Xiaolang Zhang, the former Apple employee who pleaded guilty to stealing information about the development of the company's self-driving vehicle, has been sentenced to 120 days in prison followed by a three-year supervised release. Zhang was arrested back in 2018 at San Jose International Airport just as he was about to board a flight to China. He initially pleaded not guilty until he changed his tune in 2022 and admitted to stealing trade secrets. In addition to serving time behind bars, he also has to pay restitution amounting to 146,984, according to the court document of his sentencing first seen by 9to5Mac. Zhang originally faced up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 250,000.

For many years, rumors have been flying around that Apple has been working on a self-driving car, or at least an electric vehicle with some autonomous functionality. Now, a third former employee has been accused of stealing some of that technology for a Chinese self-driving car company. A federal court in the Northern District of California has unsealed charges against Weibao Wang, a former Apple software engineer. Wang started working at the company in 2016 as part of a team that developed hardware and software for autonomous systems -- technology that could conceivably wind up in self-driving cars. According to the indictment, in November 2017, Wang accepted a job with a US subsidiary of a Chinese company that was developing self-driving cars but waited more than four months to tell Apple that he was quitting.

Apple, Amazon and Google have been dead-locked in a battle of the voice assistants for the past several years. But it's no secret that Amazon and Google have charged ahead with their respective services, Alexa and Assistant, while Apple's digital assistant Siri has lagged behind. Siri's troubled seven-year history is likely a result of poor management, slipshod decision making and an inconsistent vision at the company of what the product should be, according to a new report from the Information. At least a dozen former Apple employees spoke in detailed candor about how Siri was created and the drama that ensued among executives and engineers. Many people involved in creating Siri from the beginning cite Apple founder Steve Jobs' death as a tipping point in the product's failure.