When Sam Sung proudly sold iPhones

Few variables are as inversely proportional as this one. We've been fed all along that Apple has been 'secretly' working for Samsung, what with Steve Jobs telling us that the South Korean electronics powerhouse's smartphones and tablets suddenly looked and functioned like iPhones and iPads once they were unveiled. Helpfully, an Apple executive recently repeated this on the iPhone's 15th anniversary. A court case by Apple, too, had branded Samsung's mobile computers as slavish copies. Now, in a reveal that challenges considered wisdom, it turns out that Sam Sung had been almost 'anonymously' working for Apple.

Sam Sung, now Sam Struan, worked in Apple Stores in Glasgow, Scotland, and later in Vancouver, Canada, during 2010-13. In 2014, he auctioned his business card, where you read Apple and Sam Sung in the same breath, to raise over $2,500 for charity.

This week, in another charity auction of an old business card and staff t-shirt, he raised $1,152. Call it old-fashioned, non-social media publicity, but it is kosher so long as it helps folks. It is as appropriate as the coopetition between Apple and Samsung - their copybook rivalry hasn't prevented the latter from supplying bespoke parts for Apple products it was accused of copying. So, will Samsung now hire a 'trespasser' with the name Tim Apple? That would be directly proportional.