The Back Page: Inside Apple’s most secret secret research & development group

Apple is a notoriously secretive company. A company so secretive that, in the past, when information has leaked out, it has stridently told its employees that it’s doubling down on its already secret secrecy but secretly it’s quadrupled down on its secrecy. (You haven’t heard about that because, well, it’s secret.) Of course, two men can keep a secret if one of them is dead. And the other is Tim Cook, because he is very good at keeping secrets. And doing away with people who leak secrets. Secretly.

So, when a reporter gets ahold of a story about a secret Apple design group working on secret projects—and no, not that secret group or that secret group, yes literally, a more secretive third secret group—you can draw two important conclusions: first, that whoever disclosed said secret has already been entombed within Jony Ive’s featureless white cell to live out their days in perpetual oblivion.…