Cease & Desist: AppleInsider’s OS X Leopard Preview Pulled Offline
With only two weeks to go before the release of OS X Leopard, the fifth major revision of Apple’s (AAPL) flagship Macintosh operating system, AppleInsider today published the sixth entry in its comprehensive Road to Leopard series — and at Apple’s insistence pulled two earlier posts offline.
Written by Prince McLean, the nom de plume of a systems programmer who clearly knows his stuff, the series not only describes with text and screen shots the key innovations coming in Leopard, but it takes pains to place them in the history of graphical user interfaces as they evolved from Xerox Parc, through Lisa and the first Macs, Systems 8 and 9, Next and the previous versions of OS X. The Commodore Amiga even makes a cameo appearance.
The series is so good that Apple’s legal staff has stepped in, demanding through cease-and-desist orders that parts of the first two entries be removed. AppleInsider has taken them temporarily offline while they are being redacted.
[UPDATE: The first two posts are back up in heavily redacted form.]
If you’re interested in what’s in store for you when Leopard finally arrives, you might want to archive the other posts before key sections disappear. Here are the links:
- Apple shares could be in for a rough ride
- Reports: Apple is No. 3 PC maker in U.S., No. 6 worldwide
- iPhone profits: Apple cleared estimated $330 million in three days
- iPhone 3G: Sold out in 21 states (updated)
- Apple: 1 million iPhone 3Gs sold
- Piper Jaffray analyzes first weekend iPhone sales
- Bottom line: iPhone sales projections roll in [update]
- “iPocalypse” now: The perils of event marketing
- Video: Applauded — and roughed up — in the iPhone 3G line
- Live! From the Fifth Ave. iPhone line
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
Thanks for providing links to the AppleInsider analysis of Leopard. It’s an enticing preview, and I enjoyed McLean’s evolutionary screenshots showing Newton, Mac OS 9, Windows and other influences and offshoots. Too bad that Apple has taken such a negative position. This is good publicity for Leopard and won’t detract from sales or general interest. And it’s useful information for those of us getting ready to make the leap to Leopard.