Let me just say at the outset that I don’t like Apple Computer. Not the products, the company. Basically, I think they’re dicks. Now, it’s their company, they run it well, they make lots of money for their shareholders, and they don’t break any laws. So if they want to act like dicks, they have every right. But I don’t have to like it. And I especially don’t like it when they try to position themselves as hip individualists while running their corporation with about the same subtlety that J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI.1
End of rant. That said, I’m a little unsure that Apple is really doing anything all that wrong by going after Gawker in the case of the missing iPhone. They are, it’s true, being dicks. Still, paying some guy $5,000 for an iPhone prototype that was “found on a barstool”? Seriously? Gawker just accepted that story and forked over the cash? I mean, this is pretty much the same story a guy told me once who offered me a Blu-Ray player out of the backseat of his car for twenty bucks. Perhaps a little skepticism is legitimately in order here?2
1Just to give equal time, as a longtime PC user I also hate Microsoft, Symantec, and Adobe. In fact, I sometimes wonder just which one I hate the most. So really, I guess I’m just a hater.
2Note that this is in no way meant as a comment on the legal aspects of the case. I believe Gawker is unquestionably a media outlet protected by California’s shield law. Exactly how that law applies in this case, however, I really don’t know.