sounds like a typical extra-super-hyper-important-emergency effort under the constant gaze from the very top through the thick E/S/VP/etc. layers of CYA mediocrity eager to report up the successful completion of a glorious effort to the glorious leader in a typical BigCo where engineering culture is faltering while nobody who matters cares (or even able to care) Well, at least it was that way back at Sun :) ... Or may be it was just a one bad day at Apple. Though many people like to argue that engineering culture is exactly to prevent the "bad" days from happening...