinely holding on to the one minor mishap from Apple that was corrected right after. Either way, grabbing popcorn to see how this plays out in court.

290 points by meetpateltech 2mo ago

Yay for more cherry-picked information. A substantial amount of evidence in Apple's complaint isn't addressed, but what's shown here throws a decent amount of shade and doubt. I have my popcorn ready for discovery. I hope it gets to that point, and I hope it proceeds to trial...

random__duck 2mo ago
Spot on, while reading this post I couldn't help be wonder "but what about the prototypes"?

MagicMoonlight 2mo ago

[dead]

cube00 2mo ago

I can't see a judge looking kindly on this being published prior to trial. It's in court already, fight it there. Even if you win public opinion with your point of view you can still lose in court.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
gene91 2mo ago
Does US law prevent (or frown upon) defendant from publicly publishing evidence, even when the plaintiff publicly published the accusation and their evidence first? If so, how is the defendant supposed to protect their public reputation when a lawsuit is ongoing for years? Or maybe I’m missing your point on what wouldn’t be looked upon kindly?
- cube00 2mo ago
  Two wrongs don't make a right, even if the plaintiff is playing dirty it doesn't give you the right to join in. Assuming the exhibits aren't sealed they're publicly available as soon as they're entered by the court during trial. If they're sealed there's probably a good reason they shouldn't be published until the trial is over (or ever in some cases)

prmoustache 2mo ago

When I look at the imessage conversation, one thing strikes me: that guy looks to be using the same icloud account he used when working for Apple with OpenAI. Is he using his own personal account? Why do both Apple and OpenAI allow that in the first place, this look so amateur. I would have assumed each company would have opened a different account for him and locked him when leaving. Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?

h05sz487b 2mo ago
On the phone with some App Store support person I was told they don't like people having multiple Apple IDs. That's why I use my personal one for work as well.
wodenokoto 2mo ago
I have never worked at a place where they gave us corporate Apple accounts. We’ve always been asked to use our personal Apple account to install apps used for work.
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Whereas I never worked in places where IT would not see that as a security violation.
  - prmoustache 2mo ago
    Same here
  - simondotau 2mo ago
    Correct, because other companies are not in a position to certify the security of iCloud meeting their own standards. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Apple trusts Apple more than other people trust Apple.
- happymellon 2mo ago
  Which is the point I've created a work Apple id unless they specifically set it up to prevent it. Which has happened. Bonkers configuration.

kennywinker 2mo ago

This feels like a trumpian tantrum from someone at openai. If they’re innocent, just win the lawsuit. Is this quibbling over details supposed to win the public over? Because afaik the public doesn’t know or care about this, and publicizing it just makes it worse.

thiht 2mo ago
This reeks of MAGAt communication style. It's tacky, classless, and completely irrelevant. Why is this a public blog post? It should be presented in a proper court, not on the internet

gr_norm 2mo ago

Setting aside the presented evidence, it feels weird for somewhat emotionally charged complaining like this to go on an official company blog. Companies are generally pretty tight-lipped about active litigation outside court documents, right? This just seems a bit amateurish, down to the title. Is public opinion about this case so important to them?

jiggawatts 2mo ago
They might be head hunting other Apple staff and wish to control the narrative to avoid scaring them off.
altmanaltman 2mo ago
Yeah this is the cloest a corporate company can get to drunk texting their ex at 3 am and reiterating how it wasn't their fault. But I mean its OpenAI, it loves drama
- chneu 2mo ago
  Haha omg what if someone at openai prompted a model to write this and the model could only come up with this unhinged version. It reads like a 3am manic text fest cuz that's what the model figures it should be.
  - madeofpalk 2mo ago
    Is there any doubt this is exactly what happened?
NewsaHackO 2mo ago
Yea that’s what strikes me as weird too. I had to look up at the web site bar to really confirm this was OpenAI and not some employee blog site. Particularly, the whole Asian last name bit was so shoehorned in to imply Apple is racist I guess? Not something I have seen in a statement from a company like OpenAI. Just weird energy. Also, that text exchange made Apple look like a fun place to work.
2mo ago

int_x 2mo ago

To me, this looks like OpenAI is terrified and tries to come out ahead of the public opinion to control the narrative. Such a shit company. They built their whole business model on stolen data and act surprised when another company has zero trust in them. Based on their track record this lawsuit is not unexpected at all.

gr_norm 2mo ago
Yeah, based on their track record (I mean, even their name is a bad joke at this point) I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. Turns out there's downsides to conducting yourself with little integrity.
- sandeepkd 2mo ago
  > Apple now tries to shift the blame to “residual access”, but they also don’t disclose that this is a common issue with Apple which is caused by them failing to properly manage system access when people leave. I have been fixated on this topic for some time. Most people behave in a regulated and lawful manner to be on safer side. They do not trespass into some ones home just cause the owner happened to leave the door open. Companies are using LLMs to hack into other organizations and giving it a spin about agent escaping the sand box. I am surprised how the impacted organizations are not filing lawsuits for damages unless they themselves have something to hide, (probably their reputation). Interestingly from what I remember there is a law that binds the public companies to reveal any intrusion, unless I am missing the names of impacted companies by LLM agent great escape has not been revealed fully.
  - jtfrench 2mo ago
    Hugging Face straight up asked for $100M in compute or something from OpenAI in response to the hack, if I remember correctly.
    - sandeepkd 2mo ago
      The messaging is what questionable here. This just opens up the door to commit hacks openly if other party has not secured properly. The definition of being a bad actor gets diluted here.

bulder 2mo ago

Corporate posting in the weeks immediately surrounding a legal case or ruling impacting tech companies is definitely my favorite brand of written text. Despite not paying full attention to EU legislation, I get reliably notified by Google about every tiny bit of antitrust from them posting a "Google brings millions into the EU's [field they are getting hit with antitrust in] ecosystem" vagueblog about it.

simondotau 2mo ago
OpenAI knows that the court of public opinion is more dangerous than a fine from a real court.
- Traster 2mo ago
  That is absolutely not true in this case. If what Apple alleges is true, the closest example we can look to is Waymo vs Uber. Where Uber ended up settling, they paid Google a quarter of a billion in stock, agreed not to use the IP they had stolen and fired the engineer involved. This could very easily just kill OpenAI's hardware product, they might literally not be able to release what they've built. At that point they have to decide whether they start again from scratch, with monitoring to ensure they aren't using any of the IP or they just give up on this expensive distraction from their core business in the run up to an IPO.

mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago

I wonder if they are throwing a public tantrum because GPT said that the were absolutely in the right and that it had the smoking gun to prove it

pertymcpert 2mo ago

I like how this addresses very little of Apple's core complaints. OpenAI are totally fucked.

pmkary 2mo ago
I'm looking forward to see that with popcorns and great pleasure.

picafrost 2mo ago

> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier. The veiled implication here is hilariously petty. This entire document is hilariously petty. And apparently, ignorant of the news cycle. This does not build more trust in OpenAI. If it's-totally-a-misunderstanding and Apple-should-have-communicated-better is the best they can offer, well, good luck in court.

jaccola 2mo ago
Also a completely meaningless statement. Essentially “You didn’t need to file because your lawsuit is wrong” er… yea of course you’d say that or there wouldn’t need to be a lawsuit.
NorthSouthNorth 2mo ago
> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. Is also rather funny when hiring HUNDREDS of their engineers.

jbverschoor 2mo ago

One thing is probably true: airdrop failed

aa-jv 2mo ago
If nothing else, this case definitely points out the flaws in various architecture decisions that Apple have made, in terms of iOS multi-user functions. It is extremely smelly that Apple doesn't isolate personal versus business accounts in its HR practices. Its also pretty lame that a multi-user operating system has been lobotomized to sell more hardware in that sense.

efnx 2mo ago

Is it normal for a company this big to make a public blog post like this with almost no introduction to what they’re on about? I would expect them to start out with something like Apple is suing us for yada yada yada, but instead it reads like the diary of a hurt teenager.

gr_norm 2mo ago
> it reads like the diary of a hurt teenager. Yep, down to the pages of iMessage screenshots
- jbverschoor 2mo ago
  They aren't screenshots
  - tuoret 2mo ago
    Which, somehow, confused me even further. I get that it's a stylistic choice to make them easy to read or whatever, but my first thought was "wait, they just posted screenshots with the names censored like a bad Reddit post?"
    - dannyw 2mo ago
      Semantic HTML and CSS for text is infinitely better than screenshots for accessibility, as well as cheaper to process for LLMs/agents reading it. For the first reason alone, it's worth it when you can.
  - xg15 2mo ago
    They did keep the emoji though
- justonepost2 2mo ago
  oh my god did you see brian’s hat?
chneu 2mo ago

Taikhoom2010 2mo ago

Odd, regardless, OpenAI is spreading itself too thin, trying to fight wars on the enterprise, consumer, and hardware fronts, and will likely end up losing them all. Models are a lost cause anyway - https://open.substack.com/pub/taikhooms/p/why-openrouter-can-be-the-next-great?r=2pgab7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://open.substack.com/pub/taikhooms/p/why-openrouter-can...

dbgrman 2mo ago

Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out. I'm not Apple's biggest fan either (I got super upset when they conveniently wiped out all information about the person comiting suicide in one of their conference rooms and TMZ caught the police line and the sherif said "there is a gun, next to a dead person, we can't say much at the moment" and that was it). But it is unlikely that Apple would depriortize its brand on a fake story.

zombot 2mo ago
> the person commiting suicide in one of their conference rooms https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/apple-death https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/apple-...
Barbing 2mo ago
Can you clarify the information deletion/wipeout? RIP https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Ed_Mackowiak https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Ed_Mackowiak - Apple’s statement is linked there (and the bit about the woman in the Wiki might be outdated per TMZ correction https://www.tmz.com/2016/04/27/apple-campus-body-found-cupertino/ https://www.tmz.com/2016/04/27/apple-campus-body-found-cuper... )
onion2k 2mo ago
Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out. I think you're right, but let's not forget that Apple's goal isn't to protect themselves or to get a fat payout here. Their goal is to make their current employees less likely to leave for an offer at a company like OpenAI. This suit is telling everyone Apple employs "Hey, if you leave and we can find anything that looks a bit dubious, we're happy to screw you over." Apple aren't a loving and caring company that nurtures people. They're as ruthless as the next trillion-dollar unicorn.

Barbing 2mo ago

“They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention.” Stunned they’re playing the racism card.

eurleif 2mo ago

>They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention. I find it bizarre that they felt the need to specify "Asian". What does that have to do with anything?

pastel8739 2mo ago
They are definitely trying to get you to think that Apple (the company perhaps single-handedly responsible for developing Chinese manufacturing) is racist
- derangedHorse 2mo ago
  I’m not saying they’re racist but I will say that them using Chinese manufacturing isn’t an argument against it. Most top level leadership, which include the people who would have initiated this investigation, actually have a small representation of Asians [1] compared to the rest of the business [2]. [1] https://www.apple.com/leadership/ https://www.apple.com/leadership/ [2] https://www.apple.com/diversity/ https://www.apple.com/diversity/
bob1029 2mo ago
Roughly one in five Koreans have surname "Kim". Upward of 40% Vietnamese have surname "Nguyen". "Li" is quite popular in China. Specifying "Asian last name" in this context is quite apt.
- vostrocity 2mo ago
  The odd thing is one of the guys has the first name Chang, and the other guy has the last name Chang.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- dgellow 2mo ago
  But what makes that necessary context? That can be communicated clearly without specifying Asian, „Apple confused 2 people with the same name“. Adding Asian sort of excuse Apple for the mistake, which is strange for OpenAI to do? I would tend to believe they are implying some casual racism

pmkary 2mo ago

How shitty you must be as a company to go out and write this. Kindergarteners have better public policy. I have not seen any gathering of people (other than Trump's whole whatever that circus is called) this openly and easily tell lies. Gathering non profit funds then becoming for profit, Being built to do open source development and not shipping one result, going to the congress and saying "I'm not making any profit of this company" and rigging the world's economy... Now this shit "hey I was the nice person! I said nice things to Apple, look these are facts" Keep your garbage for the court.

sidcool 2mo ago

Small digression. Silicon Valley never ceases to deliver top quality entertainment. We desperately need new iteration of Silicon Valley series. On a serious notes, this seems like a desperate attempt to sway public opinion, but hey, Apple is no saint either. This will be a fun season.

jorisw 2mo ago
Season 7 you mean https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/episodes/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/episodes/
- sidcool 2mo ago
  Yes. Corrected.

Terratrader 2mo ago

Apple is getting everything wrong these days. I am so disappointed after buying a Mac mini M4 last year how everything is sandboxed and behind insane numbers of security layers. I will be moving to Linux as soon as my wallet allows it.

jorisw 2mo ago
The F does this have to do with anything?

EagnaIonat 2mo ago

Any self respecting lawyer would normally tell you to stfu and not post stuff like this. Judges don't like trial by press. I think they are hoping what they did with Elon will work with Apple.

amelius 2mo ago
This is a different class of lawyers, though.

brap 2mo ago

Many years ago, back when I was a junior, I wrote something like this to my manager, complaining about another employee who has wronged me. I eventually decided not to send it because it just seemed so unprofessional. Wild that a company this big would post this on their official, public blog.

bergen 2mo ago
Yep, that's exactly what i thought at first look. This looks like one of those "letting-steam-off" mails you bin after thinking it through after cooling off.
kilroy123 2mo ago
I think this is a good way to vent. I've done that a few times. Typed up a long, angry rant. Only to delete it. Just make sure this is on your computer and not in a Slack DM or draft email. Don't want to accidentally hit send.

cung 2mo ago

Why do American corporate PR statements read like a teen drama novel nowadays?

mcintyre1994 2mo ago

I don’t really understand this, Apple obviously wants to force discovery and publishing stuff seems like it’d just widen the net there.

gxs 2mo ago

> after confusing two Asian last names What a fucking a joke - throw some cheap shots in there trying to stir things up by pointing out they were Asian Everything I read about OpenAI makes me dislike them more and more - really can’t stand that company’s culture - I have “friends” who work there and it makes complete sense

cloudie78 2mo ago

Scam Altman at it again. PR is not a moat buddy.

kotaKat 2mo ago
Some day Ann will get her justice and Sam will get thrown in prison. There's only so much smokescreen the golden child can throw out there.

rpunkfu 2mo ago

Absolute cinema. OpenAI writing “100 reasons why it’s not my fault” post.

iammjm 2mo ago

Can’t trust anything OpenAI says anymore. Seems like they’ve been acting in bad faith for far too long. Feels like a company run by ruthless lying sociopaths. And I used to be a fan and a customer. Not anymore.

dotmariusz 2mo ago

a very strong piece of evidence that apple is absolutely right, oai trying to do damage control already.

anon373839 2mo ago

> Apple also accuses Tang Tan of trying to get and use their trade secrets. However, Tang has always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies. > Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. Well, I guess that settles it, then! Case closed. Seriously, what is point of this?

gobip 2mo ago

It feels weird doesn't it? It's because it is. Don't buy the story, we'll see what the court says.

jdw64 2mo ago

Reading through this, the Apple side of the story is actually the more fascinating one. It's frankly bizarre that a company of that scale had to rely on a former employee's (Chang Liu) personal iCloud access. It exposes a massive flaw in Apple's offboarding and internal system management. Combine that with their legal team confusing an Asian surname and emailing the wrong person, and publicly, Apple just ends up looking incompetent and deceitful. By choosing to release these receipts to the public instead of saving them for court, OpenAI is executing a very deliberate PR strategy. They are effectively framing Apple as a sloppy, legacy company. As with most corporate litigation PR, information is selectively released. Here, OpenAI is trying to reframe Apple's own operational failures as the root cause, rather than any actual technology theft by OpenAI. Looking at the bigger picture, it's clear who is actually at a disadvantage: OpenAI. Whether Apple's tech was copied or not is almost secondary. The real existential threat for OpenAI is the legal discovery process, which could expose their internal AI architecture and training data to the public (and to Apple). That risk is exactly why OpenAI is playing this out in the court of public opinion—to force Apple's hand. Ultimately, both sides have a lot to lose. Apple has always marketed itself on 'privacy, security, and perfection,' but this incident pulls back the curtain on how sloppy their internal operations can be. OpenAI has their own black boxes to protect. In the end, this isn't about truth; it's a pure media management war to see who blinks first.

Melatonic 2mo ago
I mean it makes sense. They somehow still don't have a proper product for businesses to manage Apple devices and accounts. Instead people have to rely on third party integrations. What happens if someone is fired and had kept info only on their personal account that is highly valuable ? Or wants to steal corporate info?
- Good4boothee 2mo ago
  > They somehow still don't have a proper product for businesses to manage Apple devices and accounts I am not sure why that should matter. If company can handle BYOD model then they should solve that on hardware level - by issuing work phones (and other devices).

stingraycharles 2mo ago

What is this kind of unprofessional blog-style rant doing on OpenAI’s website? Shouldn’t this be settled between the two companies themselves rather than trying to play the court of public opinion? Besides, I have absolutely no idea what this is about or whether I should care.

asimpletune 2mo ago

What really matters is the claim that Apple never raised those issues in the lawsuit with them. OpenAI claims the emails prove this, but to me all the emails prove is Apple sent an email that said “please see the attached letters”. We don’t know what is in the attachments but I imagine those were the relevant issues they raised. Moreover OpenAI says, “[Apple] now admits that Apple employees reached out to him and asked for his help to locate this information”, but the transcript they cite seems to me to show the opposite? It’s Chang Liu asking for someone to help him copy data. The part where Apple employees reach out is later and it’s not for copying data to a hard drive… it’s basically “who should I talk to about this project?” Which makes sense because when he was contacted it was after he left (so he wouldn’t have access to data) Can someone please tell me what am I missing? None of this makes sense with what they’re saying. The fact that the lawyer emailed the wrong person is moot if they caught it and resolved it days later.

bartman 2mo ago
The timeline OpenAI wants to present looks like this to me: - Leaving employee (LE) needs a USB stick to copy data off their Mac to give to their Manager (MA) so someone at Apple still has access - After LE left, MA has access to LE Mac and iCloud to still access some data - At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account on that Mac as they suspect they'll get OpenAI-related messages soon and don't want Apple/MA to see them - Eventually, MA deletes the Apple files in LE's iCloud
- AceJohnny2 2mo ago
  Granted, Apple does do this weird thing where you're invited to use your personal iCloud (/Apple) account for work-related things (I suspect because they're just bad at supporting multiple accounts simultaneously). As part of the deal, your iCloud account gets upgraded during your employment. But they're also quite explicit and repeat the directive (including during the exit interview) about removing Apple files from your account when you leave, and logging out of iCloud from the Apple devices you leave behind. Also: > At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account You can sign out remotely, so this would've been stupid of everyone involved. Then again, this whole situation demonstrates a level of stupidity from supposedly competent people that I wish I could say was unbelievable. Add "Making a public post about a topic under litigation" under that category too.

mthoms 2mo ago

It reads like OpenAI has been taking PR tips from the king of juvenile, ill-advised blog posts during legal proceedings — one Matt Mullenweg. Guys, just stop posting. Listen to your counsel.

haritha-j 2mo ago

It’s a real Goliath vs Goliath thing we’ve got going here.

dgellow 2mo ago
More like Goliath vs wannabe Goliath
- Melatonic 2mo ago
  Turns out one of the Goliaths was actually just 5 copies of Siri in a big trench-coat

wilg 2mo ago

Glad to see everyone dispassionately awaiting the adjudication of this dispute in the official venue!

kajman 2mo ago
I'm glad I don't have any ~~bookie~~ prediction app accounts, because I'd now be willing to put money on an incoming settlement.

celltalk 2mo ago

“Hi, this is highly irregular, please remove me from this thread” Oops.

vostrocity 2mo ago
Seriously, that was the only person with a level head. When has it ever been okay to discuss work details with an ex-coworker months after they left?

vednig 2mo ago

What I don't understand that if two companies are in legal battle, can they discuss the case and try to influence public swing by doing a blog post or sharing evidence that is not verified by anyone other than the party sharing them. OpenAI, even after raising this much capital, had never anticipated that something like this could happen yet keeps digging it's own grave. At this point all that's left is for them to kiss and pay else they're done. Apple vs OpenAI will be the war of legacies, trust and innovation.

matwood 2mo ago
> OpenAI, even after raising this much capital, had never anticipated that something like this could happen yet keeps digging it's own grave. Hubris.
nicce 2mo ago
> can they discuss the case and try to influence public swing by doing a blog post or sharing evidence that is not verified by anyone other than the party sharing them. With Trumps era, anything is possible
dannyw 2mo ago
OpenAI always has the option of transforming themselves to a 'national security corporation' as I'd like to call it. I mean, just look at Kim Dotcom or Aaron Schwartz.

perching_aix 2mo ago

This is fucking awesome lmao, now we just need a hundred page google docky from Apple, and a 2 hour video from Mujin breaking it all down. Finally some proper gen-z representation. Maybe a Cluely-like office comedy web series next? I sense potential.

pmkary 2mo ago
Your "I sense potential" was the best thing I read all month :))))

donkeylazy456 2mo ago

so why it should be publicly posted?

shevy-java 2mo ago

> Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time I stopped right there. I am sorry but I can't deal with promo articles that begin with incorrect claims made.

f6v 2mo ago

Controversial opinion: I don't care about disputes between trillion-dollar companies.

actionfromafar 2mo ago
Do you live outside the environment? :)
- f6v 2mo ago
  I'm a simple man, all I care about is ChatGPT usage reset.

minraws 2mo ago

Maybe there is a point but I don't see it, people in this or any community will support Apple. Publicity doesn't help at this point, the truth is the truth in this case I expect the case after discovery to be quite cut and dry. Or maybe it isn't and stuff really is complicated like OpenAI makes it sound like. Or maybe I am cynical enough to believe OpenAI made this public post as a legal way to collude and make sure all involved parties can get their stories aligned without having to do secret communication that could be tracked and used as evidence of collusion. (This last one is truly an unfounded claim, and just there to complicate OpenAI's narrative but the point is I don't see the point in making this public).

vostrocity 2mo ago

Maybe someone could help me understand what this message means. > I think I’m going to have to hit the workday button before I’m complete. I just got a weird message that is making me nervous (see below), so I am going to go hit the workday button now.

dgellow 2mo ago

Looking at the messages, we are basically at the level of twitch streamers drama? Will we see a google doc manifesto next?

surgical_fire 2mo ago

In a fight in between OpenAI and Apple, I am cheering for the fight.

CoolestBeans 2mo ago

This is a company that's planning on going public soon. Imagine having your eggs in this basket, a basket which is already being zip lined across the Grand Canyon, and they're posting adolescent slam pieces about an ongoing lawsuit against the most valuable company in the world. The chance that any legal team has seen this yet has to be nothing because the second they see it they're going to scream to take it down. Even if OpenAI is right they look like amateurs.

Traster 2mo ago

This looks really bad for OpenAI. Honestly, do not post text messages on the web, you look like a messy bitch. At this point I really don't see this company going public under Altman, they're going to have to bring someone in to bring some professionalism here. Altman seems to have badly mismanaged pretty much every corporate relationship they've got going. OpenAI is such a natural fit to be a partner with Apple, yet somehow they've managed to completely burn those bridges in the most public and messy way possible.

thot_experiment 2mo ago

"800 billion" dollar companies making callout blog posts now, truly this is the dumbest timeline. I want to get off Mr. Bones Wild Ride.

throwawayffffas 2mo ago

My favorite thing about this is in 2026 it's still a major hurdle to move 200GB around.

deleted 2mo ago
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apimade 2mo ago

Data theft (i.e. taking corporate IP) was normalised until very recently (I'd say the last 2-3 years with the rise of the adoption of DLP and public litigation). A few examples I can think of thing I've heard _just_ in my own career; terabytes of client data taken by a former consultant, sales reps that joined _solely for the purpose_ of taking this quarter's leads and then ghosting the company, execs forcing the use of their buddy's startup/consultant/vendor (and then they later join the startup/consultancy/vendor). The latter being _the most common_. If you're a large company, your sales pipeline is so valuable to startups -- and from a single consultant perspective the ROI of ripping off your sales data is _insane_. I think back to the questionable things _I've_ done that _don't_ amount to data theft, but _should have_ caused someone to probably kick off an incident/investigation.. But they didn't. - git cloning every repository in the company (who am I kidding, I do this in _every_ company - airdropping stuff to my personal phone (my profile photo, but it could have been the aforementioned git repos) - using sharedrop/similar services (to copy my RSS/news feeds, favourites bars) from my work laptop - enumerated staff/ops dashboards/tooling to get shit done (think: enumerating the CRM before Lazarus and Lap$u$ made it cool)

greatgib 2mo ago
It used to be a thing that dev were keeping source code and all in old time. I remember a manager during an internship telling me to do clean code because later I might have to reuse piece of code in further work experiences. It was the time when code was shared with zip and so or net shares. At that time there wasn't that many "software shop" and it was just a way to do things in other company like hardware manufacturers. Obviously you would have been trusted not to take or disseminate or reuse company trade secret or coffee things like expected by your non competition clause in your contact anyway. Since then, a lot of company became like "software production" company and developers are now considered like factory workers. And in some way I would say that you are nowadays robbed of your code and there isn't even attribution anymore. Look, in the 80/90s it was more common to know the name of the main dev of major companies, and their contributions were clearly attributed to them. But now you will very very rarely know the dev that did the code for anything. Top manager/architect/... Might be recognized but not really for their code contributions.

sscaryterry 2mo ago

Prejudicial, wouldn't surprise me if someone gets gagged. But then again, I think they're into it (OpenAI).

cellover 2mo ago

Is this just me or this is always a bad look when a company needs to get to these dirty little details publicy in what I consider an amateurish manner? This looks like PR disaster to me, but of course I am only a pair of eyes and a brain without accelerated reinforcement learning.

tomburgs 2mo ago

Despite whether what OpenAI alleges in the blog post is true or not, it's super odd that a company of their size would make a blog post about it. This looks like a company that's in a downward spiral. They're doing anything they can to attempt to salvage their reputation, maybe because when the court date finally rolls around it might already be too late.

tokioyoyo 2mo ago
A few years ago Epic made a whole event out of deliberately breaking AppStore rules, writing blog posts and suing Apple. Public opinion matters, and narrative control is important if you don’t want to be perceived as “morally wrong company”.
Supermancho 2mo ago
> super odd that a company of their size would make a blog post about it. There is no "non-company blog" that wouldn't have to trace it back to OpenAI for verification anyway. This looks like a personal message to a specific audience, which may include the employees who are nervous about the company's positioning. It's unusual, but this is a blog. It's literally a web log and this is something that is going on with the company.

senordevnyc 2mo ago

Honestly pretty funny watching all the Sama haters throw a tantrum in this thread, now that their little fantasy of OpenAI being killed is going down the drain. Particularly enjoying the pearl clutching over a company putting all these facts out there in public. Somehow I suspect the people whining about it wouldn't have a problem if those facts were in Apple's favor. I certainly didn't see anyone complaining when Apple dumped their side in public. Sorry y'all, but this case will settle out of court for peanuts, OpenAI will still release their hardware (which very well might flop), and they'll still IPO.

xnx 2mo ago

Just astounding how immature a company supposedly worth billions can be. Add "no-context public legal rant" to the collection of red flags for OpenAI: CEO/"nonprofit" drama, undetected hacking, etc. This is the kind of post I would expect from Matt at WordPress.

barelysapient 2mo ago

Poor judgement, open ai

kittikitti 2mo ago

[flagged]

v5v3 2mo ago

A lot of negative comments, but I read it and said the usual social. media response of "damn they got the reciepts".

baxtr 2mo ago

The number 1 rule of the powerful: never ever admit anything. Deny, deny, deny.

mplanchard 2mo ago

This is an insane thing to publish, and I can’t believe their legal team signed off on it. Save it for the courts.

7e 2mo ago

OpenAI protesting too much.

deleted 2mo ago

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cube00 2mo ago

I wondering how they'd do the iMessage transcript in the voice version they've posted, spoiler: they don't, they just skip over it and the emails too.

maieuticagent 2mo ago

I searched for "chips", "local", and "hardware" and realized wrong is right.

VCFundedGenYer 2mo ago

Yikes. Big yikes. This is only showing with more clarity just how weak Altman actually is. It almost feels as if they wanted the same clout received from the "Thoughts on Flash" Jobs article from nearly 20 years ago and thought ChatGPT could do better. Lawyers would not have advised posting this.

fwlr 2mo ago

I guess there is something big about to happen and the Apple lawsuit situation needs to be visibly/publicly addressed in order to unblock it. And this thing is big enough that the objection “there is no good way to address the lawsuit” gets overruled with “then address it in a bad way”. So I guess it’s the IPO, closing a new funding round, or the hardware launch?

hashstring 2mo ago

> after confusing two Asian last names The addition that the last names are Asian is insane and just put there to make the opposite party look bad. Ironically, all it does is reflect the spirit of OpenAI.

lern_too_spel 2mo ago

Why does everyone think this is out of the ordinary? OpenAI did exactly the same thing with Musk's lawsuit. I was waiting for them to post this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611484

Barbing 2mo ago

Controversial! (and possible followup) Post off front page, down onto third page. Rank 78, 248 points, +10hr, 244 comments Almost wish the thread could get locked instead, but maybe only almost… - Also, for coverage: FT picked this up, syndicated here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/openai-says-apples-trade-secrets-lawsuit-is-aggressive-and-oddly-personal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/openai-says-appl...

thrill 2mo ago

We're living through the history of how OpenAI became AppleAI, told in a teenager's diary tone - we just need some doodles in the corners.

deleted 2mo ago

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1vuio0pswjnm7 2mo ago

OpenAI quotes from iMessage communications between Liu and Peng But Apple's motion states that their communications occurred "through the Line messenger app to avoid detection by Apple" https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.474095/gov.uscourts.cand.474095.49.0_5.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.47...

Melatonic 2mo ago
Saw that - what the hell is "Line" messenger? It also does specifically state that they use that to avoid detection (and only between those two people) so they could have been using multiple communication mediums. That document has a lot of more interesting stuff, however. They also talk about an "apple proprietary metal finishing process" made by a supplier - could they have tried to steal Liquid Metal? edit: They also state this below which may have some more specifics on what technology is in question: "Documents sufficient to show hardware development at OpenAI involving (1) bat- tery technology, including can size, flange specifications, and manufacturing toler- ances; (2) the metal finishing process, including surface preparation and anodization"
- sufficientsoup 2mo ago
  It's a messenger app used in Japan and supposedly some other Asian countries (but I can only vouch for the former).
- sunnybeetroot 2mo ago
  Typing in “line messenger” on Google reveals it’s a Japanese messaging app.
- turtlesdown11 2mo ago
  > Saw that - what the hell is "Line" messenger? An Asian super-app with a few hundred million DAUs

keeda 2mo ago

Lots of comments about how OpenAI is posting this informal response to a lawsuit on a company blog, but ehh, they've been doing this forever: https://openai.com/index/the-truth-elon-left-out/ https://openai.com/index/the-truth-elon-left-out/ https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk/ https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk/ https://openai.com/index/court-rejects-elon/ https://openai.com/index/court-rejects-elon/ https://openai.com/elon-musk/ https://openai.com/elon-musk/ https://openai.com/index/response-to-nyt-data-demands/ https://openai.com/index/response-to-nyt-data-demands/ https://openai.com/index/mental-health-litigation-approach/ https://openai.com/index/mental-health-litigation-approach/ (The Elon ones also have redacted screenshots as receipts.) Indeed, they are litigating in the court of public opinion but let's not be naive to think that this is NOT what the other parties have also been doing.

keeda 2mo ago

Apple: OpenAI brazenly ignored our lawyer when he contacted them about this treacherous industrial espionage. OpenAI: Sorry but your lawyer never really contacted us because he was incompetent and maybe even racist. More entertaining than anything on TV /popcorn Which makes me wonder, is it normal for giant corporations to very publicly lob lawsuits after just a couple of failed attempts to connect with the other party?

alberth 2mo ago

Why does the iMessage screenshot look “off”. Something about the line-height, fonts used, etc don’t look like a real iMessage chat. Am I alone on this?

maxutility 2mo ago
It’s not a screenshot. It’s a formatted reconstruction from a transcript.

suobset 2mo ago

They are genuinely holding on to the one minor mishap from Apple that was corrected right after. Either way, grabbing popcorn to see how this plays out in court.