Perhaps Apple employees get tired of not being able to talk about what they do at work in social settings. Leaking provides an outlet so that their friends and family might have an idea of what they're up to. It's still sort of an ego thing, but having to hold your tongue at parties can get really exhausting.

So what do you do?

option A: “I’m working on really cool / inconsequential shit. But I can’t tell you about it. Maybe we can catch up next year and I can tell you what I did”

option B: “I work at Apple”

option C: just stay home.

Its Money one of the classic reasons to leak

Are media organizations like 9to5mac (mentioned in Apple's memo) paying Apple insiders for the information they provide?

Personally, I wouldn't think that the leakers were getting paid. Even if they were, I imagine the amount that these particular online web sites are able to pay is very much -- especially when compared to the average Apple employee's salary.

This makes me think that money isn't the primary motivating factor, if it is a factor at all.

I agree that money probably isn't the thing. I would imagine the average Apple engineer would realize that the payment for leaking would have to be massive to offset the damage to career / loss of earnings from the damned good job they already have. Maybe it's the sense of getting away with something? Like a super lame, mundane version of Thomas Crown--life is going well in pretty much every category so raise a little hell just to see if you can?

One can be smart enough to work at Apple and also be dumb in a lot of ways. It's easy being manipulated ("nobody will know it was from you! you're a confidential source"), and it's definitely easy to think of yourself above all laws, or at least too smart to ever get caught.

That's completely fair.

But being cynical the journalist would want to give the source some money as it locks them in

seeing something that you said show up on the front page of a popular website... and knowing that it was you and only you, with your underutilized expertise in your under appreciated role, that made that possible...

you can’t really buy that

Perhaps an ego thing? Like "I know something, I'll show you what I know and how important I am to know this"

What if the leaker is offered $100,000?

I addressed that in a comment below. It makes sense for an employee of a supplier in Asia to leak for money, it makes less sense for an employee in Cupertino.

Also somehow I doubt that newsrooms are making enough money to pay $100,000 (or any money for that matter) for random tidbits about products that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.