The timeline OpenAI wants to present looks like this to me:
- Leaving employee (LE) needs a USB stick to copy data off their Mac to give to their Manager (MA) so someone at Apple still has access
- After LE left, MA has access to LE Mac and iCloud to still access some data
- At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account on that Mac as they suspect they'll get OpenAI-related messages soon and don't want Apple/MA to see them
- Eventually, MA deletes the Apple files in LE's iCloud
- Leaving employee (LE) needs a USB stick to copy data off their Mac to give to their Manager (MA) so someone at Apple still has access
- After LE left, MA has access to LE Mac and iCloud to still access some data
- At some point, LE asks MA to sign out off LE's iMessage account on that Mac as they suspect they'll get OpenAI-related messages soon and don't want Apple/MA to see them
- Eventually, MA deletes the Apple files in LE's iCloud