Apple has fired an engineer after his daughter posted a video of a top-secret iPhone X. The Verge reports last week’s sneak peek on YouTube of the latest iPhone went viral and got Brooke Amelia Peterson’s dad sacked.
Sites such as 9 to 5 Mac urged readers to view the hands-on demo — “probably our best look yet” — at the much-anticipated device that TechRadar notes will hit stores on Nov. 3.
In a teary mea culpa, Peterson confirms the firing and says her father takes “full responsibility for the one rule that he broke.” On a visit to Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, Calif., Peterson shot the spot showing her dad’s phone in Caffe Macs, which Gizmodo notes is the swanky employee cafeteria.
“I made this little innocent video that was just supposed to be a fun memory,” she says. Peterson explains she took it down immediately at Apple’s request—but it wasn’t fast enough to stop it from triggering a sensation.
(Reposts of it are still available.) Apple hasn’t commented, but Engadget notes the tech giant generally bans all filming in its public spaces. Other tech companies, too, are touchy about early views of new products: Microsoft wasn’t happy about a worker who shared pre-release shots of the Xbox 360.
And Peterson’s iPhone X was no ordinary phone, but a specialty employee unit with sensitive info like code names. Peterson says she’s upset by the insults that followed her first viral video.
“Hate on me all you want, but please don’t hate on my father,” she says, calling her dad “the most honest, most loving, most caring.” (Sold-out pre-orders may not be an indication the iPhone X is all that.)
