Oliver Haslam·

iOS 11 Golden Master Build Was Leaked By A Rogue Apple Employee [Report]

The recent leak of iOS 11 build in its new Golden Master form has seen more information regarding the iPhone X appear online in 24 hours than the past 6 months, and while that is great news for the likes of us writing about these things, it is perhaps less so for those who work inside Apple.

The leak of iOS 11 GM not only means that we all get to see the update in its almost final form ahead of schedule, but it also means we now know much more about the iPhone X, as well as other announcements, thanks to things that were added as part of an update that was never intended to be made available to public until after the iPhone media event on Tuesday. That’s a big deal.

Normally Apple would announce the new iPhone range along with all of its fancy new features during the event and then make the Golden Master release of iOS available for all following the event. By that point everything we need to know about iPhone X would already be in the wild, whereas the leak of the Golden Master right now effectively means that all the information which was to amount as new come Tuesday, just plummeted. For Apple, that’s a huge deal.

So how exactly did all this come about? According to the BBC and Apple commentator John Gruber, the leak came courtesy of a disgruntled, rogue Apple employee.

The leaks were in the form of URLs sent to multiple news outlets, with the iOS 11 GM being fetched from that URL. According to Gruber, those URLs were not guessable, and were definitely leaked by someone with knowledge of them within Apple. He won’t say why he knows that, but we have little reason to suggest he is on to something here.

In fact, BBC has independently reported the same thing, suggesting that someone somewhere inside Apple leaked the URLs that allowed iOS 11 to leak in final form, and while the leaker may not have known to what extent his or her actions would alter the impact of announcements made during Tuesday’s media event, we have to believe they knew what they were doing would make waves.

This has obviously been a huge spoiler for Apple and its 10th anniversary iPhone announcement – a company which keeps some of the best features for the keynote show as a wow factor – as well as many fans, who were looking forward to getting excited by the surprise announcements made by Apple come Tuesday, September 12.

Something tells us that somewhere in Apple there will be someone looking over their shoulder very nervously now.

(Source: Daring Fireball)

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