Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: Jobs v. Wiley

Certainly within Apple's rights to determine who they will and won't do business with, and how they make that decision is up to them as well. Folks need to take a step back and remember the stores DO belong to Apple. If you want to buy Wiley books, just go somewhere else. Here's the thing, the same stubborn streak that makes Jobs act this way is what has made him buck the Wintel stream and build the computers we all love. If he was a compromiser, we would never have had the Mac to begin with.

iCon as in i-con as in con man, definitely is the inteneded meaning (along with icon) and I can see why Jobs is pissed off. I would say Jobs is a lot of things but I don't see any signs of him being a con man. Even if they do have nice things to say about him inside, as the author has stated, it is a little hard to get past the cover. Wiley is getting just what they wanted though, controversy, which almost always spurs sales, so it was probably a risk they wanted to take but they should not be surprised by Jobs' reaction.

Hey, I like Andy and all, but he's offered public support for Willey (sorry for the previous misspelling), and I personally find what Willey's doing offensive. I'm not calling for a public boycott or anything, just making a personal decision.

As for David, my bad - I thought some of his books were published by Willey. Basically, it's a Willey thing, not an Ihnatko or Pogue thing.

As for it being a different division - doesn't wash. You could easily say that this decision was made by the Apple Stores and so why should that reflect badly on Apple as a whole. Corporate is as corporate does.

Sorry about not buying your book - if you put a PDF online I'll buy it from you directly.

Wow. What a nexus of weirdness. I mean, Anna, you don't like Bill Gates, as in personally. Do you know him, personally? Or you don't like his business practices? There's a difference; after all, he does donate enormous sums to charity, too. Or, Dogzilla, you're going to boycott books written by people who had zilch to do with writing a book that you haven't read but have a sneaking feeling might have a few negative things to say about the billionaire CEO of a company you like? But to get to Laurie's point, this *is* the same kind of behavior that ended up getting Steve-O bumped from Apple back in the 80's. And for C.K. Sample, yes, it's quite easy to side with Apple on file-sharing and product leaks and still see Wiley as a wronged party. It's called "thinking."

I don't figure it's quite fair to comment without hearing both sides! How do we know it' has anything to do with this book? Has it been confirmed? Besides no one would question a book advocating satanism be displayed by a religious book store.

Dogzilla wrote "just for that, I'm not buying anymore of David Pogue or Andy Ihnatko's books published by Wiley." Dogzilla, you should know that Andy had nothing to do with the Jobs book, its title, or anything else having to do with it: that book was prepared and marketed by an entirely different group at Wiley (which is a big publisher with many different imprints). So, why are you punishing Andy? Or me, for that matter: I just finished co-writing an Ihnatko series book about Xcode 2, which comes out this month, and I can assure you that I had nothing to do with the Jobs biography either! I first heard about it two days ago. Oh, and, as for David Pogue's books, I believe the Pogue Press books are published by O'Reilly, not Wiley (the names rhyme, but that's their sole connection).

I personally don't like what Apple is doing, either, regarding pulling out the titles from Wylie. I think it's a tad childish and immature. In a sense they're just practicing their right to not associate with companies they dislike or disagree with. Much like I refuse to buy Microsoft products because I dislike Bill Gates, even though the Office for Mac products are really not too bad. I just wish Apple will remember that it's actions are more far-reaching than an ordinary individual's. It's a big, influential company that can't act in knee-jerk like fashion like this. In a way, it is very irresponsible for the company to do what it did, and this action is not good for the company's image. I wish they would stop conflating what's good for Steve Jobs with what's good for the company.

Forgot to add - given that many of Apple's product names begin with a lowercase "i" (iPod, iMac, iSight) you can easily understand why many people would read that title as implying "Con artist". I just did a quick check here at the office and all four people I asked read it that way when I showed them a pic of the book cover.

Welp, when I originally read about this, it struck me as strange that Apple would be so reactionary. There have been plenty of articles and books published depicting Jobs as an absolute asshole with no comment from Apple, and I couldn't understand what was different about this one. Jobs generally doesn't care about this stuff so much. So it seemed to me that Apple was overreacting on this. Having seen the front cover, I can understand. I thought the title was "Icon: Steve Jobs..", but the graphic treatment on the front cover implies that Jobs is a con artist. If the book was about me and had that title, I'd be pretty pissed. I wonder how much of the "negotiations" were about a simple redesign of the front cover that Wiley refused to do because they realized a) that specific implication would guarantee controversy and free publicity and b) sales with those who knee-jerk hate Apple. After learning more, this actually seems like a pretty sleazy move by Wiley. Worst part is, they can probably sneak this sleaze move under the radar with it while trumpeting free speech. Lame and weak - just for that, I'm not buying anymore of David Pogue or Andy Ihnatko's books published by Wiley.

Laurie, I just have to point out that this behaviour that you side against in this case is the same general knee jerk response behind the current Apple lawsuits you support, only instead of Trade Secrets, this case covers Steve Secrets. Ooooooooh!