FT frames this as some aggressive escalation tactic, but document retention letters are extremely standard practice. At this point they're basically a formality, as any former Apple employee at OpenAI really ought to know by now that they could get dragged into this. Hold letters can be aggressive if you send them before you've even filed a complaint, but if anything, Apple is late to the party with these.
Apple must have hard evidence on this. I can’t believe they would take it this far without already knowing they are going to win. If they have to fire a huge chunk of their hardware employees it’s going to throw their IPO plans into chaos.
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.
You’re underestimating how much Apple Legal goes after anyone and everyone they feel a slight wrong sniff about.
I know some insane stories that will never be publicly disclosed for one reason or another, and…it’s not a legal team I’d ever want to cross paths with.
It’s also not the first time Apple has cried wolf at employees leaving the company to do bigger and better things, while trying to take responsibility for their successes.
Why do I get the sense that OpenAI is gonna run to the administration to broker a deal to prevent “losing competitiveness” in the AI space in the advent of Chinese alternatives like Kimi AI. All they’ll exchange is some stake in OpenAI to TruthSocial or some investment vehicle for 45/47.
Based on the previous thread, Apple seems to have damning evidence of wrongdoing by the (ex)employees before-and-after they left their positions at Apple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865019
Seems very similar to Google/Waymo winning its case against Uber (ex-Googler Anthony Levandowski) stealing corporate data.
Apple has the employees' emails history, the server access logs, etc. Really don't see Apple pursuing this unless they had a mountain of evidence against them.
Generally speaking, I think Apple tends to win on anything related to ex-employees. I am not sure if this is normal across Big-Tech. But surely is for Apple.
Depending on what is at stake. Example the one with Nuvia and Qualcomm I believe they just settled.
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.
Wait until it comes out that OpenAI stole trade data through their deal with Atlassian. Seems inevitable. The company is fundamentally criminal in nature.
I’m a huge fan of Apple but this kind of thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Regardless of whether OpenAI poached some of their talent or is the one in the wrong, Apple has such a massively dominant hardware business (some might say monopoly level in some areas) that for them to be publicly acknowledging how scared they are of OpenAI…it’s just…pathetic.
They’re a $5T company and can’t muster up the motivation to get in the game and compete in the next computing frontier.
Apple fanboys will invent some narrative about them swooping in with the best product as a laggard and claim it’s always their strategy, but I see zero evidence they have the capacity to do that anymore.
The Siri situation is just absolutely pathetic and no amount of bad press about OpenAI is going to change the fact that Apple neglecting Siri for a decade now has been a big F-U to their customers.
You may want to read the related articles first. I'm personally quite anti-Apple on several fronts, but the evidence so far seems damning if it holds up in court.
This isn't just them being scared of a competitor because they're able to outperform Apple, according to Apple they have proof of an active plan not just to poach talent, but to get that talent to syphon out information as they leave, as well as former employees keeping Apple hardware and using it to access confidential information. If what Apple claims is true, this is straightforwardly illegal. Could Apple be lying? Maybe, but that's a very risky move.
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.
How can I say this…? Some companies come across like a neon sign flashing "EVIL!".
It's been nothing but warning signs from this company for at least a year now. I'm so happy to have nothing to do with them (having deleted my account a year or so ago).
Their marketing dept is going to have to really dig to get them out of this hole they've made for themselves.
The idea that I would trust any device they might roll out that is as personal as a personal AI assistant… It's no better than Meta and their creepy glasses.
- U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit Accuses Apple of monopolizing
smartphone markets and anticompetitive behavior.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple-monopolizing-smartphone-markets
- EU Commission DMA breach The European Commission found Apple in breach of
the Digital Markets Act regarding steering rules.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-finds-apple-and-meta-breach-digital-markets-act
- Epic Games injunction sanctions Court rules Apple defied App Store order
regarding external payment links.
https://apnews.com/article/69b16572d2b2c990f6b69d4bbad9b57b
- EU €1.8B App Store fine Fined for abusive music-streaming rules and
preventing cheaper alternative information.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1161
IPHONE PERFORMANCE AND "BATTERYGATE"
- Apple Will Finally Pay for Throttling iPhones (WIRED) Apple settled the
throttling lawsuit for up to $500 million (without admitting guilt).
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-batterygate-settlement-payments-finally-coming/
RIGHT TO REPAIR AND PARTS PAIRING
- The End of Parts Pairing? Almost (iFixit) On how software component linking
forces warnings and loses functionality.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/100266/the-end-of-parts-pairing-almost
- Self-Repair Programme Critique (Right to Repair Europe) Critiques
serialization, remote authorization, and part restrictions.
https://repair.eu/news/apples-self-repair-programme-is-not-the-right-to-repair-we-need/
- France is Fighting to Save Your iPhone from an Early Death (WIRED) Regarding
France's probe into planned obsolescence and parts pairing.
https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-apple-france/
PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE
- Apple to pay $95 million to settle Siri privacy lawsuit (Reuters) Lawsuit
alleging accidental Siri recordings and sharing with third parties.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-siri-privacy-lawsuit-2025-01-02/
- Apple's CSAM On-Device Scanning Critiques (EFF) The Electronic Frontier
Foundation's critique of Apple's plan to scan photos on-device (later
dropped).
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life
LABOR CONDITIONS IN SUPPLY CHAINS
- Apple Reveals Supply Chain, Details Conditions (Reuters) Early reporting on
audit findings of child labor and work violations.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/apple-reveals-supply-chain-details-conditions-idUSTRE80C1KV/
- Rights Group Says Apple Suppliers in China Broke Labor Laws (Reuters)
Reports of excessive overtime and labor violations in Chinese factories.
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/rights-group-says-apple-suppliers-in-china-breaking-labour-laws-idUSBRE85R0EF/
TAX PRACTICES
- State aid: Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13
billion (European Commission) The EC ruling that Ireland gave illegal tax
benefits to Apple, later upheld.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_16_2923
A list of very normal capitalistic practices. Borderline, sometimes ruthless, sometimes opportunistic. Evil is enabling genocide in Myanmar, which Meta provenly did.
Evil is voluntarily steal millions of artworks for your own benefit, which OpenAI has provenly done.
Etc…
FT frames this as some aggressive escalation tactic, but document retention letters are extremely standard practice. At this point they're basically a formality, as any former Apple employee at OpenAI really ought to know by now that they could get dragged into this. Hold letters can be aggressive if you send them before you've even filed a complaint, but if anything, Apple is late to the party with these.
https://archive.ph/3J3iw
Apple must have hard evidence on this. I can’t believe they would take it this far without already knowing they are going to win. If they have to fire a huge chunk of their hardware employees it’s going to throw their IPO plans into chaos.
What do you mean "this far"? How far is this?
Corps lose law suits all the time. They always have to go whatever "this far" is before it happens, surely?
This is John Ternus having a beef with Tang Tan. It’s widely known they both competed for the role of CEO. Tim Cook would never have started this.
It shows a level of pettiness and arrogance which I never expected to see from Apple.
I can’t put myself in the mind of John, but he clearly hated Tang.
From outside and with a parent’s perspective this looks like my kids throwing a tantrum.
John must be thinking he is the new Steve Jobs (Steve would definitely do this)
Makes you wonder if they’ll settle for bargain-basement token prices for Apple Intelligence.
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.
You’re underestimating how much Apple Legal goes after anyone and everyone they feel a slight wrong sniff about.
I know some insane stories that will never be publicly disclosed for one reason or another, and…it’s not a legal team I’d ever want to cross paths with.
It’s also not the first time Apple has cried wolf at employees leaving the company to do bigger and better things, while trying to take responsibility for their successes.
https://archive.ph/zoUde
Why do I get the sense that OpenAI is gonna run to the administration to broker a deal to prevent “losing competitiveness” in the AI space in the advent of Chinese alternatives like Kimi AI. All they’ll exchange is some stake in OpenAI to TruthSocial or some investment vehicle for 45/47.
Predictions on who wins? Does Apple actually have a winnable case or are they just throwing a wrench in things?
>Does Apple actually have a winnable case
Based on the previous thread, Apple seems to have damning evidence of wrongdoing by the (ex)employees before-and-after they left their positions at Apple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865019
Seems very similar to Google/Waymo winning its case against Uber (ex-Googler Anthony Levandowski) stealing corporate data.
Apple has the employees' emails history, the server access logs, etc. Really don't see Apple pursuing this unless they had a mountain of evidence against them.
Generally speaking, I think Apple tends to win on anything related to ex-employees. I am not sure if this is normal across Big-Tech. But surely is for Apple.
Depending on what is at stake. Example the one with Nuvia and Qualcomm I believe they just settled.
Oh the irony if Apple can get a larger OpenAI stake than Microsoft.
Both parties will just settle.
Apple already caught former employees accessing the Apple internal network with unreturned laptops after termination that’s pretty much game over.
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.
It would be very strange for Apple’s legal department to send out formal letters filled with claims on a lark.
Not really, just slowing down a potential competitor could still be worth it.
Apple is not the company that makes this sort of thing just for fun.
Also, they don't have a directly competing business with OpenAI, so slander doesn't make sense.
I think this is genuine.
OpenAI ain’t too open
Nag screen, as usual
Wait until it comes out that OpenAI stole trade data through their deal with Atlassian. Seems inevitable. The company is fundamentally criminal in nature.
I’m a huge fan of Apple but this kind of thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Regardless of whether OpenAI poached some of their talent or is the one in the wrong, Apple has such a massively dominant hardware business (some might say monopoly level in some areas) that for them to be publicly acknowledging how scared they are of OpenAI…it’s just…pathetic.
They’re a $5T company and can’t muster up the motivation to get in the game and compete in the next computing frontier.
Apple fanboys will invent some narrative about them swooping in with the best product as a laggard and claim it’s always their strategy, but I see zero evidence they have the capacity to do that anymore.
The Siri situation is just absolutely pathetic and no amount of bad press about OpenAI is going to change the fact that Apple neglecting Siri for a decade now has been a big F-U to their customers.
You may want to read the related articles first. I'm personally quite anti-Apple on several fronts, but the evidence so far seems damning if it holds up in court.
In what case is apple a monopoly?
This isn't just them being scared of a competitor because they're able to outperform Apple, according to Apple they have proof of an active plan not just to poach talent, but to get that talent to syphon out information as they leave, as well as former employees keeping Apple hardware and using it to access confidential information. If what Apple claims is true, this is straightforwardly illegal. Could Apple be lying? Maybe, but that's a very risky move.
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.
So we should "make our economy more dynamic" by encouraging IP theft which will simultaneously discourage genuine research & development?
How can I say this…? Some companies come across like a neon sign flashing "EVIL!".
It's been nothing but warning signs from this company for at least a year now. I'm so happy to have nothing to do with them (having deleted my account a year or so ago).
Their marketing dept is going to have to really dig to get them out of this hole they've made for themselves.
The idea that I would trust any device they might roll out that is as personal as a personal AI assistant… It's no better than Meta and their creepy glasses.
Yeah, no thanks.
… so… you’re talking about OpenAI or Apple?
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.
A quick search:
APP STORE, COMPETITION, AND MARKET CONTROL
IPHONE PERFORMANCE AND "BATTERYGATE" RIGHT TO REPAIR AND PARTS PAIRING PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE LABOR CONDITIONS IN SUPPLY CHAINS TAX PRACTICESNone of this seems like it could reasonably be described as evil.
How about these?
Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties (yahoo.com)
52 points by notRobot on Jan 1, 2021 | un‑favorite | 5 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386
Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments (jessesquires.com)
468 points by ig0r0 on March 31, 2021 | un‑favorite | 291 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216
Apple removes nearly 100 VPNs used by Russians to bypass censorship (elpais.com)
31 points by speckx on Oct 1, 2024 | un‑favorite | 3 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41712728
Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA (open-web-advocacy.org)
514 points by yashghelani on July 14, 2025 | un‑favorite | 383 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44557348
Apple defined ICE as a "protected class" in blocking anti-ICE apps (boingboing.net)
146 points by baobun 9 months ago 69 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45520407
https://9to5mac.com/2020/12/29/iphone-workers-forced-labor/
Well, just enough evil to increase profit margins.
A list of very normal capitalistic practices. Borderline, sometimes ruthless, sometimes opportunistic. Evil is enabling genocide in Myanmar, which Meta provenly did. Evil is voluntarily steal millions of artworks for your own benefit, which OpenAI has provenly done. Etc…
From what we know this far it’s quite easy to be on Apples side in this particular question, right?
Especially since Apple has no history of doing this—suggests this is on another level of theft.
(I worked at Apple and am aware of little "theft" incidents that came and went. Obviously those little incidents never made the news cycle.)
How could you have worked at Apple during the entire Samsung lawsuit and say Apple has no history of suing competitors over IP theft?
Because Apple didn't sue Samsung over IP theft. They sued them over copyright infringement.
> Some companies come across like a neon sign flashing "EVIL!".
This is a perception created by your choice of media.