The Apple Executive Responsible For Catching Bugs Like Today's Has A Ferocious Door-Slamming Temper
Apple's latest update to the operating system for iPhones and iPads, iOS 8.0.1, appeared to be quite buggy when it launched earlier today.
It disabled cell service and turned off Touch ID, the fingerprint sensor on the home button.
Almost immediately, Apple pulled the update.
If Apple CEO Tim Cook is going to blame anyone for the fiasco, it's probably senior engineer Kim Vorrath.
Vorrath is the chief bug-catcher at Apple. It's her job to make sure all Apple products are bug-free before launch.
She hosts meetings called "BRB," for Bug Review Board. In them, Apple engineers report their progress eliminating bugs. Vorath charts their progress with a graph that has the bug-count on the Y-axis and the date on the X-axis. She wants a line that goes from the top left to the bottom right, just before a product's shipping deadline.
Vorrath has a notorious temper.
According to Lessin, Vorrath was once so furious at her colleagues that she slammed the door to her office so hard its handle broke.
Fellow Apple executive Scott Forstall had to use a bat to break her out of her office.
The last time Vorrath was in hot water with her bosses was when Apple launched a very buggy Maps application back in 2012. After that fiasco, Vorrath's own boss, Forstall, left the company.