So, it tracks that he has rapist mentality.
This is like if you left your door wide open, and a neighbor peaked in and told another neighbor about your decor or what posters are on the walls.
You didn’t lose anything tangible, but something you wanted to be secret isn’t anymore. Where the balance of blame falls is up to you, but I do think to some degree that if you want to keep a secret and can’t put in the bare minimum effort to even try to protect it then you own some of the blame.
For trade secrets, it only requires "reasonable measures" even just having an NDA is enough, even if the rest of your security is wide open. Just because someone found a loophole or grabbed files before their access was revoked doesn't make it legal (under trade secrets law).
Almost certainly the employees at some point in their tenure at apple signed some duty of confidentiality, or some acceptable use policy, etc. which is grounds enough for illegal misappropriation. "You didn't lock down their access enough" isn't a valid legal defense.
You really don't want the law to be "Well you didn't lose a physical thing, so why should it be illegal?"
There are people who feel this way, so it's possible that the parent comment does actually want it to be this. You're 100% correct that this doesn't describe the law right now though, which is what actually matters for this lawsuit.
There are also no tenant protections for criminal intruders, squatter protections require a claim of right like a disputed lease or a holdover tenancy, or continuous possession over many years. Someone that just walks into a residence is an active trespasser and can be arrested for criminal trespass or burglary.
Here is New York: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/140.20
I don't know exactly what legal technicalities are involved, but this did actually happen to me in a de facto sense!