Apple Agrees to Hold Off on Subpoenas

ido writes "Apple has agreed to hold off on serving subpoenas related to their John Doe civil suits against some free press journalists to reveal sources releasing Apple's "trade secrets." This is related to a previous article." The original story has some more background info as well. While Apple is notorious for its secrecy before MacWorlds, Apple probably figured out that dragging people into court usually does little for one's popularity.

Comments

Reputation is really important to Apple

[twigles]

Well then Apple customers must be the dumbest ppl on earth, because they are fiercely protective. Personally I've never owned a Mac simply bc of the price, but Apple has always seemed to care about its reputation as far as I could see. For a long time the die-hards were the only ones interested in macs.

Now Apple is still a massive minority of corporate desktops and their iPod/home user market is based as much on marketing and image as on product specs. Maybe more. If they do something unpopular they could literally drive away their base. Apple needs to maintain their reputation as the "little guy's" corporation, even if it's bullshit.

Re:Apple does not have a popularity problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Apple plans on taking on Microsoft, they should reverse their marketshare slide before they go below 1%. Maybe the Mac Mini will help, but everyone else is selling computers like hotcakes too.

But you're right that Apple doesn't have a popularity problem, it has an irrelvance problem. Outside of a couple core markets, they simply don't exist in most people's minds.

Popularity

[sepluv]

Apple probably figured out that dragging people into court usually does little for one's popularity.

Do they have any of that?

Seriously they are even more proprietary and evil than Microsoft (and cost more and have an even worse UI and better customer lock-in), and they have evil bad-quality expensive proprietary hardware too (on top of the software) which is actually worse.

Re:Popularity

[sepluv]

doing so only magnifies your ignorance. Remember, it helps to know what you are talking about before attempting to talk about it.

I've used (or tried using) Macs many times--in fact, I used one this week briefly. I've looked at how much they cost. I know about the history of Apple and their crusades against freedom (e.g.: recent case with EFF).

They produce an expensive, badly designed (although the design was actually quite good in its early days), proprietary (except Darwin) OS on expensive, badly-designed, proprietary hardware.

Instead of using ad hominem arguments against me, tell me what is wrong with my arguments and conclusions. Try comparing it with GNU/Linux on an Intel/IBM-compatible PC.