Sources: in early March, Apple started letting some engineers take home early versions of future devices to continue work during the lockdown period
With its 175-acre campus in Cupertino, California, and several dozen more offices across the rest of the world, Apple Inc. wasn't designed as a work-at-home company.
BloombergMark Gurman
Context & Ripple Effects
Two weeks after Tim Cook's internal memo told office employees in affected regions to work remotely, the lockdown collided with a rule Apple had held firm on: as WSJ reported, some staff were still coming into HQ precisely because unreleased products couldn't leave campus and some systems had no external access. The March decision to let engineers take prototype devices home is Apple quietly rewriting that rule for its most secrecy-sensitive work.
First-order effects
Engineers on unreleased hardware can keep developing off-campus instead of commuting into Cupertino, ending the situation where prototype work forced employees to remain at HQ.
Second-order effects
The policy shift undercuts Apple's earlier plan to bring staff back sooner than rival tech companies — by July, sources reported a full return wouldn't happen in 2020 and Apple was shipping employees test kits, with retail workers also pushed home.
Third-order effects
If prototype work proves feasible outside the campus perimeter, Apple's hardware-secrecy model — built on physical control of devices — loosens structurally, and the phased-return approach becomes a template rather than a temporary exception.
The trend: Hardware companies built around campus-bound secrecy are being forced to extend their development pipelines into employees' homes, with Apple's phased-return cadence setting the pace.
How Apple's Culture of Secrecy Poses Challenges for the New Work From Home Reality https://www.macrumors.com/... > Employees who rely on prototypes for their work have been unable to access Apple's secure labs, which has caused prototyping work to grind to a halt. Hilariously bad…
Apple designed a whole new process to capture + send Chinese production line pictures back to the US that involved ‘tamper-proof and serialized stickers’. Mindboggling. https://www.theinformation.com/ ...
Apple started a contest for employees to share photos of their work from home setup. The last guideline reads: “If you're working on anything confidential, please keep it out of the shot.” https://twitter.com/...
“.. $AAPL hasn't paused its efforts to build future devices. The company is working on new versions of the HomePod speaker, Apple TV set-top box, MacBook Pro, budget iPads, Apple Watch and iMac for as early as later this year.” (via @markgurman) https://www.bloomberg.com/...
New story: Apple Tests Its Secrecy Somewhere New: Employee Homes — Apple lets employees take home early prototypes, clamps down on future software testing, is still working on several new products for 2020, and many more details: https://www.bloomberg.com/...
“...[Apple] employee said the inability to hold a component in hand makes troubleshooting problems nearly impossible.” https://www.theinformation.com/ ... via @nickbastone @waynema
There's no big tech co. that values being in the office more than Apple (hardware prototyping, secrecy, etc). Lots of detail from @nickbastone and @waynema in this @theinformation story about how Apple is functioning in a work from home world. https://www.theinformation.com/ ...