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Apple Is Not Your FriendStephen Van
Esch
July 5, 2000 The Register (among
other news outlets) recently ran an article on how Apple has been
strong-arming the AdCritic web
site into removing Apple ads. It seems that the Apple legal
department has a problem with the ads running on the AdCritic
site. This strikes me as a bit heavy-handed. Of course, no one can
accuse Apple of going easy on people who use their trademarks and
infringe on their material. The list is long - and bound to get
longer. As The Register article indicated, MacCards was shut down
recently. There was also the issue
of the Canadian teenager who registered and used the domain
appleimac.com. Oh, and don't forget the
Skinz debacle. Clear message here: stay off Apple's turf or face the
consequences. The backlash was fairly quick, and pretty much everybody condemned
Apple's move. I, personally, agree with this. Apple should have left
AdCritic alone and enjoyed a bit of free publicity for some great
ads. On the other side of the coin, this is one of the few times that
the Mac community gets a good look at the reality of Apple. Often, I
find, we love the Mac so much that we ignore the basic fact that
Apple is a business. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, making money is
a huge priority. Protecting trademarks is important to their
business, and protecting them helps the Mac community in a very
roundabout way. The Macintosh is an operating system that people become attached
to for one reason or another. The community that comes with the Mac
is, if you choose to participate, open, friendly, and inviting. This
reflects well on Apple and the Macintosh. It should be clear,
however, that Apple did not create this community. The Mac
community is a product of Macintosh users. It's understandable that, because the Mac community is so great,
we expect Apple to be great as well. This is not the case. Apple
supports us by producing a product we like. Various other minor
promotions (like Demo Days) also help Apple connect with its
customers. The brunt of community work, however, falls on the people that
choose to support the platform in one way or another. Apple is not
our friend. Apple is not a person. Apple is a company that creates
great products. We are the ones who breathe love into the product, no one
else. It's normal for us to think of Apple as something more. Its
products mean more to us. But let's not lose sight of the corporation
that has to make money.
- <back to the
original article>
Stephen Van
Esch is the founder and president of
the
E-learning Foundry, an online training
resource for Mac users. Steve loves the Mac and is doubly bilingual,
since he's also fluent in Windows and French. Recently on Mac Scope- Connecting with the broader Macintosh community, 04.06.
"But beyond the very minor celebrity status that came with being published on Low End Mac, it gave me a real opportunity to participate in the Mac community."
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Macs are usually pretty reliable, but a hardware failure after just two-and-a-half years is still disappointing.
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While the pay-per-tune model makes sense, Apple's post-purchase copy management flies in the face of Canadian copyright law.
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"For all those Windows folks who are gussying up Windows to look like OS X and getting excited over PearPC, please just buy a Mac."
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Mac Scope articles copyright © 2000-04, 2007 by Stephen Van
Esch. �
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