Apple Employees Axed After Leak of New OS

Yesterday we reported on America Online's recent termination of three employees, including its Chief Technology Officer, for leaked customer web-search information. Today, the trend appears to be continuing, with a group of Apple employees being fired over their illegal downloading of the company's unreleased Macintosh operating system (OS) "Leopord" -- the upgrade to the curren version, "Tiger" (10.4.x).

Although certainly not as popularly anticipated as Microsoft's Vista, Apple's Leopard OS uses true 64-bit technology, while still maintaining 32-bit compatibility. One of Leopard's most fascinating features is the "Time Machine", a backup and rollback mechanism. Like some of Vista's saving features, Time Machine can easily recall lost data and even entire systems. (Source: dailytech.com)

The bruhaha over the leaked version of Leopard resulted after the guilty employees were overheard discussing the illegal download. Once word reached Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, a formal investigation was launched. It appears most of the guilty workers were a bit surprised by their termination, as many told the publication Think Secret that they believed an honest admission of wrong-doing would save them their jobs.

One employee was even reported as saying, "My only question is, if we all lied and denied it would we still be working at Apple today? Even more so, is that the kind of person that Apple wants working for them?" (Source: dailytech.com)

Leopord is still under development by Apple, and as such, the downloading did clearly violate the company's terms of service. For those of us patient enough to wait, Apple hopes to ship Leopord by spring of 2007.