Jailbreak Notifications Developer Now An Apple Employee

Peter Hajas, the lead developer of the popular jailbreak notifications replacement,
MobileNotifier, is now an Apple “iOS Apps and Frameworks” employee. We originally speculated that Hajas was working for Apple when he announced that he was leaving as the head of the MobileNotifier development team, and it has now been confirmed that Apple has hired Peter Hajas to work on iOS.
iOS 5 will be unveiled at WWDC on Monday, and Apple could introduce a new system of push notifications. It’s unlikely that any of Peter’s work will be seen in iOS 5. He is most likely working on a future update to Apple’s mobile software…
Right after we reviewed MobileNotifier Beta4, Peter Hajas announced that he was discontinuing development of his hugely successful jailbreak notifications replacement. But he didn’t totally leave before releasing MobileNotifier Beta5, which brought several huge enhancements to the tweak.

We were the first to guess that Apple had gotten ahold of Hajas when we read his blog post announcing his departure from MobileNotifier. His words were cryptic, and he alluded to something big coming soon from his career change.

“I can’t say why, but it’s worth it. Trust me. If you look around hard enough, you’ll probably figure it out.”

We figured that the only possible reason Hajas would leave the MobileNotifier project was because he was presented with something better. And what’s a better career oppurtunity for a mobile developer than a job with Apple in Cupertino?
After we broke that story, an interesting clue was uncovered in Peter’s blog post. His last line, “Stay hungry and stay foolish,” was a reference to a speech by Steve Jobs from several years ago. It was pretty clear that Hajas was hinting at Apple.
It appears that we were correct in our speculation. A pile of evidence has stacked up that confirms Peter’s new allegiance with Apple.
As TiPB points out, it’s important to remember that this isn’t the first time Apple has gone out of its way to hire outside talent. The Cupertino company hired the notifications designer of the Palm OS last year.
A report from February said that Apple was looking for a developer to help revamp iOS notifications, so it’s possible that Hajas could have been contacted by Apple months ago.
Redmond Pie has uncovered two new pieces of evidence that confirm Apple’s hiring of Peter Hajas.
Firstly, Hajas tweeted that he was going to work at a “fruit” company in California.

That tweet has since been removed.
Secondly, a source at Apple has sent Redmond Pie a screenshot confirming that Peter Hajas is in the internal Apple Directory System as an “iOS Apps & Frameworks” employee.

Hajas seems to only be at Apple for a limited time, and MobileCrunch has uncovered that Hajas added Apple to his list of employers on Facebook. He listed himself as an “Intern” beginning in May of this year. Peter tweeted on May 9 that he was headed out to California.

“We asked a few of our Apple sources; while they’d heard his name around campus, none had actually seen him lurking about yet.”

MobileCrunch explains why he would be called an “Intern,”

“So, why “Intern”? It’s par for the course with Apple. They seem to consider it something of a dry run; sort of their way of testing how well newbies mesh with the current talent and how skilled they actually are before giving them access to source code repositories or a fancy title.”

It’s nice to see such a talented developer join the ranks at Apple. While he is gone, Peter Hajas will certainly be missed by the jailbreak community. Apple has always been three steps behind the jailbreak scene, so maybe Hajas will help the “fruity” company get ahead with notifications.
Thoughts?