Sumimasen deshita, with a bow towards Cupertino...

It seems like a lot of folks in the Mac web community are looking for some apologies, following Apple Legal's hard-line approach to sites that published what purported to be pictures and drawings of a soon-to-be-released iMac model.

I agree. I think we'll all feel better when these sites apologize to Apple.

Assuming we have similar bookmark / favorites / hotlist files, we've probably seen some pretty strong editorials on this story in the last few days. Steve Wood, in Which Apple "Special Event"? comes down hard on the many ways in which Apple has done wrong by its customers recently, from OS updates that break the company's own printer drivers (the LaserWriter Select 310, which I unfortunately own), to the apparent G4 "upgrade block", to neglected software like AppleWorks and Claris E-Mailer.

The article calls Apple "rather heartless", says readers could describe the company's actions as "incredible corporate arrogance and heartlessness" and suggest the company "may be far more avoracious than Microsoft and others ever dreamed of being".

Wood's argument is that it is that Apple could not survive without loyal Mac users, and in particular the websites that provide an important online Mac community.

MacWeek's editorial agrees, noting "in fact, the targets of Apple's wrath were among the company's biggest supporters, and reading them the riot act probably did more harm than good."

One of those websites is The Low-End Mac, whose webmaster Dan Knight also wrote an opinion piece about the situation. He says Apple is openly hostile towards independent Mac sites, saying "They would rather engage us in court than engage us in conversation," and that "they never ask without at the same time threatening".

And truly, those of us who recall Steve Jobs' vicious response to Ric Ford's Open Letter about MacOS licensing on MacInTouch a few years ago don't have too much trouble accepting Knight's feelings about the situation.

Knight says "Very few individuals not employed by Apple Computer do more good for Apple computer than the dozens of independent Mac webmasters," and he's absolutely right. Mac users can count on a vibrant, well-informed, and supportive online community to help them get the most from their computers. PC users call condescending, clueless Tech Support when they have a problem, and I don't know many who've gotten satisfactory results; Mac users get hooked up with a website or a usenet newsgroup and often solve their own problems.

And that's why I do my own tiny little part to contribute to Bill Fox's page with a running feature on PlayStation gaming for the Mac.

But you know what? None of the above matters.

The specifics of the case are pretty clear. Apple owns its own intellectual property. Every one of us who's ever griped about Windows or the eOne stealing from Apple has implicitly made this argument.

Pre-release photography and schematics of new computers are Apple's property. The company spent time, money, and ingenuity to develop them, and should be able to control their use. That's the idea of copyright. The "right" to copy it is, for a length of time determined by law and with some exceptions, controlled by the author. Using that property against the author's wishes, is essentially stealing.

If it's so bad when Microsoft steals the fruits of Apple's labor, why should it be OK for us?

I don't care how crummy Apple has treated you. You don't have the right to steal their stuff. I don't care if the company is shooting itself in the foot by hurting its most loyal fans. You still don't have the right to steal their stuff.

The "yeah, but..." argument didn't work when we were five, and it doesn't work now.

I'm not against rumor sites -- heck, I like 'em, and I'm looking forward to quad-processor G4's and finally running the MacOS on Intel hardware (no, really!) But they usually traffic in ideas: descriptions and opinions about what's coming the Mac world. Ideas alone aren't copyrightable. The tangible expression of an idea, like a book, a play, a picture, or source code is the touchstone of copyright law. Make the slippery "Fair Use" case if you must -- although the principle usually only applies to using a small excerpt, not an entire work -- but it seems to me that there's a clear line here, and in their enthusiasm for the Mac world, some folks crossed it.

And since that line was a legal one, Apple called in its legal department. Scary? Mean? Maybe... but also appropriate. That's the world we live in.

This controversy isn't worth the ill-will, anger and frustration it's causing. The Mac online community is too important to Apple and vice versa for this to go on another day.

C'mon everyone, sumimasen deshita - an expression of remorse. We made a mistake, now send the lawyers off to do something useful and let us make things right again.

--Chris Adamson, plucky@mindspring.com
October 4, 1999