Edible Apple

In August of 2011, Apple hired famed JailBreakMe developer Comex -aka Nicholas Allegra – as an intern. If you recall, JailBreakMe was a tool that enabled users to easily get through Apple’s iOS security measures and install any app of their choosing onto their device. At the time, JailBreakMe was described thusly:

JailbreakMe is the easiest way to free your device. Experience iOS as it could be, fully customizable, themeable, and with every tweak you could possibly imagine.

Safe and completely reversible (just restore in iTunes), jailbreaking gives you control over the device you own. It only takes a minute or two, and as always, it’s completely free.

Apple, after a while, decided that it was high time to stop playing a never ending game of cat and mouse with Allegra and bring him over to their side to help them make future iterations of iOS more jailbreak-proof.

Now, about 14 months later, Allegra is no longer an Apple employee per a tweet where he said, “So… no point in delaying. As of last week, after about a year, I’m no longer associated with Apple.”

Forbes followed up with him and it appears that the departure was the result of Allegra not responding to an Apple email regarding extending the term of his internship.

When I followed up with Allegra in a phone call, he explained that the email he forgot to answer was an offer to continue his employment at Apple as a remote intern. At Apple, apparently, offer letters are taken rather seriously, and Allegra soon learned that his had been rescinded. “I wasn’t too happy about it, but it didn’t seem like I was able to fix it,” he says. “So that’s what it is.”

Allegra added that his departure from Apple was more complicated than just a forgotten email, and that “it wasn’t a bad ending,” but declined to say more. He also wouldn’t say what he worked on during his two internships at Apple–one in the fall of last year and one over the past summer–but he said he enjoyed his time in Cupertino.

So as is typically the case, there seems to be more to the story. Alas, Allegra says that he will now concertate his attention on schoolwork as he is currently a Brown student.