The company’s former (13-year-old) nemesis explains how Steve Jobs has suddenly gone soft.
I've had the dubious privilege of being on the frontlines of Apple's war against web leaks.
After my Apple news site, Think Secret, published details of Apple's Mac mini two weeks before the product was officially announced, the company sued me in an attempt to ferret out the leaker. (I was a freshman in college at the time, and the prospect of being sued by one of the world's largest technology companies suddenly made my history final seem a lot less stressful.)
I’ve had the dubious privilege of being on the frontlines of Apple’s war against web leaks.
But lately, there are signs that Apple—long the most secretive company in the tech world—has thrown in the towel on fighting leaks. This year, advance details about a number of Apple products spilled onto the web, including photos of the iPhone 3G and the latest lineup of iPod nanos. In the past, Apple would've fought like hell—including threatening legal action—to get the leaks off the web. But when I spoke to many of the sites that published the images, all of them said that the company's lawyers had been strangely silent.
"There's no doubt that Apple has changed," Jeremy Horwitz, editor in chief of iLounge, told me in an email. "Probably due to the awful PR its prior lawsuits generated, and because cease-and-desist letters only confirm leaks, Apple has wisely stopped going after the people who generate its 'buzz.'"
While most big tech companies would be grateful for the publicity, Apple prefers to let public speculation build to a fever pitch until Steve Jobs, with his usual theatricality, pulls the curtain off of the latest iWhatever at highly choreographed press events. The company's regime of secrecy was engineered by Jobs himself. Before returning to Apple in 1997, he was known for hanging World War II-era posters by his desk proclaiming "Loose Lips Sink Ships," according to Alan Deutschman's biography, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.
Last year, for instance, a site called 9to5Mac published photos of a new lineup of iPod nanos two weeks before Jobs unveiled them to a crowd of reporters. Before long, the photos were replaced with the glum message: "Sorry. Apple called. Said take 'em down. They are down."
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Stanley Crouch's culture pieces have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, Vogue, Downbeat, The New Yorker and more. He has served as Artistic Consultant for jazz programming at Lincoln Center since 1987, and is a founder Jazz At Lincoln Center. In June 2006 his first major collection of jazz criticism, Considering Genius: Jazz Writings was published. He is presently completing a book about the Barack Obama presidential campaign.
Benjamin Sarlin covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com. He is a graduate of Vassar College.
Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, and the author of fifteen books that have had a broad influence in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy. His major works include Social Justice in the Liberal State and his multivolume constitutional history, We the People. His most recent books are The Failure of the Founding Fathers (2005), and Before the Next Attack (2006).
Benjamin Sarlin covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com. He is a graduate of Vassar College.
Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who worked for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a writer with a special interest in environmental issues. Brooks has worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March, and her novel Year of Wonders is an international best seller. She is the author of Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
Nicholas Ciarelli is an assistant product manager at The Daily Beast.
Nicholas Ciarelli is an assistant product manager at The Daily Beast.
Nice article
It seems to me that Apple has more to gain by participating with and not against, their most ardent fans online. http://www.socialmediaworx.com/2008/why-doesnt-apple-get-social-media/
Apparently, Apple employees are 15x more likely to use the word "secrecy" to describe their company than employees at other companies: http://blog.glassdoor.com/2008/10/05/apple-a-fortress-of-secrecy/
I really admire that Nicholas Ciarelli started ThinkSecret when he was just 13, I wish I would have had a brilliant idea like that when I was 13.
Brilliant article. I've been following the Nick Ciarelli/Think Secret story for years. Here's some wiki info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_dePlume
Glad you found a new home online.
- South Dakota
Apple is a big company, and it still has a lot of intellectual property to protect. You're making a pretty big assumption in linking your case to their current efforts, or lack thereof. And, you have no real way of knowing whether or not they are taking any action. They may just be better at doing it in a more stealth way than when you were a snot-nosed brat and they were a smaller company.
"F- it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is *sooo good*. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you *worm*. Because our stuff is *great*. It's *shiny* and it's *pretty* and it's *cool* and it *works*. It's not like you'll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!"
http://tinyurl.com/4roxbf
Great to see you back in print, Nick. Gonna bookmark this Beast thing for daily reads.
I realized a long time ago, when I was still in school, and I smelled some of the BS that our educators wanted me to swallow. In 1792 there was a political party called the "Democratic-Republican Party", and now I'm to believe that they are separate. It seems to me that the "Democratic-Republican Party" which probably still exist as one would forever have complete control over our government... which they do. But I digress... I don't care what the media polls are. I have never been polled (ever). Nor has anyone I met (ever). I question the accuracy. If what I gather from my own polls is correct then John McCain doesn't have an ice cubes chance in Hell of becoming our Commander in Chief unless our votes don't count. Which they don't. So I am aware that from what you read from here you may stop reading and count me out since I decided not to vote. I am a Republican and I do not support John McCain. I do support Barrack Obama and wish him well. I have decided not to vote until the open ballet is reinstated.
The "closed ballet" system has been implemented because a long time ago, we did have an open ballet. And everyone know who their neighbor voted for. And people retaliated and vandalized opposing party members homestead. (this is the time when the Democratic-Republican Party had other competition such as the Federalists) We no longer live in such a time. In fact walk down your street and see how many houses and cars publicly display who they intend to vote for. An open ballet would leave a paper trail and allow me to look in the books and read off the lists of names of the citizens that voted . And I would look for just my name and verify that it matches that candidate that I voted for.