The evils of Apple

Whether banning books, launching long-running lawsuits, or being investigated and sued for anti-competitive practices, Apple is seldom out of the headlines. Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs allegedly projects a reality distortion field able to convince almost anyone of anything, but lately it seems Apple's legendary PR machine is going rather wobbly. Here are some recent stories and some classics from the Apple files.

Banning rival iPhone applications: If you want to sell or even give away an iPhone application, you need to go through Apple's online store. When Apple banned Google's GoogleVoice internet telephony application, the result was an FCC inquiry, still ongoing. (Wall Street Journal) They also banned the Opera browser and the podcasting application Podcaster because they were too similar to Apple's browser Safari and Apple's iTunes media player. (Register)

Banning iPhone applications for no reason: As well as commercial considerations, they've been punishing app developers for the mildest of obscenity. They briefly stopped sales of Eucalyptus, which allows users to browse public-domain texts, because it lets you download and read the Kama Sutra. (Guardian) Equally bizarrely, they banned the Ninjawords dictionary for including swearwords. (Telegraph)

Anti-competitive deals with other companies: Apple and Google have until recently been close, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt sitting on Apple's board of directors. The two companies cemented their close relation with an agreement not to hire away staff from each other. This led to a US Justice Department probe. (Washington Post)

Failure to provide MMS in the USA: the only American network supporting the iPhone was unable to provide the MMS multimedia messaging service for months after the June 2009 launch of the iPhone 3GS. The 3rd generation iPhone was the first Apple phone to support the messaging standard, which has been widely available on other phones in Europe since around 2004. (Computer World)

Clamping down on cloners: they have spent a long time suing Psystar who produce Apple-compatible hardware far more cheaply than Apple do (in contrast, so many manufacturers produce systems compatible with IBM's PCs that IBM got out of the market years ago). Apple accuse Psystar of copyright breaches; Psystar have counter-sued claiming restraint of trade under anti-trust laws. (Register)

Keeping iTunes music tied to iPod/iPhone hardware: recent action against software allowing you to sync iTunes with a Palm Pre (Tech Crunch; The Apple Blog) is just the latest in a long line of limitations placed on what you can do with your music. (EFF; Ars Technica; Apple Insider)

Exploding phones: in common with other major producers like Sony and Dell, Apple products have occasionally caught fire, sometimes causing alleged significant damage. (Gizmodo; CNet)

No user-serviceable parts: unlike many manufacturers of consumer goods, Apple products almost never have user-replacable batteries. Rechargable batteries often lose some of their capacity and need to be replaced; with an Apple product you must take it to an Apple store and pay them for the privilege. (Register; CNet)

Suing blogs for publishing stories about upcoming products: They drove ThinkSecret out of business when it published rumours about a new Mac and wordprocessor (Wikipedia) sued over a post on the AppleInsider forum about a new Apple mouse (Wikipedia) and their lawyers had dealings with MacScoop. (Wikipedia) See also NY Times.

Censoring critics: Trying to stop publication of Jeffrey Young and William Simon's iCon: Steve Jobs - The Greatest Second Act in The History of Business published by John Wiley and Sons, they pulled all Wiley's books (including the Dummies series and other Mac-related titles) from the shelves of Apple stores. Four years later Apple are still not selling them. Apple also attempted to stop a profile of Jobs in the Sunday Times. (Register; Brand Republic)

Getting a journalist arrested: Apple's persecution of bloggers ratcheted up in April 2010, when the home of Jason Chen, an editor of Gizmodo, was raided by police. He had received an iPhone 4G prototype from a source who found it left behind in a bar, and Chen's home was raided by police with a warrant accusing him of handling stolen property. California's special computer crime division REACT, whose advisory board included Apple, were behind the raid and seized his computers (Times). A number of groups including EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) claimed the raid was in contravention of Californian laws protecting journalists. (BBC) Eventually the warrant was dropped and Chen's property returned (EFF).

Breaching copyright and antagonising Eminem: Apple used the Eminem song Lose Yourself in an advertisement without his permission; he sued and they settled out of court in 2005. He has also accused them of offering his songs to download on iTunes without permission, although at time of writing this is still to be decided in court. (The Guardian)

Driving contractors to suicide: In summer 2010 there was a press scandal about worker conditions in far-eastern plants run by FoxConn, one of Apple's suppliers; there had been 10 suicides in 5 months. However the plant also supplied Dell, Nokia, HP, and Nintendo, so working conditions were not unique to Apple. (Forbes)