> Apple’s suppliers are forbidden from referring to Apple by name or its project code names anywhere in buildings.
In which buildings? Surely (at least vendor specific) codenames are necessary for basic communication. I was affected when a partner team was sidelined by an Apple contract. It was a fireable offense to say <codename> was Apple or leak it, but you could use <codename> internally to indicate that you had mandated commitments and may not meet partnership goals.
I worked at a company that did work for Apple. It was a poorly kept secret that they were a client but even in a 50-person company, I had no idea what exactly that team was working on. We definitely were only working in marketing stuff not product because that was our business. We maybe had early photos of phones at best. They had a huge list of secrecy and security demands many of which applied to people who didn't even work on their stuff. I heard nothing but terrible things about how they treated our team too.
There are tons of components in Apple's devices and only a few Apple logos. If you get an order for 70 million higher end tiny lenses you can narrow down the list of potential customers pretty quickly, no logos needed.
I worked on an Apple contract in the late 80s - Apple leaked like a sieve back then too, we used our own code name, unrelated to Apple's for the project ... and when their code name leaked we were happily in the clear
In which buildings? Surely (at least vendor specific) codenames are necessary for basic communication. I was affected when a partner team was sidelined by an Apple contract. It was a fireable offense to say <codename> was Apple or leak it, but you could use <codename> internally to indicate that you had mandated commitments and may not meet partnership goals.