I’ve long been fascinated by the shifting circles in the New York Times‘ “sector snapshots,” those charts in the Business Section that show the relative sizes of companies in a particular field — and which ones are leading, slipping, lagging or improving relative to the S&P 500.

On Wednesday, the Times ran the snapshot I’d been waiting for - the one that shows where Apple stands vis a vis its competitors in technology hardware & equipment.

The version that appeared in my morning paper showed HP (HPQ) and IBM (IBM) in the first, or leading, quadrant (up for the week and the year) and Apple (AAPL) in the third, or lagging, quadrant (down for the week and the year).

But the best thing about these sector snapshots is that they are available in interactive form on the Times‘ Web site, and by Wednesday afternoon, Apple had shifted from lagging to improving, thanks to the fact that Apple’s share price didn’t fall as steeply Wednesday as the S&P 500.

Check it out for yourself at nytimes.com here. You can track dozens of companies in nearly 30 sectors. Here’s how you do it:

1. Make sure the sector you’re interested in appears in the Category window in the upper left hand corner.
2. Click on the company you want to track in the right hand column to highlight the circle that represents its market capitalization.
3. Move the Time Period slider to see that company shift — like a planet against the fixed stars — on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis.

But if it’s Apple you are tracking, you have to move fast. This stock is as changeable as a baby’s bottom, and could be anywhere by the end of the day.

IBM only had to pay a $350 filing fee to sue Mark Papermaster, the 25-year IBM (IBM) veteran hired by Steve Jobs last month to run Apple’s (AAPL) iPod and iPhone division.

It’s going to cost the company a lot more to pursue the case.

Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas granted Big Blue the preliminary injunction it sought — based on a noncompetition clause signed in 2006 — and ordered Papermaster to stop working for Apple immediately. See The Papermaster chronicles.

On Tuesday, the judge ordered IBM to put up a bond to cover any costs or damages Papermaster might suffer should it turn out that the injunction should not have been issued. Noting that district courts are granted “wide discretion” in determining how big a bond to require, Karas writes:

“Here, based on a careful reading of the letters sent by the Parties to the Court, which are being filed under seal, the Court finds that a bond in the amount of $3,000,000 is appropriate to guarantee payment of the costs and damages that Defendant may incur…”

On Wednesday, Papermaster’s lawyers filed their answer to IBM’s suit and filed counterclaims of their own. They admitted only those facts that were indisputable and denied pretty much everything else — including the fact that Papermaster worked for IBM.

IBM and Apple aren’t competitors, they claim, and even if they were, Papermaster has been hired to do work that has nothing to do with IBM. And even if it did, IBM’s noncompetition agreement is unreasonably broad, Papermaster’s lawyers assert. What’s more, they argue, it doesn’t apply in Texas (where Papermaster worked for 17 years) or California (where Apple is based) — neither of which honor such agreements.

A status conference is set for Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, White Plains.

Below the fold: links to the key court documents.

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  Continue Reading: “IBM must put up $3 million in Papermaster case”

Mark Papermaster must know how Barack Obama, John McCain and, for that matter, Sarah Palin feel when they get shafted by the press.

The 25-year IBM veteran engineer is in the middle of a nasty civil case in which his former employer has sued to stop him from taking a new position in Steve Jobs’ inner circle as head of Apple’s iPod and iPhone division.

IBM (IBM) is trying to enforce a non-compete contract Papermaster signed in 2006. Apple (AAPL) is trying to get around it. The case is being heard in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.

On Friday, Papermaster filed a declaration with the court, arguing that IBM and Apple are in very different businesses. That afternoon, a reporter for Information Week plucked this quote out of the 27-page statement and ran with it:

“I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM.”  (link)

The quote echoed through the blogosphere. Grizzled tech writers, including this one, treated it with various degrees of derision and incredulity. (See here, here and here.) How could anyone who joined IBM in 1982 possibly forget that Apple and IBM spent much of the 1980s locked in mortal combat for dominance of the PC industry — an iconic competition that spawned one of the most famous ads in TV history, Ridley Scott’s “1984“?

Well, we all owe Mark Papermaster an apology.

It turns out that his quote was taken out of context. What the Information Week reporter left out of his story on Friday [it was updated on Sunday] was the part where Papermaster acknowledged that before IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo, and when Apple sold servers to schools, they did in fact compete. The full quote reads:

“Until this litigation effort by IBM, aside from the divested IBM personal computer business and a single sale several years ago of Apple’s Xserve product to a university, I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM.” [PDF]

Papermaster’s statement goes on to describe — under penalty of perjury — the reluctance with which he received Apple’s overtures, the deference he showed his superiors at IBM, his caution to avoid even the appearance of impropriety (he left everything in his office except textbooks and memorabilia), and the respect IBM showed him for his integrity (rather than escorting him out of the building immediately — standard practice in Silicon Valley — they let him work in his office for nearly two weeks after giving notice).

Whatever Steve Jobs’ motives for hiring this guy — be it to run the iPod division or, as IBM fears, the chipmaking operations at P.A. Semi — Papermaster seems to be playing it straight.

On Friday, the court granted IBM preliminary relief and ordered Papermaster to immediately stop working for Apple. His lawyers have until Tuesday to register their objections. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 18.

See The Papermaster chronicles for a timeline of events.

Steve Jobs’ high-profile raid on IBM’s managerial ranks hit a snag on Friday.

A judge in White Plains, N.Y., ordered Mark Papermaster — IBM’s (IBM) former top microprocessor executive and Apple’s (AAPL) newest senior VP — to immediately stop working for Jobs.

It’s the latest chapter in a bi-coastal drama that pits one of the world’s largest and most established technology companies against one of the brashest. Here’s a timeline:

• January 2008: Robert Mansfield, Apple’s VP for computer hardware development, includes Papermaster’s name in a short list of possible hires. The two were classmates at the University of Texas at Ausin and both worked at IBM.
• February 2008: Papermaster is invited to Cupertino to meet Jobs and discuss an unnamed “senior leadership position” involving product development in consumer electronics.
• A few weeks later, Apple calls to say the senior leadership position is no longer open and offers him a less senior position in laptop design. He declines.
• April 2008: Apple acquires P.A. Semi (formerly Palo Alto Semiconductor), a maker of power-efficient processors based on IBM’s “Power” architecture.
• September 2008: Papermaster, whom IBM in court papers describes as the company’s “top expert in ‘Power’ architecture and technology” [PDF], gets another call from Apple. Steve Jobs wants to talk to him.
• Oct. 7: Papermaster meets with Jobs, Tony Fadell (head of the iPod and iPhone division), and others. He’s told that Fadell is leaving, and that Jobs is looking to replace him. The next day, Papermaster meets with Fadell’s team.
• Friday Oct 10: Jobs makes Papermaster an offer he can’t refuse — a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to head the iPod and iPhone division.
• Monday Oct. 13: Papermaster informs his superiors at IBM that he intends to accept the job. They tell him they suspect Apple’s interest in him has something to do with P.A. Semi.
• Monday Oct. 20: IBM offers Papermaster a “substantial increase” to persuade him to stay.
• During the same conversation, IBM reminds Papermaster that he has signed an agreement that bars him from working for an IBM competitor for one year. [PDF] It offers Papermaster a year’s salary if he will respect the agreement. Papermaster says he needs time to think it over.
• Tuesday Oct. 21: Papermaster submits his resignation the next day. He is scheduled to leave the company at week’s end and start working for Apple in November.
• Wednesday Oct. 22: IBM files a 10-page complaint in the Southern District of New York to prevent Papermaster, “who is in the possession of significant and highly-confidential IBM trade secrets and know-how” from accepting an executive position with Apple. IBM describes Apple as a competitor that is trying to expand its presence in the markets for servers and chips for handheld devices.
• Tuesday Nov. 4: After the Wall St. Journal breaks the story, Apple issues a press release announcing that Papermaster had been named senior VP of devices hardware engineering to lead the iPod and iPhone division, the job formerly held by Tony Fadell (see here). Neither chips nor servers are mentioned.
• Thursday Nov. 6: Papermaster files court papers arguing that Apple and IBM are in totally different businesses — one focused on high-performance business systems, the other on consumer-oriented hardware and related products. [PDF]
  
• Friday Nov. 7: Robert Cringely publishes a column echoing the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley — that Papermaster’s position as head of the iPod and iPhone division is a subterfuge, a “placeholder” until his noncompete year is up and he can take the job for which he was really hired: “to lead Apple’s PA Semi acquisition and create a new family of scalable processors optimized for Snow Leopard and beyond.”
• Later that afternoon: Federal District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains grants IBM a preliminary injunction, ordering Mark Papermaster to “immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc. until further order of this court.” [PDF] IBM PR expresses satisfaction. Apple PR expresses confidence that Papermaster “will be able to ultimately join Apple when the dust settles.” (link) Papermaster cannot be reached.

Papermaster’s lawyers have until Tuesday Nov. 11 to submit objections. A hearing is set for November 18.

UPDATE: Reading Mark Papermaster’s statement in full, I discover that it had been taken it out of context. The full quote, reproduced at the bottom of this post, makes a lot more sense. My apologies to Mr. Papermaster.

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“I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM.”

I did mental double take when I read those words, and I suspect I was not alone.

They were filed in a U.S. district court in Manhattan early Friday by Mark Papermaster, a 25-year IBM veteran and, as of Tuesday, Apple’s newest senior VP.

Papermaster is stepping into the spot recently vacated by Tony Fadell. (See The man who made the iPod.)

IBM had filed suit to block the move, claiming that Papermaster was violating “his contractual obligation to refrain from working for an IBM competitor for one year.”

Papermaster’s response was that IBM (IBM) doesn’t compete with Apple (AAPL) and as far as he knows, it hasn’t for the past 25 years.

Huh? That’s news to me — and I suspect it will be news to Steve Jobs.

I remember 1983. The IBM PC was two years old and the Apple II and III were rapidly losing market share. The Lisa came out that January, but was destined to be a commercial flop.

Jobs, who had been kicked out of the Lisa project the year before, was pouring his energy into the Mac, which would debut the following year, heralded by the famous “1984″ commercial.

Jobs certainly seemed to know who his competition was. That fall, when he previewed the so-called Big Brother ad in a keynote address, he introduced it with these words:

“It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?” (link)

I know IBM is an enormous company with many large divisions, and that for most of his career, Papermaster worked on silicon chips and servers, not PCs.

And I know that it’s been several years since IBM competed in consumer electronics, having sold its Personal Computing Division to Lenovo in 2005.

But to think that Mark Papermaster could have started at IBM in 1983 and worked there a quarter century without ever once hearing Apple described as a competitor — well, it boggles this tech reporter’s mind.

UPDATE: 9to5 Mac reports that in a filing made public after markets closed on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Karas ordered Papermaster to “immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc. until further order of this court.”

For the latest on the case, see The Papermaster Chronicles.

[Kudos to Information Week's Paul McDougall for spotting the court documents. You can read more of Papermaster's statement here.]

UPDATE 2: It turns out that Paul McDougall led us all on a merry chase. Papermaster’s full statement, copied below, acknowledges that IBM and Apple have indeed been competitors from time to time in the past.

This reporter’s mind is unboggled and his respect for Mr. Papermaster’s integrity renewed.