Something's bothering me about Apple's switch to Intel, and it has nothing to do with how well the Mac-Intel machines will perform. In light of what we now see has been on Apple's mind for many months, what should we make of the company's legal attacks on weblogs that supposedly revealed its trade secrets?
Apple's legal crusade against the press over the last six months has struck many observers as being a little too Big Brotherish even for a control freak like Steve Jobs. Why would any company want to adopt such strong-arm tactics against loyal fans whose only crime was to care enough about Apple's products to want to report the rumors they heard about them? It made even less sense when, in one of the cases, Apple tried to get the courts to enforce a subpoena allowing them access data from a reporter's ISP in the hopes of determining who his sources were. That was guaranteed to raise hackles not just in the press but also with a broader contingent of privacy and freedom of speech advocates.
And Apple was bringing all this opprobrium down on its head supposedly for the sake of smoking out the sources who'd tipped off the weblogs on a couple of less-than-earthshaking stories. Not only did it strain credulity that Apple would care that much about the reports of a sub-$500 Mac and a FireWire audio device, court filings subsequently made it obvious that Apple had not bothered to conduct a serious investigation of the employees who were the most likely suspects. So while willing to argue the First Amendment should be trashed to allow them to apprehend the dastardly fiends who might have violated their non-disclosure agreements, Apple didn't really seem that interested in actually unmasking them.
I'd say it's now perfectly clear what secrets Apple was actually trying to protect with all its legal posturing. They were worried about the Mac Mini, all right, but not the pre-announcement leaks about it. Apple feared that the stories that for years had swirled around its possible switch to Intel would become grist for the rumor mill websites, and ultimately enough information from knowledgeable sources would surface to make it clear that it really was likely to happen in the near future. So rather than the Mac Mini hitting the market as the next big thing from Apple, it might instead have been perceived for what it really is: a last ditch shot at moving some PowerPC-based iron in volume before the truth about their future plans became known.
And, hey, Apple's strategy worked. Until the Mac-Intel machines start coming on the market, they know they are going to go through some "rough times" trying to sell the old stuff, but at least they had almost half a year in which to push the soon-to-be-orphaned systems out the door. From what I can tell, if the Mac-rumor sites got any wind of what was happening, they didn't dare breathe a word of it until after the Wall Street Journal broke the story a few weeks ago. I doubt they were intimidated out of it, though. What's more likely is that their potential sources saw all the stuff about Apple subpoenaing ISP records and just kept quiet.
So, from Apple's perspective, you can certainly say that using its lawyers to keep its customers in the dark was a good business decision. I must admit I was startled by how many readers leapt to Apple's defense when I wrote about my belief that there is a public interest in preserving the right of the trade press to do unauthorized product news. Maybe IBM or Microsoft stoops to FUD tactics, they argued, but Apple's only desire is to protect its legitimate trade secrets. Well, fine. Like IBM and Microsoft, Apple's just trying to make a buck, and they do have the right to try to keep secrets. But what they shouldn't have the right to do is eliminate the basic methods by which the trade press operates just so that they can enforce the embargo date on their press releases.
But you know what? While it's quite possible that switching to Intel is indeed a good move, I think Apple made a very bad business decision with its cynical abuse of our court system. When the Mac-Intel machines do arrive, Apple's greatest challenge is going to be proving to Mac loyalists - a group that's supposed to be more focused on creative expression than the rest of us -- that the company's product line is still unique. Having mounted this vicious legal attack on the very principle of freedom of expression just to squeeze a few more dollars from unsuspecting customers, I wonder if Apple's core customers will still consider the company worthy of their devotion.
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