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Sticks and stones and Apple

By Gearhead, NetworkWorld.com, 04/29/05

We have admired Steve Jobs for years. Clever guy. Brilliant marketer. Excellent CEO. But the recent news that Apple has taken an aggressive and punitive stand against a biography written about Jobs just shows that maturity doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with all the good stuff.

The book in question, "iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business" by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon (pub. John Wiley & Sons) apparently doesn't cast Jobs in the most flattering light and Apple's response was to pull all Wiley titles from the Apple Stores on April 26th.

What was Apple thinking! Did Jobs forget the old saw "sticks and stones ..."? Did his advisors not see the foolishness of giving the book free publicity?

This is a revealing move after Apple's recent "going for the throat" of the 19 year old blogger Jason O'Grady owner of the PowerPage and AppleInsider sites for leaking minor details about Apple's soon to be released product Asteroid, a tool that will allow direct recording of musical instruments.

Apple took O'Grady's disclosures rather badly and sued O'Grady to reveal his sources arguing that the disclosure was a theft of trade secrets. This action opened a whole can of worms regarding the status of blogs and whether the people who contribute content are journalists or not which may prove good for journobloggers but will undoubtedly cramp O'Grady style and wallet for some time to come.

What is so disappointing about these events is that the Apple brand is being damaged. This isn't "Think different" but rather "think in the same old cold-blooded, corporate way as any other soulless institution."

If Jobs cares at all about how he and Apple are thought of he'll rethink how these events have been handled and live up to the mature, sophisticated image we used to associate with him.

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