Apple doesn’t have a particularly healthy relationship with the press; it has sued websites for publishing information it didn’t like, and has tried to keep information under wraps that a journalist tried to uncover via the Freedom of Information Act. Now, however, it has tried to prevent The Times from publishing an article about Steve Jobs.
The article in question is not really anything to get all excited about. It details Jobs’ personal andprofessional life, including the hiring of Sculley and Jobs leaving Apple, all the way until Jobs returning to the company and bringing it back on its feet with the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. It also details Jobs’ control-freak attitude and his allegedly narcissist personality.
The article also details Jobs’ health situation, as well what would happen if Jobs eventually left the company. There’s nothing in there we didn’t know already, so for us geeks it’s not particularly interesting.
Still, the author claims Apple tried to block the article from getting published. This is what the author wrote about Apple’s attempts, copied here verbatim:
The secrecy is all about preserving the magic of each new product. Apple hates personality stuff and press intrusion. “We want to discourage profiles,” an Apple PR tells me stiffly, apparently unaware she is waving a sackful of red rags at a herd of bulls. Another PR rings the editor of this magazine to try to halt publication of this piece.
I’m reminded of the classic case of the “Parental advisory – explicit content” labels on music CDs. What happened when the RIAA started putting these labels on CDs? Exactly – they sold more copies. This Apple case is the same: had Apple not tried to stop the article from getting published, no one would’ve cared about it.
i don’t really get why this is page 1 new material, it’s pretty much a gossip issue.
I do. It is one in a long line of articles showing that apple is no longer a company with a capital A – but instead a company that tries to suppress information and harass sites and people they think could harm their reputation.
As much as I love their older hardware (I have nothing newer than 5 years) and their OS, I’m glad someone is shining a light on how they operate – it’s not OK to behave this way and I sincerely hope people will notice.
Obviously you don’t.
Repeat after me: if there is a READ MORE link in the article, it’s Page 1. If there isn’t, it’s Page 2.
I know, crazy, super-duper difficult concept to grasp!!
There IS a read more link, and it IS a page one news item, hence my reply. I *DO* understand why this is page one news. Perhaps you didn’t understand my post?
What I don’t get is how Apple got to know about this article before publication. Or their PR chit-chat happened after publication?
Well, some news corporations notify to the stakeholders before publishing an article related to them, maybe this was the case.
And if Apple tried to block or not an article about Steve J. Why would I care, is like E! news, the least trash news to distract me the better.
Edited 2009-08-18 00:08 UTC
Probably because the author asked info from Apple for his article. Pretty standard procedure.
Or they got tipped off by someone the author came to asking for information while doing research.
Who was it again who said Silicon Valley is a small world? 😉
I must add that the Times article is written with a sense of humor and with insight. The author has been recollecting some standard anekdotes and combined it with insightful analyses. Well-worth the read.
Of course this is a news piece for front page!
Notices that are actually about operative systems, like the Jolicould, Snow Leopard GM, or the Linux 3D GUI revolution don’t deserve the same importance as gossip.
It’s sad to see what OS News was and what is it turning into now.
“Linux 3D GUI” WTF is that? Wobbly windows? That isn’t news. The only competitor to MS acting like a spoiled child? That’s news.
I want to know what companies are acting like asses, so I can avoid their products.
So in other words you live under a tree – inside a cardboard box might be subjecting yourself to the multibillion dollar cardboard industry.If one avoided products from every company that did something stupid or filled with idiots – I don’t think any one here would own a thing.
No, I vote with my wallet. I shop at the local grocery store instead of the bigger chains. I don’t buy Sony, and the way Apple is acting, I wouldn’t buy from them either. If I have a choice, I buy stuff from places that more reflect how I think things should be done, or that help the local economy. I don’t shop at Walmart either.
Perhaps you should come out from under the rock you’ve been living under, we all have the power to affect the ways companies do things, if we all made our purchases using more criteria than just the best price, companies like Apple, Sony and others might get the message. Sony certainly has been behaving better the last couple of years, since the rootkit scandal.
A large part of Apple costumers buys there products because they have enough of Microsoft’s shady business practices. They sometimes, quite literarlly see Apple as something resembling the ‘light side’.
Therefore news that can break this illusion can be very welcome.
Not to mention, not too much here on OSNews, is fun to read the resulting comments from Apple-fanboys of such articles.
For me, I don’t care about practices; I just want a product that works out of the box with minimum fuss and bother – Apple provides me with that product. If Microsoft could provide a superior experience, I’d use that. if Novell could do the same thing, I’d move to them.
I have no loyalty – I go with what ever does the job. Maybe instead of an anti-Apple or anti-Microsoft vendetta, you used some of that pent up frustration to educate end users of alternatives so that their software repotoi extends beyond the big 4-5 software companies.
So since you don’t care about business practices which give you a nifty product to buy; child labor and dangerous work conditions wouldn’t be an issue for you? You’d be ok with promoting such business practices by throwing more money at companies which do that sort of thing?
I’m not saying that this is what Apple is doing; I suggest it as an example of what “I don’t care how the company does it long as I get my shinny thingy” leads.
I don’t promote companies which build single OS targeted hardware unless no other option exists for that device type. I don’t promote how MS does business unless they provide the only viable option for a software need. I don’t promote companies known to employ unfair trade practices outside of computers either. I’d rather give my money to a company which demonstrates traits I can agree with. But, how you spend your money and what business practices you promote, of course, your own decision as a consumer.
I do understand there is a degree of ethical consumption but at the same time I do think there are people here who go overboard where they claim because they can’t load Mac OS X onto a non-Apple computer that it is akin to the end of the world or some sort of fascism.
Of course, if it is taken to the logical extreme then ‘bad things’ can occur – but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a situation where one man has an intense need to build a massive wall between his corporate persona and wishing it to be kept separate from his personal life – be it his family or his health.
So you’d sooner promote a product that doesn’t do what the end user wants? there is a time and place to have wide eyed idealism then one has to come down to earth, realise that the world runs on Windows with Mac OS X taking a very distant second place. All the alternative operating systems either lack hardware support or lack software support from big name vendors. That is the reality – you can talk about having and ethical outlook but at the end of the day the end user wants a computer that works with their hardware supported running the software from the vendors they like – and they don’t like being condescended to by self righteous people claiming that they know what is best for them and how xyz software can save their soul even though it doesn’t do what the end user wants.
Edited 2009-08-19 11:14 UTC
Your previous comment made it sound like the internal policies of a company where not relevant provided you got your shinny product.
“So you’d sooner promote a product that doesn’t do what the end user wants? there is a time and place to have wide eyed idealism”
This also ignores the part where I say “unless XYZ is the only option”. To clarify, if Microsoft’s product is the only one that can meet the user’s needs then fine, I use that until an equivalent or better product comes along from a company who demonstrates policies I can more closely agree with. I said nothing about forcing an option on a user with “wide eyed idealism” when it does not meet there needs.
Along with OS News, I read several other operating specific news sites. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend with regard to the reporting of Apple-specific news on this site. If one were to just read this site, you would think that the company only produces negativity.
Now I know Thom isn’t anti Apple. I know this for a FACT because he has repeatedly said it when people have questioned his behavior. With that said, the vast majority of the information reported about Apple on this site is negative. This isn’t the case on any of the other sites i visit of which there are many. The trend is typically positive on the other sites. Knowing that Thom isn’t Anti Apple (again because he has repeatedly said so) It makes me wonder why this site is so out of sync?
Knowing that Thom isn’t anti Apple (because he’s said so) My only conclusion is that all the other tech news sites are the ones that are out of sync.
Here is a list of several weeks worth of Apple specific headlines produced by this site:
Apple Tried to Block Article About Steve Jobs – negative
Apple Accuses Psystar of Destroying Evidence, Psystar Denies – negative
Apple’s Snow Leopard Rumored To Be Golden Master – neutral
Mac OS X 10.5.8 Released – neutral
Apple Censors Dictionary iPhone App- negative
Apple Tried to Silence Exploding iPod Victim with Gagging Order – negative
Apple Keyboards Vulnerable to Firmware Hack – negative
Apple: Jailbreaking Could Crash Transmission Towers – negative
Apple Joins Forces with Record Labels, Building ‘Tablet’ – neutral
Apple Rejects Official Google Voice iPhone App – negative
Apple Withdraws Legal Threats Against iTunes Sync Wiki – negative/neutral
Apple Tries to Downplay iPod Fire Incidents – negative
Apple Reports Best Non-Holiday Quarter Results in Apple History – positive/neutral
Lost iPhone Prototype Pushes Foxconn Worker to Commit Suicide – negative
How Apple’s App Review Is Undermining The iPhone – negative
‘Apple Asked Microsoft To Take Down Laptop Hunter Ads’ – negative
Apple Blocks Palm Pre from Accessing iTunes – negative/neutral
Apple Proposes HTTP Streaming Feature As Protocol Standard – neutral
This was actually announced: http://www.osnews.com/story/21918/The_Camel_s_Back_Broke_1984_Days_…
Ahhh I see.
Does this also explain the same style of negative Apple publishing **before** Apple upset David by restricting an app on their app store?
Also on that note… does OS News have any history of this sort of behavior for any other technology company or do they reserver disproportionate negative attention to just Apple?
I seem to recall that Microsoft (for example) making quite a few blunders far greater caliber than this pretty regularly. Why do they get a free pass?
Edited 2009-08-18 01:20 UTC
Yeah just for the record: Thom is NOT David.
David bombastically announced to “have fun” with showing Apple’s dark side, only to be hardly ever heard of since.
Thom usually writes the news, and as far as I’m concerned, he still intends to remain objective. However I must say that haus’s excellent overview actually has started me reconsidering this viewpoint.
Edit: in the light of the below comments, I do think at times it is excusable to let the balance topple over toward either the negative or positive valence side, in order to put the overall picture back into balance.
Or (translation): most of us thought pretty positively about Apple. What OS News plainly does, is point out that we should change this view in favor of us knowing that Apple is “both good and bad”. That said, we got the message. Now let’s re-establish a balance & get some positive news out there again.
Edited 2009-08-18 14:39 UTC
can we have a ‘bad apple’ icon before each of these stories?
Could be helpful to keep track of them all over time
This article well explain the websites position:
http://www.osnews.com/story/21918/The_Camel_s_Back_Broke_1984_Days_…
What “other” sites you are referring to? Apple historically has gotten very good press because frankly there wasn’t much on the surface to complain about, earnings have been great and they have been very good at PR.
In the last few months I think the situation has started to shift a bit, and it certainly isn’t isolated to osnews. I see many of the same stories on other sites.
Regardless, I don’t think of most of the stories you linked to as “negative” or “positive”. They are simply news – most of which were not even written by osnews staff, only linked to. I’m sure there may be a few truly negative opinion pieces, but frankly so what – if you go back a bit further than 3 months you will find _loads_ of the opposite. If you ask me its about time…
I would have to agree with your conclusion, since almost all of the tech news sites I visit are carrying much of the same Apple stuff as osnews.
“In the last few months I think the situation has started to shift a bit, and it certainly isn’t isolated to osnews. I see many of the same stories on other sites.”
I do to, but they report the negative news relative to the negativity that comes out of the company in proportion to the positive news. No, that doesn’t mean make the negative and positive coverage equal… it means make it proportionate to the amount of negative or positive news coming out of the company.
“Regardless, I don’t think of most of the stories you linked to as “negative” or “positive”. They are simply news”
I labeled those stories accordingly to avoid the comment you just made. The majority of the stories are in fact negative.
“They are simply news – most of which were not even written by osnews staff, only linked to.”
The implication here is that OS News would link to the positive news if someone supplied it to them. I know they they don’t do this as they don’t link to the positive content… at least none that I ever submitted.
“I’m sure there may be a few truly negative opinion pieces, but frankly so what – if you go back a bit further than 3 months you will find _loads_ of the opposite.”
As I mentioned, I’ve been following this site for a long time and rarely have I seen a positive piece about Apple here.
>>”My only conclusion is that all the other tech news sites are the ones that are out of sync.”
“I would have to agree with your conclusion”
Interesting. Your comment says a lot about your motives.
Lest someone kill this thread for being off topic, please don’t reply… otherwise your comment will warrant yet another reply… unless your goal is to get the thread killed which again, says a lot about your motives.
Edited 2009-08-18 01:30 UTC
Motives? I was simply replying to your post honestly. I don’t have any motives. In fact if you want to look at my comment history you’ll probably find most of what I say about Apple to be positive, or at the least indifferent.
The difference between me and you is I’m not mad about osnews posting so called “negative” stories about Apple, I’m mad at Apple for doing so many dunder-headed things in the last few months that are news worthy. I honestly hope they get a grip on things and we can get back to seeing news about how awesome their latest product is…
For the record, I don’t know who modded your post down, but it wasn’t me. If the thread gets killed oh well…
“I was simply replying to your post honestly. I don’t have any motives.”
You say that and talk about your Apple positive posting history then assume that they need to change their behavior when in fact they as a company are doing nothing any more wrong than any other technology company.
It sounds to me like you actually advocate for the disproportionate coverage of negative news attention relative to Apple’s negative behavior. THAT is what illustrates your motives.
Thanks for the reply. Lesson learned, won’t happen again.
So? Maybe is because they have done all those things?
“So? Maybe is because they have done all those things?”
They may have, but they’re positive newsworthy items far outweigh their negative ones.
Maybe we should only focus on the fact that you cheated on your test in high school and that you stole that candy bar, you broke your mother’s favorite dishes and blamed your sister and you didn’t replace the toilet paper role after using the last square.
Now that it has been reported… we can and should only assume that these are the things that define you.
Knowing this, it’s obvious, you sir are a terrible person.
That’s funny, most of the articles I read about North Korea in other news sources are negative also.
Maybe you should blame Apple for there bad news, instead of blame OSNews.
Name some of the good things this company with his holy mission to serve mankind might have done lately?
Hmm,
I propose a new law, to stand alongside Godwin’s – to cover the mention of, comparison with or analogies based on references to North Korea or the North Koreans.
Would “Orfanum’s Law” suit? 🙂
Well, there is simply a lot of negative stuff to report about Apple.
If Apple didn’t have iPhones that blew up, and subsequently Apple offered a refund on the condition of silence (completely appalling)…
If Apple wasn’t so draconian about it’s App Store …
If Apple wasn’t trying to suppress free press …
If Apple didn’t refuse to back up their product and their Apple Care (see recent ZDNet article) …
If Apple legal dept didn’t call Microsoft bitching about MS’s “value” Ad campaign …
If Apple wasn’t so secretive about Steve Jobs’ health (yes, a CEO needs to be transparent, because it affects the company) …
If Apple didn’t have so much DRM in their iTunes …
… and on and on …
… then there wouldn’t be negative articles about them. But Apple has done all those bad things, and more, so there is plenty of bad stuff to report about them.
And sorry for the Apple fanboys who don’t want to face all that.
I own an iPod. I forked out my $150, when I could have spent about half that on a Sandisk Sansa for equivalent functionality, because I had an open mind about Apple’s design, packaging, ease of use. I also bought into their hype. But when the iPod dies, it’s Sansa or Creative for me.
And oh, on the computer side, it’s a Dell with Vista and Ubuntu for me. 😉
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/08/17/apple_attempted_to_si…
Also, the link on the statement “[Apple] has tried to keep information under wraps that a journalist tried to uncover via the Freedom of Information Act” does not seem to substantiate that claim at all, though I did see a completely unrelated article on the Times site that made a similar claim in a slightly more convincing manner (though it had nothing to do with Think Secret).
Please stick to OS News and quit wasting my time with this yellow journalism. If you still can’t think of anything to write about, don’t feel like you have to post something.
Please stick to not reading articles that don’t interest you and making annoying comments like this, you’re wasting my time.
If you don’t like a particular story, don’t feel like you have to post something.
…not the New York Times.
To me, Apply trying to block this article is not what is interesting about it. Apple try routinely to block or at least discourage a significant proportion of the material written about them. No news there.
What is interesting about the article is why the Sunday Times chose this particular writer. He’s not a tech journo, let alone a geek one. He is a writer whose broad repertoire takes in culture and science, mainly (and he has written some very good books, too).
Whether intentionally or not, the article suggests that behind the veil of marketing and hype Apple is a sick company just as it’s founder is a man with serious health problems (anyone with a transplanted organ has just exchanged one health problem for another one). Apple of course is in rude health financially, but psychologically, culturally the outfit appears far from well. It sounds a pretty hellish place to work and is beginning to drop out of the zeitgeist.
There is a mood around of “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and in IT sunlight means open standards, not a whole lot of messing with secret, proprietorial manoeuvres. These manoeuvres, let’s not forget, go all the way down to trying to stamp on an ordinary user whose iGizmo battery went up in smoke, literally (an incident which is cited in the article).
So I’d suggest this is a worthwhile article, but not because Apple tried to kill it. The implication is that Apple looks great on the outside, but on the inside it is heading for a car crash. I’ve no idea whether the eventual outcome will be a deal with Google – no one possibly can know what the future may hold – but the article seems to me right in implying that the decline and end of the Steve Jobs era at Apple is going to be a very difficult time. That ghostly, decaying mansion at the start of the article is a very haunting image.
Edited 2009-08-18 12:08 UTC
Pride leads to destruction, and arrogance to downfall.
(a.k.a. Pride comes before the fall / Hoogmoed komt voor de val)
I don’t understand why when it comes to Apple the media and pundits out there have to make it so special and particularly reporting the facts wrongly?
The information that you refer to, are industrial prototypes and industrial informations vital for the Apple’s strategy. Since when it is so special that a compagny sues people who are making public its internal confidential informations, informations which will be inevitably used by its competitors? Th history is full of case like that, just recently a french car compagny have sued some journalists who have published prototypes and informations of their new cars. Why you make it sound that is is only an Apple thing? It is not. Get you facts right, and stop spreading your anti apple crap.
Wrong gain, you read too much of the sensationalism press (i guess you can only understand that). What Apple does is what any other compagny does: protecting itself from wrong and sensationalist reporting which usually don’t separate what is a fact and what is imaginary. Any compagny does that, remember the Mercedez Class A car? Some cars were defective and journalist made such a mess of it, but it was way too much exaggerated.
So what? Some people preventing other people to write (usually non-sense) about their personality is not an Apple thing. Actors, politicians, singers, they is a ton of example of such cases.
And you want other companies name that keep press far from them. Here it goes: Renault, BMW, Boeing, Sony, and the list is big.
So what it is your point on bashing (like the Times jackass) Apple on the matter?
I totally agree, this website was about technology not sensationalist meaningless informations. As far as i see it, it is still called OSNews, this site should treat primarily about news related to operating systems and about operating system new technologies. Not useless gossip made up by bored and incompetent journalist. All the interesting staff always end up in Page 2, whereas the shit is just popping up on Page 1 for the sake of attracting zealots on forums and having more page hits.
Thank you Holwerda for that, you turned this site to a general “garbage collector”.
Edited 2009-08-20 08:00 UTC