Physical security predates computer security by millennia

The implication of a loss of a physical gadget, no matter the hype that exists around it, has low intrinsincal security severity. If the object could be otherwise used to have severe impacts, that would be another story.

Companies have security protocols for whatever they want to protect. What they consider protecting is their business. New product prototypes, or just random possible product explorations are a common example. And the protocols they use (special enclosures, training people on how to not be obvious) are figured out the same way they are in computing, In fact the core terminology we use in computer security comes from physical security.

And security protocols go back thousands of years. You can read about them in ancient literature,

So leaks about future products isn't a security threat? I think it is. That could definitely affect the stock price. Depending on the leak, it could definitely be more of an impact than a ip or data security breach. What will people do with digitizer firmware source? Other than bad pr, what affects does a data breach of customer records have on a company?

It doesn't matter. Apple had IP they didn't want to leak, and it got leaked. That alone was a security breach.

Wouldn't call that security, no.

Security doesn’t only have to imply software / online security. There’s physical security as well, which this seems to be referring to.

The design was the big secret that all their security protocols were supposed to protect.

Revealing the design was the security breach.

Their security protocols were pretty lax, if they allowed someone to take a secret prototype to a bar, and to use it in the bar.

It had "development silicon" instead of "production silicon". At the very very least that means you can use `sudo` and `su` after logging in with the well known "alpine" credentials.