Unauthorized Steve Jobs biography

On 4/29/05 10:19, "Christopher Smith" <xxman.org> wrote:

> http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/TechNews/BizTech/2005/04/27/1015635.html
>
> I gotta say, this seems even more silly than attempts to take out sites
> publishing information on new Mac models.

Apple is hardly breaking new ground here. IBM did the same thing in the late
90s when (IIRC) Fortune had a very unflattering article on Gerstner. They
pulled all their ads from the magazine for quite a while.

As well, it's a crapshoot as to who this affects. While I do have a new book
out by Wiley's WROX division, (Beginning Shell Scripting), Apple's "Wiley
Ban" is probably not going to affect me much. It's not like Shell Scripting
books were a big part of the (very) limited book space in Apple Stores.

Now, my friend and sometimes partner, Sam Crutsinger would have a completely
different comment, since he has a book on iPhoto out that IS fodder for
Apple's Stores.

It's hardly earth shattering, and it's hardly exclusive to Apple.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

Adam wrote:

>If you ran a store, and one of your local suppliers started
>bad-mouthing you to the local newspaper, would you keep selling
>their products, especially assuming you won't be hurt at all
>financially by the decision to drop them?

That analogy is not quite right, I think. It fails to include Apple's
attempts to stop the publication of the book and treats "Old Man
Wiley" as a whole, which is probably not accurate for a large
publishing company.

Try this:

If you ran a store, and the brother of one of your local suppliers
outbid you for an offer on a new retail space, and you called and
complained to the brother and asked him to drop out of the bidding so
that you could have the space, but he refused, would you keep selling
the supplier's products?

I suppose you don't have to, but when the fact that you retaliated
against the guy's family gets reported in the local paper, you've got
nobody to blame but yourself for the bad press that makes you out to
be more than a little petty.

-jason
--
Jason Snell: jsnellintertext.com - AIM/iChat: mw jsnell
www.teevee.org - sports.intertext.com

I've blogged elsewhere about this book in terms of the Apple boycott or "spurning" of Wiley's titles in Apple's stores. Apple is essentially driving the sales of Mr. Young's book. It doesn't make sense to me at all--not only as the spouse of a Wiley author, with an about-to-be-released book about Xcode 2, but as a consumer. I would think it would make more sense for Apple to ostensibly ignore the book, especially if it's sleazy, and concentrate on Tiger, the two year anniversary of the iTunes store, and WWDC.

But I really did want to another of The Spouse's books on Apple's shelves, and I think it would have been helpful to Apple and to new Xcode 2 users.

I think this snippet from Cringely's column sounds about right.

Regards

Paul
---------------------------------------------------

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050428.html

....

Nonsense.

I have written things about Steve Jobs that are far worse than anything
in this book, which is in many ways just a refresh of an earlier Jobs
biography by Young. Steve hasn't black-listed me. In fact he rather
likes his bad-boy image and loves to hear the nasty things that people
have said about him.

So what is this all about? As always, I have a theory.

I think this episode with Wiley and Apple's earlier legal attacks on
people who it accused of leaking product information are part of a
campaign to look tough to movie studios and record companies. As I've
surmised before, Apple is trying to put together a high definition movie
download service that requires content from all the major movie studios.
If Steve looks soft on IP theft or unwilling to flex his corporate legal
muscles, the studios may thing he won't adequately protect their
corporate jewels.

And that's all it is. Steve couldn't care less about this book.

Nor is Wiley unhappy. Here's word from a breathless reader inside the
Wiley machine: "The news broke everywhere from the NY Times to Forbes.
And the book shot up to #144 on Amazon, which is unheard of. Everyone is
running around like crazy."

Jason Snell wrote (using an analogy):

but when the fact that you retaliated against the guy's family gets reported in the local paper, you've got nobody to blame but yourself for the bad pres that makes you out to be more than a little petty.

Trust me, this "boycott" isn't going to make a drop of difference to Wiley. It's driving the sales of Young's book up; it's free publicity.

It's going to hurt, possibly, innocent Mac loving Wiley authors, like The Spouse, who's buying a new Mac this weekend with the advance he's going to get for his next Mac Wiley book. And, biased and all as I possibly am (I swear I'm not) it's going to hurt new Mac developers who could really benefit from reading a pretty good books about Xcode 2.

John C. Welch wrote:

>On 4/29/05 10:19, "Christopher Smith" <xxman.org> wrote:
>Apple is hardly breaking new ground here. IBM did the same thing in the late
>90s when (IIRC) Fortune had a very unflattering article on Gerstner. They
>pulled all their ads from the magazine for quite a while.

Oh, I agree they aren't breaking new ground. This is exactly the kind of
behavior we've all come to expect from the likes of IBM, which is
exactly why Apple looks that much more foolish and petty for doing this.

>Now, my friend and sometimes partner, Sam Crutsinger would have a completely
>different comment, since he has a book on iPhoto out that IS fodder for
>Apple's Stores.

I think that's part of the stupidity of the thing. If anything it helps
the author of book in question, because the ban does more to promote the
book (certainly I hadn't heard of it) than anything the publisher has
done. I doubt it'll hurt the publisher as the lack of Apple Store sales
will undoubtedly be compensated for by increased sales of the
"biography". The only people who it might hurt are other authors who
write Mac books through this publisher and Mac users (particularly first
time users) who won't find potentially helpful books (assuming they are
helpful books) when they look for them in the store.

So, what we're left with is a childish and petty response that rewards
the people that Jobs would like to punish and unfortunately the only
possible negative effect will be upon Apple customers and those who are
trying to make a living helping those customers.

--Chris

>Adam wrote:
>
>>If you ran a store, and one of your local suppliers started
>>bad-mouthing you to the local newspaper, would you keep selling
>>their products, especially assuming you won't be hurt at all
>>financially by the decision to drop them?
>
>That analogy is not quite right, I think. It fails to include Apple's
>attempts to stop the publication of the book and treats "Old Man
>Wiley" as a whole, which is probably not accurate for a large
>publishing company.

Yeah, I can't really comment on the attempt to stop publication,
since I don't know what's in it, nor do I know (or perhaps is it
knowable) how Jobs feels about what's in there.

But I think at the corporate level, companies really do deal with
each other as individual entities. The fact that the book probably
came from a different division at Wiley from the books being pulled
from Apple Stores seems irrelevant to the situation.

Clearly, Apple had to know the negative press would ensure strong
sales of the biography. They're not dumb. So that then raises the
question of why let it become a big issue. Perhaps Cringely is right,
and the goal is to look tough for the movie studios.

cheers... -Adam

--
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    Watch for our Tiger-specific ebooks, slated for release 29-Apr-05!
_____________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst: I publish TidBITS, write books, and make sure the
acetidbits.com right people know each other in the Mac industry.
Me: http://www.tidbits.com/adam/ TidBITS: http://www.tidbits.com/

On Friday, April 29, 2005, at 03:13 PM, Christopher Smith wrote:

> John C. Welch wrote:
>
>> On 4/29/05 10:19, "Christopher Smith" <xxman.org> wrote:
>> Apple is hardly breaking new ground here. IBM did the same thing in
>> the late 90s when (IIRC) Fortune had a very unflattering article on Gerstner.
>> They pulled all their ads from the magazine for quite a while.
>
> Oh, I agree they aren't breaking new ground. This is exactly the kind
> of behavior we've all come to expect from the likes of IBM, which is
> exactly why Apple looks that much more foolish and petty for doing
> this.

Although I agree, not all negative publicity is bad publicity. I must
concede that the timing is exquisite. He just happens to get
exceptionally riled up enough to pull a stunt that's guaranteed to
generate additional national and local news coverage a few days before
Tiger is released?

Although the publicity surrounding this particular incident isn't going
be entirely positive, and it doesn't help reposition Apple as a
defender of free speech in the wake of the recent lawsuits, it's better
than having someone claiming to find a human fingertip with nail polish
on it in Mac. It sort of positions Mr. Jobs as a detail and quality
obsessed - a temperamental genius.

Books probably aren't the biggest sellers at Apple Stores, and I would
guess the store managers would probably have yanked a few shelves of
books and software to increase the display frontage for Tiger anyway.

>> Now, my friend and sometimes partner, Sam Crutsinger would have a
>> completely different comment, since he has a book on iPhoto out that IS fodder
>> for Apple's Stores.
>
> I think that's part of the stupidity of the thing. If anything it helps
> the author of book in question, because the ban does more to promote
> the book (certainly I hadn't heard of it) than anything the publisher has
> done.

What the author and publisher lose in display space in Apple stores,
they will more than make up for at book retailers. It's probably the
best publicity that they could have gotten for the book, and they
didn't spend a dime to develop it.

It looks like a cleverly disguised win-win situation to me.

Marilyn

I forget, was the original Young biography the one that first
publicized Jobs' daughter and the associated paternity dispute? (I
*thought* I'd read of his displeasure at that in Cringely's
"Accidental Empires", but can't find it in my copy.)

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu