Tech Reflect
  • Home
  • About This Site
  • Contact Me
  • Search Icon

Tech Reflect

Reflecting on 25 years in tech

Searching for porn at work

Searching for porn at work

2019-11-05

This is one of my favorite stories from doing internal support for Mail. If you’ve been around long enough, you may remember when macOS had a system-wide Find dialog for text. I couldn’t find exactly the right image, but it looked something like this:

Unless an application implemented their own UI for searching text, Command-F would bring up a dialog like this.

The twist is that whatever was in the Find field would be remembered between applications. So, if you search for something in TextEdit and then bring up Mail, it would display that same search term, but it would be highlighted so you could easily type over it.

So, I was in this unnamed engineer’s office. You probably know where this is going. In the course of troubleshooting Mail, I believe I was wanting to search the raw source of an email message.

I hit Command-F and up came the Find dialog. I very quickly noticed “asian teen porn xxx” in the Find field. I was quick enough to type over it that the engineer either didn’t notice it or hoped that I hadn’t noticed it.

The moral of the story is to be careful of using your work machine for personal stuff. One amusing one I often see is people doing presentations using their Macs and an embarrassing notification appears on screen from a friend. Always turn off notifications before your meeting or don’t configure Messages on that machine.

Related posts:

Magic Mailboxes
How I almost worked directly for Steve Jobs
The first day we printed something in Mac OS X
Steve Jobs vs Me on my bicycle
Getting paid to watch porn
Except for getting punched by Steve Jobs…

apple stories

Post navigation

NEXT
Aperture: Senior QA (2004-2005)
PREVIOUS
macOS tips: Old Dock tips that are still useful

Follow Me

Get Monthly Updates

About Me

25 years in tech. I like to write manifestos. I like to offer interesting tips. I like making fun of things. Everyone copes differently.

Contact Me

My Other Blogs

  • Free Range Parrots
  • Plucky Tree (personal)
  • Little Dinosaur
  • Contact Me

Recent Posts

  • Getting paid to watch porn
  • Is App Library for me?
  • Tim Cook and the SF Gay Pride Parade
  • The first day we printed something in Mac OS X
  • Except for getting punched by Steve Jobs…

Categories

  • analog (1)
  • apple career (11)
  • apple inside (8)
  • apple stories (18)
  • bertrand serlet (3)
  • essays (15)
  • geeky (21)
  • iOS tips (3)
  • macOS tips (37)
  • personal (7)
  • products (3)
  • prototypes (2)
  • scott forstall (6)
  • scripting (1)
  • steve jobs (11)
  • tim cook (1)
  • workplace (14)

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017

Most Liked Content

  • Why I left Apple (2019)
  • Aperture: Senior QA (2004-2005)
  • The last time I saw Steve Jobs
  • Desktop Pictures taken by Steve Jobs
  • How I ended up at Apple (1999)

Get Monthly Updates

About Me

25 years in tech. I like to write manifestos. I like to offer interesting tips. I like making fun of things. Everyone copes differently.

Contact Me

My Other Blogs

  • Free Range Parrots
  • Plucky Tree (personal)
  • Little Dinosaur
  • Contact Me
© 2021   All Rights Reserved.