“How in the world does something like this happen?” asked Gruber, before explaining exactly that. Gruber says that his “understanding” of the matter is that Apple was about to release a large number of prototype HomePods to some of its employees. With this in mind, an over-the-air software update was prepared, intended only for Apple employees. Because it was supposed to only be released to Apple staff, the usual flags designed to remove code relating to unreleased hardware such as the iPhone 8 were not included. And the rest is history.
“Building the OS without those flags set may not have been a mistake,” said Gruber. “But distributing it via a world-readable server was.”
