Fair enough, but I'd point out that, unlike Second Life, Meta didn't buy pants. If you want a chronicle of wasted spending regarding Microsoft and mobile devices, Google "Tomi Ahonen."

> There are no practical laws against understanding the laws of physics, chemistry, and metallurgy

Except there are. It’s why clean-room design [1] is a thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design

> it hasn't been determined yet that they have

Legally, no. Reasonably, for purposes of discussion, I think it has. The “LOL” dumbfuck who airlifted files into OpenAI isn’t particularly ambiguous [1].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-11/openai-en...

> They’re not late to the IPO party, which was postponed by OpenAI, It may turn out that that was a mistake

Isn’t that precisely what being late to the party means? You should have showed earlier?

Did Apple help defend you against those claims during the six months?

> It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.

I believe some articles mentioned about employees bragging to their former colleagues about accessing documents. Also I believe they lied to Apple about being employed elsewhere so they can continue using their access and hardware, etc.

If these are correct, the whole OpenAI playbook is very dirty, and I won't pity them a bit.

You shouldn't ever willingly give up information to a plaintiff if it could implicate you. If the information exists, it's going to come out in discovery. Admitting to theft of trade secrets is probably not going to help you, it's not like the cops offering you immunity for turning state's witness.

You talk to a lawyer and do what they say, not what Apple demands of you. No one but a judge can demand anything of you.

That's overly dramatic.

At this point, the assumption would be that they are a non-party witness.

So, beyond not destroying any potential evidence, you might as well tell them to shove it.

That's not enough though. He could have been acting rogue or for some other reason. That alone won't win in court

Apple lawyers have a reputation for doing their homework

>How far is this?

If I am understanding your question, they went so far as to sue their employees.

Filing lawsuits against ex-employees is going pretty far. Not good PR for Apple if their claims are wrong.

Companies often file frivolous lawsuits against other companies. It’s much rarer to throw frivolous lawsuits at individuals.

The accusations are incredibly clear/defined (and serious!) and have a very simple burden of proof. These things either happened or they didn’t, and they have material evidence or they don’t. It’s incredibly unlikely that they filed such big, concrete accusations without concrete proof to back them up.

And while I am far from an Apple fan boy, yes a lot of big corporations file frivolous lawsuits but Apple typically does not engage in that behavior against other companies. Also bear in mind that open AI is a huge name so there is a public/political element that goes along with this for Apple. There are going to be a lot of people who do not want Apple to win this regardless of how true their claims are and will figut like hell to protect openAI

I think it is clear that if Apple were going to deal with OpenAI on that level, they already would have. What they wanted for their AI products is a measure of control over their destiny that OpenAI clearly did not want to give them that badly. It's also pretty clear that Apple is willing to work with arch-rivals to supply components of their products, both software and hardware, but values consistency alongside trustworthiness.

This stuff happened years ago, right? Something tells me that discussion has already happened, and they went with Google.

Besides: Apple is a "real" company that will definitely still be around in five years. They've already fumbled Siri multiple times. IMO Google was certainly the right choice for actually executing well on Apple's own terms for the foreseeable future.

Then share some of those insane stories with sources I guess. Because this seems to directly contradict my understanding of Apple (post-Jobs in particular).

I do not love Apple, as I said another comment I am so far from an apple fanboy, but frivolous lawsuits against other companies is not really typical for them. Also, these accusations are far from frivolous and they either have proof or they don’t. It would be very strange for them to file this thinking they would win with some sort of gray area argument

Oh, in that case, I just happen to have some insane stories that will never be publicly disclosed, and every one of my stories rebuts every one of your stories.

It's interesting that you say they must have hated each other, but assume only Ternus is acting on that. What makes you think Tan's hatred of Ternus or animosity toward Apple for picking Ternus over him didn't lead Tan to do the alleged behavior?

Maybe a naive take, but if there's one team in a large corporation that does not bend to "the CEO(-to-be) wants it", that is the Legal team. Particularly when the ask is a lawsuit of this scope and relevance, and potential costs (of all kinds). The head of Legal can just hint to the board how expensive (in all senses) the vendetta would be and the CEO is likely "not to be" anymore, or "to be temporary".

The alleged crime sounded childish. Appeal to rule of law, enforced by the court system is necessary for a fair business enviornment.

Sending the notification letters is probably petty though.

Tim Cook is the current CEO. Tim Cook is doing this. Any assertion otherwise is 100% wrong.

John Ternus doesn't become CEO until September 1st. If you think that this is still John Ternus' play, Tim Cook is still the one in charge and signed off to start this, meaning "Tim Cook would never have started this" is still 100% wrong.

This comment is really strange and reads like disinformation

Agreed Steve would do this

But the iPhone is the most valuable consumer hardware product on the planet, and the accusations here is “conspiracy to steal” essentially.

Is it really that petty? Apple should be okay with theft of valuable secrets?

I don’t think Cupertino will settle for stock. I think they’ll demand cash and an agreement that OpenAI abandon or reboot their hardware project. In the meantime, Apple gets an open kimono into everything OpenAI has planned.

This could actually be the fuckup that kills OpenAI as an independent company. The threat of a cash judgement gums up not only an IPO, but also debt-based fundraising. (We equity guys are idiots, so we’ll probably keep writing cheques until the market turns.)

Not really, just slowing down a potential competitor could still be worth it.

Why would Apple settle? They probably want the same outcomes of the Waymo v Uber trial that forced Uber out of the market. Apple's accusations imply that every part of OpenAI's hardware effort has been tainted with Apple's trade secrets and is therefore illegitimate. They also have more money than God so they can keep the suit going as long as they want.

IIRC Apple have been allowed to remove Fornite from the Apple Store, they just fall foul of the EU Digital Markets Act / DMA (?) when also blocking the Epic Games Store as a route to add/sideload it.

Removing ChatGPT due to ToS violations seems like it would be ok.

Maybe.

Depends if they hate Apple or OpenAI more.

Ha ha. Worked at Apple for over two decades—would not have stayed at a company I thought was evil for that long.

A bully at times? I wouldn't argue with that.

From what we know this far it’s quite easy to be on Apples side in this particular question, right?

Probably.

(HackerNews, FWIW.)

Some people think that being the exclusive supplier of iOS based devices is a “monopoly”.

Blue bubble discrimination so bad that android users are the vast majority of incels. Even if that’s not technically a monopoly breaking up Apple would materially increase USA birthrates. Unironically!

It totally could be illegal, and I don’t care. Those laws exist to entrench dominant incumbents, and make our economy less dynamic.

The history of Silicon Valley and most of its innovation come from this kind of thing, and we eliminated non-competes in California for exactly this reason.

Apple having a serious competitor in hardware would be a good thing for consumers all over the world.

Apple’s overzealous secrecy culture starts to become insidious once you become such a dominant force in the marketplace.

At what point do we allow their innovations to bleed into the rest of humanity and lower their margins so humanity doesn’t pay out a 60% tax to them anymore. I think they’ve made enough profits for investors at this point. Id be happy if my Apple stock went nowhere if it meant 20 other companies could grow and innovate new products off the back of it.