I know that I am reading WAY to much into this but here are the rules:
"For a space that is 'populated':
Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness.
Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.
For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated'
Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated." [1]
The classic glider is the hacker icon:
OXO
OOX
XXX
Apple's icon:
OXOOX
OOXOO
XXXOO
or
"Hacker"
OXO
OOX
XXX
plus
"Death"
OX
OO
OO
But, if we look at the rules and this icon, it is saying, "Hacker + Death", as if they are saying death to the hacker. They are using the first rule of fight club, "Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness" with the added populated space. As if they are pushing out hackers if by loneliness and through that loneliness they will die.
EDIT: Or they are trying to be like Gandalf and say, "You Shall Not Pass!"
To me this is sad, because the roots of apple were in the hacker culture when Woz build the blue box. I would love to get Woz's take on this...
The point is not a concatenation of two symbols -- the point is that this one little point will kill the glider beside it, where by "kill" I mean it becomes the static sequence:
. o o
o . o
. o .
So if they are saying "death to the hacker" they are saying it much more dramatically than you can hope to get by your analysis. The point is, "there is the symbol for a hacker, flying freely diagonally across the grid, but we've added a point which will get her stuck in one form."
For those not familiar with Laocoon, he was a hero from greek and roman stories, most famously written about in Virgil's Aeneid. He recognized the Trojan Horse as a ruse (and is the source of the saying that has come down to us as "Beware the Greeks bearing gifts") but was not believed and was further punished by the gods who sent two serpents that dragged him and his twin sons into the sea. A statue depicting the event is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity.
This symbol is not ominous; the glider doesn't die. It moves through four states, arriving at this steady state:
XX
X X
X
I'm surprised that the author wrote such a lengthy article without making sure that the premise is true. I think he misread the engraving and transposed the stray dot to the left, like so:
"Technically the glider becomes a known static shape. But for this active and useful little craft with its wiggly diagonal propagation and useful character, it is as good as death." Though it is fairly easy to miss, it is stated in the article. The author is using "death" to mean that the shapes stop changing, not that the dots disappear- which is not the same meaning you and I thought of at first.
The picture in the article is cropped. In the original iFixit teardown you see that the pattern is right next to a laser-engraved data matrix code [1].
The indentations probably encode some quality-control type metadata from the CNC milling machine (like the version of the plan used to mill the part). iFixit just happend to get a glider in theirs.
It's hard to tell if the author's explanation is reasonable, because he doesn't explain what part the code was found on, who found it, what other markings might be on that or other parts, etc. I wonder why he doesn't tell us any of these things? Seems like basic journalism.
Pareidolia. It could also be a binary code where the rows (or columns) represent 1, 2 and 4, giving values of 15304 or 45601 depending on what way up you read.
Minimal representation (using 2 Braille Unicode characters) is:
⠠⠵
But Apple's version contains a single cell in the top right that will interact with the Glider and will mutate and become a static structure 4 iterations later. I tested in this html5 Conway's Game of Life online simulator:
http://www.quesucede.com/public/gameoflife/game.html
After a couple of seconds in the iPad, in this case just after the annoying do I want to download the app had popped up after i started reading, techcrunch articles just go fuzzy and unreadable. The comments don't. I am guessing it is a webfonts issue. Maybe it is to force you to use the app. I havent been able to read a techcrunch article in months though.
"For a space that is 'populated': Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness. Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation. Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.
For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated' Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated." [1]
The classic glider is the hacker icon:
Apple's icon: or"Hacker"
plus"Death"
But, if we look at the rules and this icon, it is saying, "Hacker + Death", as if they are saying death to the hacker. They are using the first rule of fight club, "Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness" with the added populated space. As if they are pushing out hackers if by loneliness and through that loneliness they will die.EDIT: Or they are trying to be like Gandalf and say, "You Shall Not Pass!"
To me this is sad, because the roots of apple were in the hacker culture when Woz build the blue box. I would love to get Woz's take on this...
[1] http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/