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Publisher Wiley's Books Pulled from Apple Stores
getling writes "Looks like Steve Jobs is almost as unhappy about personal details being publicized as he is with Mac secrets. The book publisher Wiley, who is releasing a new unauthorized biography of Jobs has had its entire line of books banned from Apple stores as a result of their unhappiness with the content of the book. Wiley, publisher of the popular Dummies series of books, as well as the Bible series, is quite surprised, due to the fact that they view the book to show Jobs in a largely positive light ..."
That Amazon link looks like it contains a referrer - it has "ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14". That returns over 6000 hits on google, so either it's part of Amazon's system, or whoever provided it is making a lot of money off it. Here is a ref-free sanitized link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471 720836
"That's all he ever wanted out of life... was love. That's the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn't have any to give."
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
So isn't Apple/Steve sort of making the 'mercurial' and 'hot-tempered' point for the author? While the Woz has said that Jobs never treated him badly, he admitted that many people said they'd never work for Jobs again because of alleged mistreatment by Jobs (check out the mp3 of the HOPE keynote from 2004, in the Q&A, where an audience member asks about Jobs' behavior).
....He should step away from it....
Personally I'd be damn annoyed if people started publicising my illnesses, my past and my private life as well. For the second time no less! There's this myth that if you're a public figure you're not entitled to a private life. Bollocks.
Speech is (and IMHO ought to be!) free, and the publishers are well within their rights to go against a man's wishes about his biography. Steve is also well within his rights to tell the publishers that they'll not sell a damn thing in his bookstores from now on.
My sympathies are with the man whose life they're laying bare (irrespective of how they cast it) rather than the money-grabbing publishing house. "Quite surprised" is a laugh as well - they sent the proofs to Apple for approval and were asked to withhold publishing. WTF did they expect ?
One of the things that seems to have been lost along the route to our western democracy is that actions have consequences. I'm made up that the act of publishing this book will cause them financial pain - perhaps it'll be as annoying to them as it obviously is to Steve that they've gone ahead and published. Perhaps it'll make them think twice about doing the same thing again...
Before anyone gets on their high horse about the 'public's right to know', again, Bollocks. The public has a right to know if a public figure abuses his/her position - completely agree with that. On the other hand, this rather distasteful desire to simply nose into other peoples lives is a sad fact of the human condition today.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
A few days ago, my company's VP of Systems (read: head of IT) and I were walking back from lunch when we got on the subject of GarageBand and then Macintoshes. My good friend the VP stated that he absolutely loved the design of the new Mac Minis. The damn things were so functional, and yet so cheap. He'd setup several of these for relatives and they had all loved them. Anyway, as we were talking, we came to the conclusion that Steve Jobs may be an asshole, but at least he's a brilliant asshole!
;-)
A tribute.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Book of Job? .. Oops.
Publicity. Stunt.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
While interesting,
:-(
- Apple is not the government (therefore, any ridiculous cries of censorship are just a wee tad bit overboard)
- Apple can do what it wants with its own corporate stores
- Yes, this may result in more copies of the book being sold, but consider that this is not an effort to "suppress" the book; it's merely a retaliatory move. Apple is under no obligation whatsover, implied or otherwise, to carry any publisher's books.
In short, business as usual and a BIG yawner:
"It's certainly not unprecedented for a company to protest publication of a book or article it finds unflattering.
IBM, for instance, staged a six-year advertising boycott of Fortune magazine after then-Chief Executive Louis V. Gerstner took exception to a 1997 cover story.
More recently, General Motors withdrew its ads from the Los Angeles Times in protest of an April 6 review of its Pontiac G6."
(From the Mercury News story)
Think what you want, but businesses shouldn't be forced to support other businesses they disagree with.
Further, it looks like there's a referrer in the submitter's amazon link.
This book has always been one of the most comprehensive Macintosh references out there. Strange that Apple would pull it. Hrmmm...
http://www.walkingtaco.com
Everytime Jobs regain power in the industry...
And this happens how often?
You make it sound as if it's practically every other day.
It seems to me that he's "regained power" once.
I agree that these guys have a right to some privacy. Most interesting to me is that the comments here on /. are generally supportive so far. What a different thread it would be if this had been Bill Gates and Microsoft instead of Steve Jobs and Apple.
Did Wiley want to sell it in Apple stores (even that would have been, at most, a bit weird) ? With all respect to Apple's hardware and software products, such an action as banning the entire publishing house from stores sound absurdly inappropriate.
Check for yourself the sample chapter at least, to see whether it's such an outrageous book or not.
They'd have all their books banned from the Library of Congress.
I wonder if that's what Sen. Trist meant by "Nuclear Option"?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
anybody here see "pirates of silicon valley" or whatever it was called, the story about the rise of Bill Gates & Steve Jobs ? I know it's just a movie and maybe it's not true in every detail but that one scene where Jobs is tossing out frisbees to all his minions on the beach was pretty spooky, 'Power hungry Megalomanic!' Is what I was thinking at the time.. seems I was right.
More relevant, though, is the dubious realm of unauthorized-while-they're-still-alive biography. I feel it belongs to the age of cheap celebrity. I'm not interested in Ashton Kuchar's remarkable life, thank you very much. Let's give people a chance to die before we start worshipping them.
Mr. Murphy, meet the Apple Legal Department. They know a thing or two about interpreting the law to my advantage.
It seems to me that he never lost power. Pixar and NeXT anyone? Not only did Jobs then return to Apple, but his previous company (NeXT) went from near failure to completely taking over Apple.
He may be an asshole, but his persistence pays off. And while a lot of people complained about working for him (and even demonized him in "Pirates of Silicon Valley), the real engineer's accounts seem to simply say that he didn't suffer fools gladly. The Mac team seemed to genuinely like him.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...that this incident will probably give Apple and Steve Jobs more bad publicity than the book alone ever would have.
It even showed up on CNN's main page.
I think he's great. He pulled Apple out of the shitter. I'd rather work for steve than Bill. He is innovative and clever.
It's much.... snappier.
everyone seems to have missed one vital piece of information.. the title of the book is iCon.
nuff said.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
So does the title "iCon" supposed be a stylish version of the word icon or does it represent a certain attitude: "I conned you into buying a nice OS on some very expensive hardware to make me a happy SOB"? For some reason, I keep thinking "iCon" might be a better title for a Martha Stewart book.
Please, get it right: Real men program in hex.
Actually I heard (unreliable) rumors that the new Core* items can be compiled and run on x86 chips with little or no modification.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I'm guessing that would be no freaking way. Apple moving to Intel would be huge. It ain't happening.
I think it would bother me a lot more if this meant that nobody got to see it. But Apple's economic power isn't that high. It still bothers me a little though.
I believe firmly in the freedom of individuals to engage in whatever contracts they find mutually beneficial. But, I'm not so sure about a big, powerful public corporation. I think as organizations get larger and more powerful, they become more government-like. You die just as surely whether you starve because nobody will sell you food or someone shoots you.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Pissing off Major IT Corporations for Dummies. Character Assassination for Dummies. Making Bad Business Decisions for Dummies.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Sounds to me like a known Microsoft booster attempting to create doubt in a competitor's product by claiming it will be obsolete in less than a year. We all know how well Apple guards their secrets, the chances of Thurott leading something this big are slim to none.
There are rumors that OS X will in fact run on x86 machines, and is kept up to date, along with a seperate sort of "Classic" mode VirtualPC type thing that allows translation from PPC to x86 (so your old programs will still work). A friend of mine that worked at Apple for awhile only smirked at my mention of it, and would neither confirm nor deny.
Apple, in my opinion, will stay with IBM as long they keep producing quality chips. Sure they had some problems with their new fab process, but a minor slip-up is no reason to dump them. Especially when it requires such a radical change.
I'm glad I don't work at Apple!
According to this, Steve Jobs owns 10.1 million shares (that figure may be pre-split) of Apple, or 1.2% of those outstanding. 10 million of those are restricted shares granted to him by Apple. Mr. Jobs had sold off all but one of his shares he received from the Next merger soon after it happened.
So he's nowhere near a "majority" owner, and is only the second largest individual shareholder; at least 10 institutions control a bigger stake than Leader, aka Steve Jobs.
What's the real story ?
There will be no issue of lawsuit against the author or Wiley, unless somehow there were libel statements made in the book. The truth can't be libel, by definition. Remember once you're a public figure, you have a more limited right to privacy than otherwise is the case (It's may not seem fair, but those who wish to have the spotlight shined upon them, will sometimes have to accept the spotlight when it's not welcome).
-Mark
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
This is _not_ a troll. It is a very sincere post questioning the readers of slashdot - it makes me wonder about the level of slashdot criticism.
If this were a MS story of Bill Gates doing the same, there would be the usual crazy outbreak of 'MS evil empire' type banter. However, because its Apple , the response is a mild - 'oh its ok, hes the Apple man hes allowed to'. Where is the balance? I think somewhere in between to be honest - Jobs and Gates are simply very ruthless business persons, and yet here at Slashdot there is a decided overflow towards Apple.
Is it the OSX thing - its not a free OS.. its not Open, so why the fanaticism, is it because its most Linux like? Windows has cygwin.. and I know a large number of IT specialists whom use it, but Windows is always rated as poor and irrevlevant (by the slashdot community), yet it is the most used desktop, by a rediculous majority? So where is the balance? Where is the even levelled intelligent arguments for both sides, that usually make for a great discussion?
The more I visit here the more I see very common attitudes:
- Apple and OSX rules, and every other platform/OS sux.
- MS are evil and Windows sux.. but Xbox rules (this one has always been a bit of a conundrum - this must imply MS are less evil than Sony?)..
- Sony are evil and PS2 is crap..
- Linux and all Unix's are above all the best OS's and everything else is crap..
- Any programming language that isnt C++ like or OO is crap..
The above is a mere sample of generalisations and these are the usual source of flame wars. But the important thing about these topics, is that taking an opposing stance usually means getting flamed, chastised, or ridiculed.. It is even more interesting that moderators dont try to keep the discussion balanced, Im sure it would result in much better (more interesting) discussions, and a lot less ' is crap, or it sux'.
This leads me to one fairly basic conclusion. Most of the people posting on Slashdot these days are young, easily impressionable males, that have little sense or understanding of two sides of a discussion and generally are very one-eyed about subjects with little or no flexibilty to gauge information as valid or relevant.
Does *this* look positive to you?
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
Hex is for weenies. Real men program in binary, with a toggle switch. ... while walking 20 miles uphill both ways in the snow.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Run for president...
R(k)
Considering how much people on Slashdot like to talk about their privacy being abused, along with their hatred of online marketing and data gathering, I do find it quite ironic that Slashdot did this without some sort of disclosure.
Or could it be that it's the slashdot user who embedded this and the story editors didn't notice?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This is completely understandable, the cover of the book is pretty much saying I, Con Artist. No wonder Apple doesnt want a book on its shelves more or less calling its CEO a con man. I doubt the average passerby is going to get a positive impression from that sitting on the shelves while they're contemplating buying a $2,000 laptop from a company run by a "con."
Whatever "savvy" marketers decided to go with that title should be feeling the brunt of this decision. Last I checked Apple was a private company with no obligation to carry anything. If I told Microsoft press I was writing a bio of Gates and later told them it was going to be called "Convicted Monopolist" then I wouldnt be surprised if they dropped me.
At the end of the day Apple is a company just like any other. They'll act in a predictable fashion when it comes to protecting their property and image. Look at what one con artist has recently done to Wendy's restaurant. Bad image and rumors hurt business.
I am in awe of your standard for real manliness.
Stabbed???? Pah, geez. SHANKED!
Can anyone confirm or deny this for me?
I have no inside information, but I can easily deny it. Switching to x86 would be a logistical nightmare for Apple, even assuming that they have current x86 OS X builds in their labs. They would only do it if PPC fell substantially behind x86, which hasn't happened. The G4 almost did, but the G5 showed up just in time. And it's true that the G5 hasn't scaled like Apple and IBM expected, but that's an industry-wide problem. In the past 2 years the G5 has gone from 2.0 to 2.7GHz, which is proportionally more of an improvement than Intel going from 3.0 to 3.8.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Actually, Jobs is widely viewed (read: by shareholders) - whether or not it's actually true - as the driving force behind Apple's recent successes. Therefore a smear/expose on Jobs that could tarnish his reputation could seem to Apple to be a threat to the corporation itself. In that respect, Jobs 'is' Apple.
In the same vein, Apple could be pandering to its golden boy to keep him happy, having weighed Jobs' ego as more important than allegations of bullying or censorship.
I don't know about you, but if someone wrote a book about me and titled it "iCon" I would be pretty offended. All those people going into the Apple store are immediately going to see Jobs' picture on the front and think he's a con artist. Doesn't exactly mesh with the honest Apple brand no matter what the pages say.
... would have been for Jobs to have a ghost-writer crank out "Why Wiley's Book Is Stupid" and sell it next to the book he hates.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
No, Apple doesn't have to sell the book. But pulling the entire line is childish. And counter-productive. By going nuclear, Jobs has helped to give the title some buzz--the silver lining in every act of censorship. :-)
Damn, Apple's been getting somewhat evil lately.
a) iPods with built-in obsolescence
b) a fairly crappy recycling track record
c) suing 15 year old kids for blogging information their own employees or partners leaked.
d) Promoting Censorship within it's stores.
Whatever happened to Steve's Birkenstocks?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Stop it. Seriously. Stop with the "it's bad, but it's Apple, so everyone thinks it's okay" BS. It was old years ago, and is even older today. To reiterate, to those who keep bringing this up:
No.
Again: no.
Contrary to what some people seem to believe, your average high-karma Slashdot poster is not an idiot. Frankly, this is getting downright irritating. Bad things involving Apple keep occurring, so you people have to come out of the woodworks and say that people are only supporting Apple because they're Apple, when really, the vast majority of these 'Apple supporters' are just looking at the situation with circumspection. Got that? Just in case that was unclear, that means they're reading TFA, thinking about it, considering the situation and its angles, then replying, rather than giving a knee-jerk reaction like the 'If it were Microsoft...' people. It typically has nothing to do with the fact that it's Apple--we're dead serious when we say we'd support Microsoft/Gates if it were them instead of Apple/Jobs--and everything to do with the facts surrounding the situation.
Fact: Wiley was asked not to publish the book.
Fact: The biography was unauthorized, which is legal, but not really that morally okay, especially when the biography is about someone who's still alive.
Fact: Jobs could not have made Apple stop selling Wiley's products without support from a majority of the Board.
Fact: Apple is not preventing the publishing of the book, they are expressing objection to it by not selling the publisher's materials in their stores.
Fact: A corporation has the right to choose what it wants to sell, and whom to obtain their products from.
Fact: Again, you can walk into Borders or Barnes and Noble or whatever, or search Amazon.com, and still get Wiley's books, including the unauthorized biography of Jobs.
Was it perhaps rash of Apple to do this? Yeah, I think so. Was it a horrible, evil thing for Apple to do? Not really, no. I can understand Jobs and Apple's unhappiness with an unauthorized biography about Jobs. I'd not like someone writing about me and including intimate details without my permission, regardless of what kind of light I'd be put in. I couldn't stop them from doing it, but would it really be wrong of me to object to my fullest ability?
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Hate to say it, but selling something for more than you bought it for is the definition of good business, especially if it's exponentially higher. The market place sets the price of goods, regardless of what you can get them for. Most business people just don't like to talk about it because as soon as the secret's out they make less money.
This kinda story made me run and install Debian on my PowerBook. The recent stories really convinced me that its insane to trust my data to proprietary vendors especailly the ones run by such essentric characters as Steve and Larry.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Steve Jobs is an unbelievable asshole. Seriously, you think you know assholes? Steve Jobs makes them all look like girl scouts. He's the biggest asshole I've ever encountered, ever.
He's also a hands-down, certifiable genius.
The fact that he's an asshole really pales in comparison to what he's capable of doing. The man is like some kind of magic crap detector. He can smell crap from ten miles away. And when he sees it, he can tell you exactly why it's crap, and exactly what needs to change to eliminate its crappiness.
Steve Jobs is the most arrogant man I know, but he's also the man most deserving of open, unapologetic arrogance I know.
At least for me, it's possible to personally dislike somebody and admire him at the same time.
Why is this modded flamebait? Perhaps the moderator is unfamiliar with the history of Apple.
Apple I, Apple II, early Mac: Jobs at helm. Apple is profitable.
The Dark Ages: various people, not Jobs, at helm. Company bleeds cash. Apple nearly goes tits up. Repeatedly.
Purchase of NeXT, return of Steve Jobs: Apple is profitable.
It may not be causation, but it sure as heck suggests a correlation.
Thurott=FUD
The Longhorn demo was so lame he is attempting to distract readers by unearthing this dead horse. "Longhorn is a trainwreck but OSX is not going to exist as you know it in a year anyway..."
There are always just enough DIY/case mod/"macs are too expensive I could build a better box for $37!!" people out there to give this traction. Not going to happen but its a real fantasy for alot of people.
Think about it - what does Apple gain? 2.7mghz G5 vs. 3.8mghz intel? Nothing there... Pissing off software companies/developers by flushing several years of investment in OSX? Nothing there either...
We are men of action, lies do not become us...
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Practically everything in Mac OS X can be compiled for Intel hardware with little or no modification. There are some huge exceptions, of course; all the vectorization would have to be pulled out, and there's an assload of that now. But while it's a lot of code, it's not a big fraction of the OS.
Hell, our core operating system, Darwin, has been available for Intel for some years now.
But from two messages up, the "Apple is switching to Intel" stuff is complete bullshit. The performance we're getting out of 2.5 GHz G5s on the shelves today is spectacular. It's still, even a year later, top-shelf performance.
Yes, IBM has had massive problems going to 90 nm fabrication. But so has everybody else. We would have been real happy if IBM could have been at 5 GHz now like they'd projected back in 2002-2003. Going on-stage at WWDC in the summer of '03 and saying "3 GHz in a year!" left us looking really stupid. But shit happens, you know? It's not like IBM is totally dropping the ball on us (yes, I'm talking about you, Motorola).
Given the demand for PowerPC and POWER Architecture Chips of Late (Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo,...) it would seem odd for Apple to move away from an platform they have put so much work into developing with their partners on this.
,don't they use a POWER core with hardware translation layer to support x86 instructions?
If Apple do move away from IBM chips it would likely be for the reinvigourated Motorola Spin-off Freescale PowerPC chips. Who already make some of the G4 chips anyway.
The interesting part of such a rumor could be AMD who yes make "Intel-Compatiable" chips
Maybe the rumor (or wild speculation if you prefer) should read that Apple is in talks to get a third company producing PowerPC chips.
"Call us when the New age is old enough to drink" Beck
This is bad news for Apple, its customers (i.e. me and everyone else using a Mac or an iPod), and its shareholders.
No one likes an arrogant arsehole, and people like arrogant arseholes even less who act like mini dictators. It's not like Apple has a 90% marketshare in the computer market to play with, and investors shy away from erratic, irrational CEOs. I can understand him withdrawing the book on his life from the Apple store shelves, as he has the power to do that, but the Dumies series is extremely popular and it could make an enemy of extremely influential people like David Pogue, whose NYTimes tech articles get read by millions.
What worries me most about this is that it reminds me of the bat shit megalomanic attitude that Jobs had before he was canned from Apple the first time in 1985, trying to push others around.
Steve, if you or one of your slaves is reading this, take these words of advice: You, as a celebrity and CEO of a very trendy company, give away a certain amount of privacy as part of your status. You, like me and everyone else, are not an island. You depend on literally millions of other people for your success, from customers, to shareholders, to employees, to reviewers, to the press. Think about that before you fly into a rage like a spoilt five year old brat the next time.
IIRC, Microsoft owns Wiley. Maybe this could be an even better reason for Jobs to not support the book.
You're kidding, right ?
Apple is not refusing to sell just this book; it is refusing to sell any of the large number of Mac books put out by this publisher. The decision will cost the shareholders money, as the Apple stores profited on each book sold, and they sold quite a few.
Now, it's not horrible and evil, so I'll agree with you there. It's merely massively stupid, and the press that this move has gotten will improve the book sales.
For some reason, I get the distinct impression that she just might be one of those Russian mail-order brides. She just looks so... Slavic.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
"Fact: The biography was unauthorized, which is legal, but not really that morally okay, especially when the biography is about someone who's still alive."
Curious logic there... so a biography has to be authorised, huh? Like, say, a newspaper story about someone has to be authorised? Or an encyclopedia entry? Do you realise that you'll just end up with self-serving crap if you do that, don't you?
How about this for a correction:
Fact: Jobs is a public figure, and his decisions affect large numbers of people. He is also charismatic and famous. An unauthorised biography of Jobs is therefore is a fair and reasonable thing, provided the content of the biography is obtained legally and without deception.
I'm thinking that your Apple co-workers don't know you post under this name. ... but that's the same thing I've seen and heard from the media over the last 25 years.
You're off a little on both the name and the rank. That's actually Major Redundancy.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
First of all, we probably never would have heard anything about this book, especially the negative parts, if Apple had kept quiet and kept it on the shelves. How powerful is apple? Will this slap on the wrist be enough to make other publishing companies think twice before they insult Steve Jobs or the company? What about other forms of media? So they've sued thinksecret, a devoted fan site, why, because they're not real "journalists?" In America the freedom of the press protects anyone that decides to publish a pamphlet or newsletter, shouldn't a blog count? Of course there are limits to first amendment rights. Namely, libel is illegal, so is endangering the public (classic example: shouting "fire" in a public theater) and matters of national security are typically off limits (remember Geraldo was sent packing when he revealed troop locations on fox). Typically, "public figures" can be subjected to more scrutiny than an average citizen. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that everyone has a reasonable expectation of privacy, in your own home for example. Steve Jobs business practices don't necessarily strike me as a "private" matter though, especially since he is the CEO of a publicly traded company. In fact, to me, it seems very relevant. I know I'm rambling. But what I'm getting at here is that Apple has sort of been a dirty media player lately, and in my opinion, doing damage to the free press. They sued think secret, i recently read about a minor scandal in which a television reporter apparently accepted money to give apple positive reviews on TV (lots of loopholes, not necessarily illegal but probably a little unethical), and now this. That's three of the major medias... And with dominance in the portable music player market Apple may decide to use its muscle to control that medium in similar ways.
...is another man's "somewhat negative" I guess...
Because they *never* stiffed apple on developing processors!
No, they don't, unless RISC86 is POWER, which I have no reason to believe it is (AMD says the RISC86 instructions were "specifically designed with direct support for the x86 architecture while obeying RISC performance principles"), and they still use that scheme in their current processors. Seee the Nx568 product brief.
"Steve Jobs is a dick." Yeah, we already knew that. Why did the childish reaction surprise Wiley?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
For one thing, there is a major point you didn't mention in your poor sob story of oh so bullied Microsoft/Windows and how many user rate OSX good: The amount of Windows users here on Slashdot that regularly complain about Microsoft/Windows bashing.
.Net are often heavily supported as being good to code in by a decent amount of posters, for example.
And they do this even though articles on C# and
People will ask about them, then go to Barnes And Noble on the other side of the mall to buy one.
And when people ask, Apple can in general:-
- Be honest, and at best say they don't sell Wiley books and don't explain why
- Be less honest, and say that they withdrew Wiley books because (e.g.) they weren't up to Apple's standards.
- Lie outright, and say that Wiley went bankrupt because their books are rubbish, and would the customer like to buy one of the fine selection on the shelves.
In the first case, Apple lose. In the second case, if it happens more than a couple of times, Wiley can probably sue on the basis of defamation or something (IANAAmericanL). In the third case, Wiley would probably find it trivial to prove and win a case; the only question would be whether they gained more than they lost by pissing off Apple.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
So do you really work for Apple, or are you just an elaborate troll?
... I hear the Bible is quite a big seller :)
Jobs or anyone like him isn't the type of chap you want to hang around the pub with. To reach this level you have to be dedicated, intense, focused, and somewhat single minded. This leads to tons of ego and an abrasive if not abusive character. This not just applies to business but government and academics as well. One also accumulates a lot of enemies on the way to the top.
I find it hillarious and sad at the same time that the nation most proud of their "freedoms" has no fucking clue what those freedom mean. I've seen "freedom of press", "freedom of speech" or "democracy" used for every possible bullshit (e.g., as some "right" to troll a site or cheat in an online game) _except_ the cases they actually cover.
Here's some free clue: "Freedom of Speech" and "Freedom of Press":
1. Are _only_ applicable to your dealing with the _government_. Not with private persons, not with corporations, not with anyone else.
I.e., pay attention, lemming: it means that the government can't ban you from saying that Kerry was a better candidate than Bush, or viceversa. It doesn't however mean that Bush, as a private citizen, can't sue your pants off if you publish libel about him. E.g., if you were to start writing that Bush rapes small babies, he could very well sue your pants off, and "freedom of speech" would have nothing to do with it.
2. It never said that anyone has to print, broadcast or help sell your bullshit. If anyone, _including_ the government, doesn't want to publish your speech, sell your book, or pay for public access to your blog, they _are_ entirely within their legal righst.
E.g., "freedom of press" does _not_ mean you can go to NYT and have them publish whatever you want published in their newspaper. As they say, "freedom of press" only applies to whoever owns the press.
E.g., if Apple doesn't want to sell another company's books, "free press" and "democracy" have exactly _nothing_ to do with it.
E.g., if an ISP (even a state owned one) decided to unilaterally block all porn sites, or even all opposition sites, they _are_ within their legal rights to do so. Bad PR move? Yes. Violating your sacred "freedom of speech" or "democracy"? Nope.
3. Additionally "democracy" _only_ means you get to vote for your government. Period. Nothing more. It doesn't mean you get a vote in what books Apple should sell. It does _not_ mean you should get a vote even in what your CEO or CIO decides.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
AFAIK, Apple (and also Steve Jobs) is the biggest IP terrorist there is. They just don't want anyone else earning anything through something that even remotely relates to them or don't want anyone to have it for free. So when Wiley, a big computer related books publisher, publishes a book about Jobs, Apple see a few dollars going to someone else and they want it for themselves instead so they ban *all* books of that publisher from their stores. It surprises me how noone else gets this point. What doesn't surprise me, though, is the fact that Apple zealots are now going to mod me down as troll.
Thanks mister "Insightful!" Your comments probably just got Slashdot banned from all of Apple's computer networks.
Nope, Wiley is owned by a Wiley family member and a whole bunch of stock holders.
Wiley owns the Dummies books, Frommers travel guides, Cliffsnotes, Webster's Dictionary, and a bunch of other things so I doubt this will make much of a difference.
Technical book publishers and computer/software makers have a symbiotic relationship. More books about a particular computer/software increases sales of that computer, more sales of a particular computer sells more books about that computer. Apple needs book publishers to publish Apple computer/software reference books more than publishers need Apple to sell it's books in Apple stores.
Wiley is a top tier technical book publisher that publishes respected reference books and text books. For Apple products, Wiley publishes everything from the popular "Dummies" series to the standard "The Mac OS"X" Tiger Book" to the geeky "Bible" series. I believe that the presence of these books about how to use Apple computers/software enhances the prestige of Apple computers and increases the ability of people to use Apple computers; both of which result in increased Apple sales.
Dropping Wiley technical books from Apple stores because Wiley wrote an unauthorized biography about Jobs is one of the most arrogant things that I have ever heard.
There are probably more definitions for this but at least when I think of the meaning of "charisma", I think "personal magnetisim or charm".
;-)
I think that would be bit like saying the Emperor wanted Darth Vadar because of his charisma
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Lord knows when I need a book, the first place I go is The Apple Store...
Skippy
take your pick
j ob s
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=steve+
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
> Flames! Trolls! Unspported facts! That's what
> Slashdot is about, not mature responses like
> conceding points; the system isn't set up to
> handle that!
You're just saying that because you believe that VI is better than Emacs, GNU/Gentoo/Hurd is better than Fedora and Debian combined, GNUstep is better than KDE, X-window sucks an needs to be replaced by DirectX/framebuffer, and Mono is better than Java.
It's a proven fact, backed by a ton of solid anecdotal evidence and vague references to the Bible and Scientology that you're wrong.
...well... he's acting like a God-damned Republican!
The key word here is "largely". Anything short of "Messiah" is unacceptable. It's a well known fact that the standard Apple employee contact requires new hires to worship Steve and agree to "put no other gods before me".
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
First rule of Steve Jobs Fight Club .... No one writes a dummies book about Steve Jobs Fight Club.
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
Seems Jobs managed to pull that one too.
I guess you need to have a story about the Bush administration doing stuff like this before the modders all flock and give 5 insightful ratings to posts like:
"yeah screw them man!"
If Apple had any sense they would of ignored it, now it will sell like mad because Apple dissed it.
I dunno. This sounds like something Jobs would do, with his ego. However, there's something about this that sorta rings false to me.
Jobs is a master showman and very media savvy. He HAS to know that his actions are going to cause a spike of interest in this book. The two companies have a long standing relationship.
My money is on this being a media stunt - all planned to increase sales of the book. I could be wrong, and we'll probably never know one way or another, but if Steve had done this because he was pissed off, I somehow think it would have been done quietly without press coverage so as to avoid giving Wiley the benefit of the press exposure.
Since when did the author of those ".. For Dummies" books become a biographer? Hahahaha.. right. Guess he must have read "Biography writing for Dummies" and thought he'd give it a go.
Today Steven Jobs has filed a temporary restraining order against his mother. The TRO claims that Jobs' mother kept talking about her son to friends and family, showed embarrassing pictures of him as a kid, and praised him for his success.
A spokesperson for Apple was quoted as saying, "Jobs' mom was always prone to talk about how proud she is of her son, but when she showed the friends in her knitting circle a picture of Steve when he was two years old using the toilet for the first time, her actions went from merely annoying to criminal."
This current action from Jobs has affected others in his family too. His wife of 14 years, Laurene Powell, has had her voice box surgically removed to avoid any chance of her offending her husband. Furthermore, his two children have been killed for talking about their dad in class.
More news on this story as it develops.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If that is indeed the case, how come Apple didn't ban all the Apple and Mac related "Dummies" books from their stores before this? The simple fact is that Jobs is an egomaniacal control freak and the biography pissed him off. Your assertion is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Supply some evidence or take off the tinfoil hat. And of course, you were careful enough to inoculate yourself against challenges by stating that people who disagree with you are "Apple zealots". FYI, not all Mac users are enamored of Jobs. I'm a diehard Mac user, and I love Apple's products, but that doesn't mean that I love Apple, or blindly approve of Apple's actions. They are a public corporation after all, not a charitable organization, and they should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other public company. I admire and respect Jobs' vision and leadership, but I wouldn't piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire. I honestly have never liked the guy.
Sounds like Steve Jobs is trying to win the Spoiled Brat award for 2005... He's always taking away his trucks from the sandbox and leaving when people don't play his way.
to sound like another certain software company that everyone accuses of abusing their monopoly power..
And Apple IS a monopoly (given that x86-based PCs are considered to be their own market, according to Judge Jackson.. we can assume PPC-based PCs would also..)
They don't need to sell the Steve Jobs biography if they don't want to.. but to completely ban the publisher?
Add this tot he fact that Apple doesn't consider bloggers to be a part of the legitimate press.. and we get a pretty bad impression of them, wrt free speech..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Shaking it's head in agreement with the same dopey blank stare as any other bobblehead.
One thing I love about these Slashdot bits on Jobs' bratty behavior are the legions of Apple/Jobs yes men that come out of the woodwork like cockroaches in an East Village walkup.
Just face facts; a publisher published a book that made Steve out to be petulant and capricious. His actions relative to the book merely demonstrate he's that and venegeful, too.
All in all it reminds me of the unrepentant socialists I know who like to downplay Stalin. "Perhaps he went to far, but you have to remember that he kept the nation together in spite of Nazi aggression." A little denial goes a long way...
Apple is under no obligation whatsover, implied or otherwise, to carry any publisher's books.....Think what you want, but businesses shouldn't be forced to support other businesses they disagree with.
Both I, Adam Smith and the Apple shareholders strongly disagree. Apple's in business to make money for the shareholders. It's not in business to defend Mr. Jobs personality or social standing. If Wiley books sell well at their stores and provide Apple with decent profits, they should be sold, and particularly so if they lead to sales of other core products ("Gee, making movies is easy in this book. I'll take a new Mac.")
Good ole Apple, the paragon of intellectual freedom, creativity, openness. They have mastered the style but their substance is limits, conformity, and closed systems.
There has been a new trend in the past 10 years or so of the celebrity CEO.
Jobs
Gates
Michael Dell
Jack Welch - when he was there
Page and Brin
These people are the company.
They may not own it on paper, however without these charismatic people there is no company, or rather there is just a shell of a company.
This is part of a new shift in the economy that was primed by computers and automation. Busines is becoming less and less capital intensive so the purpose of the stock market is waning.
From 1840 - 1980's, business was based on capital. You had to have a lot of money to create the production capacity. The capital markets were need ed because it required $50 million to build a factory.
So the old way required floating paper as a means of funding the business.
Now, the stock market is being used as a means of making businesses Rich.
An example is Google.
Google was already profitable before they went public. Google could have easily grown by reinvesting their profits.
That's a slow process that definitely VC firms do not like. So they force companies to go public so the VC firm can recoop their investment.
However, this whole scheme is a house of cards.
Think about it...
What happens when Bill Gates and Balmer decide to retire?
What happens to Apple when Jobs retires?
You heard it here first.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
Anyone notice on Amazon that they suggest reading books on finding jobs if you're interested in reading about Steve Jobs? I understand why this happened but it's still pretty funny..
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Remove the slash at the end of the URL, and it'll work.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Call 1 800 275 2273
Select nothing. Wait until the voice prompts, and then select 0 or say operator.
Tell the operator you want to leave feedback. If you want, you can even give them your name and phone number, which creates a ticket that the PR people are forced to deal with.
simple yet effective, especially if lots of people do it.
San Francisco Photographers
The popular view is to portray Bill Gates as an arrogant, greedy bastard. I've always throught Steve Jobs won that title hands down.
I've certainly heard far more employee horror stories coming out of Apple than out of MS, but that's purely anecdotal.
Hes looked like a middle age slob now and then, between poor grooming and a weight issue. Then he comes back another time looking dapper.
I noticed this in the political biographies last year. Either the cover picture was smiling and confident or evil and dishevled.
I'd say whether or not its pointless depends on your morals.
For instance, I don't do business with Union Carbide or their customers because of how they treated the incident in Bhopal. They may not miss the little bit of money that didn't go their way but, I know that I'm giving them nothing.
I will buy Chinese goods. This is because the Americans being put out of work are the same ones who voted for Bush, and Bush supports big Chinese imports. So, I'm supporting the political position of those factory workers.
There are many people who will not buy fuel from Exon over the oil spill in Alaska. Does Exon miss their money, maybe not. Can those people sleep better at night? Absolutely.
Of course, if you don't give a **** then it doesn't matter. The issue is not about whether you $5 makes a change, its about where *you* chose to put that $5. Its about what you think is important. If you chose not to shop with a jerk, maybe he doesn't care. You'll know that *you* chose to do business with someone else.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
And Jobs is only paid one dollar a year for his work at Apple according to my annual report as a shareholder.
Think I'll go out and buy that Bioniformatics, Biocomputing and Perl book from Wiley now.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I guess since Mr. Gates is dressed as a Borg, /. can Dress Mr. Jobs as an SA brownshirt.
There is no reset button in life; however, there are bonus levels.
And what point would that be, exactly? Your inane theory that Apple "don't want anyone else earning anything through something that even remotely relates to them or don't want anyone to have it for free", and they "see a few dollars going to someone else and they want it for themselves instead so they ban *all* books of that publisher from their stores"? I countered your point with my first statement: if your theory is true, why didn't Apple ban all Mac-related volumes published by Wiley and others before this? The simple explanation is that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac who was angered by the publication of an unauthorized biography and responded in a disproportionate and infantile manner.
I suggest that you post facts instead of crackpot theories, but this being Slashdot, what are the odds?
Closer to ten cents, depending on how much ice and how stingy they are with the syrup dilution ratio control. Usually these drinks are about half ice (cost ~$0.01/cup in icemaker operation capital costs). Standard coke 5:1 syrup runs about $25ish for a 5 Gallon box (marginally cheaper for corporate bulk than non-chain restaurant purchase, made up for by my last purchase being four years of inflation ago), producing 3840 floz of soda, or 320 servings of 12floz to finish filling the cups, for a cost of about $0.08 per. Cups run about $0.02 each in 24 oz size. Total cost $0.11.
Still a heck of a markup for a $1.00 soda. "The perfect product costs a dime, sells for a dollar, and is both legal and addicting." Pretty durn close.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
As an artist, I tend to state my opinion rather matter of factly and then look for opposition to that opinion to instigate a discussion of, in this case, aesthetics and the 'why' behind them. Quite simply, I'm an inqusitive person and merely wanted a well-thought out answer to my 'why.'
I mean no fierce emotion or attack from my end. Just an explanation as to my thought process.
Have a nice day.
dennis
I have to agree. The impression I get about Steve Jobs from all the various Steve stories I've heard is that while he's usually a jerk, he's also usually right. He may not have had the technical genius of Woz, but he makes up for it in marketing genius.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Fact corrections. Requests for revisions on parts they feel are substantially inacurate. Possibly even a request for a change in title-- I can see how "iCon" would offend Steve, even while the ambiguity of the title fits the ambiguity of his personal character. A request to stop the publication entirely is not only suprising, it's utterly ludicrous, unless Apple thinks there are grounds for a major libel suit against the publisher. Publishers are in the business to publish, and they usually pay advances to authors that once they recieve a manuscript, they can't get back except from the royalties on publication.
An act like this is the gesture of a (petty) tyrant, and as an Apple user makes me nervous about the Apple platform. Would Jobs respond as vindictively (to the limits of his ability) against a software publisher who offended him? Or perhaps against a music label?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Ouch! Please don't remind me of that aweful tv series! (anything past the original star trek is just "near beer" imo).
If you can't treat people with respect, you don't deserve it yourself. And you certainly don't deserve the kind of following Apple has.
I don't agree with the monopolistic practices of the Evil Empire, but everything I'm hearing says that Jobs would do the exact same thing if he had the chance. So why support him? The de-facto standard of the Windows OS means that software is available and cheap. If I want to "rebel", I'll go to Linux.
I've worked for arrogant and productive leaders, and it was interesting for a bit, but in the end it was de-motivating to almost everyone else who worked with them.
As Paul Atreides refused to do, these leaders eliminate the 2nd-best people in their organizations by refusing to treat them with respect. Eventually the company built around an individual will fall to an organization of people that can work effectively together.
VFX is more influential than you think.
This is bad news for Apple, its customers
Nonsense. So customers can't buy these books from Apple's online or retail stores - BFD. There are a lot of books Apple does not carry; did you think they were a bookstore? You want a computer book, you can still buy one there from Oreilly or some other publisher. If you must have a Dummies book, you can buy it from B&N like the 90% of the population that does not live within driving distance of an Apple retail store.
This is _not_ a troll.
Oh yes it is.
If this were a MS story of Bill Gates
Blah blah blah retarded shitcanned "if Microsoft was doing this" which gets brought up EVERY SINGLE TIME blah blah blah.
It is a very sincere post questioning the readers of slashdot
By "sincere" you mean "kneejerk responce to a number of posts you didn't even bother to read". Try doing that and then drinking a nice, warm cup of STFU, as most of the posts fall either fall into "Jobs is an asshole" category, or at best "calling someone a Con isn't very flattering."
Most of the people posting on Slashdot these days are young, easily impressionable males, that have little sense or understanding of two sides of a discussion and generally are very one-eyed about subjects with little or no flexibilty to gauge information as valid or relevant.
Oh, don't worry, we have our share of arrogant, stuck up dicks as well. Thanks for making our quota for the day.
Just out of my own curiosity ... are you also one of those guys who complains that iTunes organizes your music for you? I ask because those guys are impossible for me to understand.
I have a friend that has around 300 gigabytes of MP3s and he insists on using CollectorzPro to keep them organized because it has much more flexible directory, tagging, and naming options than iTunes.
His biggest problem with iTunes is the time it takes to re-index his collection when he shuffles his directories around. Otherwise it's the fastest way for him to find a song.
Now, with a reasonable script, one probably could cut that time down significantly by re-using the ID3 tag information in the iTunes Catalog XML file. But a very nice feature enhancement would be for iTunes to do this on its own when re-indexing...
-Stu
Personally I'm not as anal about this but, a couple of examples:
- creating genre directories as your root folders in your music collection
- creating A-G, H-P, Q-Z sub directories because you have too many artists to have as a flat list
- naming the MP3's as "01 [Artist] Album - Song Title.mp3"
This is the kind of stuff he wants....
Anyway. If you just use iTunes to play & burn, it doesn't make sense. If you use external apps and need to use the filesystem, it does. Winamp launches faster when he wants to play specific tracks, for example.
-Stu