Consider things from Apple’s perspective. Their secrecy is part of the appeal. Everybody wants to know what they’re going to do next, and the company does an excellent job of controlling the flow of information. They have a right to do this. They work within regulations and their shareholders are obviously happy.

So you’ve got this brand new iPhone in the works, and it’s impressive. It’s made of higher quality materials, build quality is going to go way up, the new CPU is much faster and more power efficient, it has a bigger battery and a higher resolution camera in addition to the new camera on the front. If you’re Apple, you want to keep these details secret. Less people want to buy this year’s model if next year’s is a couple months away. This is in contrast to cars, where the current model often becomes more attractive to a large segment of buyers, because it’s available at a discount. Apple doesn’t do discounts like that. The price on today’s model normally doesn’t change in the lead-up to new product. When new models are released, Apple will pay you the courtesy of upgrading your order (if you ask) if you placed it in the preceding 10 days, but if it’s day 11 you’re probably out of luck.¹ This is also perfectly legitimate. The result is less overstock, which means less discounting after the new model is out.

Leaking the new iPhone probably cost Apple millions in revenue. While it isn’t really a secret that Apple has an annual release cycle for iPhone, the previously-described effect is so strong that Apple is selling more iPhones today than it did during the holiday quarter. Think about that. Now that the forthcoming iPhone is common knowledge, I’m expecting that we’ll see a more pronounced dip in sales over the next month or so.²

The evidence to date suggests quite clearly that after the device was left at the bar, none of the people who handled it afterward did the right thing. The original finder³ didn’t make enough effort to return the device directly to Apple. He took money from Gizmodo, and handed it over. Gizmodo knew what they were getting, and they didn’t return it until Apple legal counsel asked for it back.

Leaving aside the lost sales from the current model, that prototype was assuredly one of a relatively small number of units. One-offs like that are normally costly to produce, on top of untold millions in research and development.

The long and short of it is that a crime occurred, and the police are obligated to investigate. Apple could probably intervene, but at this point in the game it isn’t fair to say Apple is going too far. Better to make an example of these fools as a warning shot to anyone else who might consider acting similarly. You can guarantee whatever money Gizmodo made from ad sales premiums when the story broke is but a drop in the bucket relative to what Apple lost by Gizmodo’s irresponsible behavior.

You might think Apple’s behavior is certainly reminiscent of The Man, but Cult of Mac made a rare good point about how things work at 1 Infinite Loop that lead me to think otherwise.

On the topic of AT&T, Mr. Stewart and I are one. Despite my overall disagreement with his arguments, the bit was hilarious.

* This post is a response to a comment by my good friend Josh Bernstein, on Facebook. I decided it was a little long to stick in a comment.

1. Unless you get a nice customer rep at AppleCare
2. On the flip side, it’s probably fair to say that the anticipation for the new iPhone may indeed be higher than if Gizmodo hadn’t taken the actions it did.
3. Now identified as 21-year old Brian Hogan of Redwood City, CA

“The ZFS team has produced a game-changing file system/volume manager. The chance to get it into the hands of 10s of millions of Mac users – and to influence Redmond’s file system strategy – seem to this outsider an opportunity of a lifetime.

If the ZFS engineering team opposed this – and I’d love to hear their take – I encourage them to reconsider. Marketers often ask the question ‘would you prefer 100% of nothing or 40% of something huge?’”

MacRuby literally dominates Ruby 1.9.1. On “average”, according to these limited tests the experimental branch of MacRuby appears to be roughly 3 times faster than Ruby 1.9.1 (YARV), and in some cases even faster than that. You should definitely find this impressive.

Apple’s sponsorship of the MacRuby project is – at least on the surface – very much like Google’s unladen-swallow Python branch.

This is a really big deal.

Update: “Sponsorship” may have been the wrong word to use, here. MacRuby is Apple’s project. They don’t just “sponsor” it.

What’s interesting to me about this campaign in general, and with this latest ad in particular, is just how ordinary Microsoft is willing to have Windows appear. It’s as though Apple is saying “I’m better than the rest,” while Microsoft is saying “yeah, but there are more of us.” With Apple, you choose to be different. With Microsoft, you choose not to be. This is the crux of my longheld opinion regarding most Microsoft products in general.

Take Internet Explorer. We all recall the hot water Microsoft found itself in for its bundling of IE and its subsequent destruction of Netscape. During those first great browser wars, Netscape found itself in the unenviable position of selling a product that didn’t come with your brand new PC to replace the free product whose icon was already on the desktop. We can argue features and functionality left and right, but “free” is an incredibly strong economic aphrodisiac, followed closely by “easy.” This one-two punch was something with which Netscape simply couldn’t compete, and Navigator died a long, painful death. ¹

When an individual or organization chooses to purchase a Mac, it’s almost never spur of the moment. First-time Mac buyers are typically curious about the platform and often feel that Windows is more work than it’s worth. This was exactly the position I was in several years ago when I pre-ordered a top of the line PowerMac G5. I had been learning Java in school, and was doing all of my programming in Eclipse on Windows XP. At the time, I’d been intrigued by the gorgeous design of the tower, and Apple’s claims of performance were very interesting. In addition, I’d been fooling around with Linux, and the idea of using a *nix as my desktop machine was very enticing.

Every switcher has his or her reasons for doing so, but every single one of us made the calculated decision to buy that first Mac. What Microsoft is attempting to do with this latest ad is classic misdirection. They point to the cost and talk about features, completely neglecting actual functionality. They speak like all 17″ screens are created equal, but we all know that isn’t the case. Anyone who’s ever purchased a TV knows that, and the same goes for the rest of the kit. Not all hardware is engineered to the same level of precision, and not all hardware includes the same quality components. Having 4GB of RAM means fairly little if the unit in question has integrated graphics. It also says nothing of durability, or for that matter, weight.

There’s nothing wrong with buying an HP laptop, but Microsoft is missing the mark if they’re trying to convince us that Macs are simply too expensive. For this ad campaign to really succeed, Microsoft needs to change the way we think about PCs. The stock Windows-based PC is the default in the same way that Internet Explorer is the default web browser. People neither choose Windows nor do they choose Internet Explorer. Those are simply defaults. When people start choosing Windows over Mac OS X, Microsoft will have succeeded. Until then, they’re just blowing smoke.

If there were a 17″ MacBook available for under a grand, I’m fairly certain Lauren wouldn’t have bought that HP. The Apple Store is the first place she went. The funny part is that a cheap 17″ laptop is a very low-margin piece of kit. I wonder how many of them HP would have to sell to make the profit Apple extracts from a single MacBook.

1. Ironically, Firefox – born of the ashes of Netscape Navigator – now commands a much larger marketshare than any single version of Internet Explorer.