Re: e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce

["Erik E. Fair" (Time Keeper) <fair@cesium.clock.org>]

Just FYI, there is at least one other full-time Apple employee on this list.

The previous digital signature stuff from Apple was part of PowerTalk, our
own attempt to do an E-mail system as part of the base OS. We licensed the
crypto stuff from RSA (as did Lotus and a bunch of others at about the same
time). PowerTalk had good goals (full digital signatures, encrypted mail,
etc), but an exceedingly bad plan for getting there (completely proprietary
file formats and protocols, and incompletely fleshed out APIs for getting
at them).

Needless to say, it was a flop in the market, and we've let everyone know
that we've stopped development of it. Fortunately, we still have that RSA
license, and we may yet be able to do something useful with it before
either the license or the patent expires. I keep pressing people about
these issues when I get the chance, internally.

I haven't made any of the face-to-face meetings of the Cypherpunks because
I have been busy frying other fish since I got on the list. I post from
this odd return address because I prefer to use my private system and
domain for cypherpunks. At work, I'm

        Erik E. Fair <fair@research.apple.com>
        Apple Research Labs (nee Advanced Technology Group)