Did Apple Inadvertently Out Its Tablet?

Ed Sutherland ()

Did Apple Inadvertently Out Its Tablet?

Mac fans searching for the latest tidbit about Apple’s highly-expected tablet may have gained an unlikely (and probably inadvertent) ally: the Cupertino, Calif. company’s own lawyers. Thursday Apple’s legal team tried to shut down a public ‘bounty’ for clues to a tablet, but opened a whole new avenue for tablet trivia.

In a cease & desist letter to Valleywag, a silicon valley gossip site, Apple’s law firm made mention of “an unannounced and highly confidential Apple product.” The site, which was offering $10,000 for a photo, $20,000 for a video, $50,000 for pictures of Steve Jobs holding the tablet – even $100,000 to play with the rumored device for an hour, seemed non-plussed by the threats.

“We want answers, dammit! And we’re willing to pay,” Valleywag proclaimed. The site seems undaunted by the letter from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. “Anonymity of both the winners and losers is important to us: We’ll go to spycraft-level lengths to prevent anything being traced back to you,” the Website wrote.

Would Apple go to such an extreme length to stop talk of a product that didn’t exist? This isn’t the first apparent pre-emptive move by the company to plug possible leaks. Just days after the New York Times reported Apple’s tablet would make use of technology from a company it acquired in 2007, the Website of the firm named – Fingerworks – was closed. The reason could have been another report the site included “explicit descriptions of technology that could have evolved into the Apple Tablet’s UI,” as we wrote.

In another instance, an Apple partner appeared to backtrack after a series of reports quoted an executive on an upcoming release of the tablet. France Telecom executive Stephane Richard reportedly told a radio interviewer the tablet would be released “in a couple days.” PR for Mobile carrier Orange, owned by France Telecom, after a day of headlines, attempted to explain away the earlier comments as simply a misunderstanding.

Apple does have an unofficial policy on beneficial leaks, however. “The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple’s consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products,” former Apple senior marketing manager John Martellaro told the Mac Observer. Martellaro said leaks about the tablet could be used to float trial balloons (such as pricing), prompt a partner or intimidate rivals.

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How did Apple respond to this latest attempt to gain information about its tablet prior to an official release? They had no comment.

[Via Digits and AppleInsider]

9 comments »

About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • Mattzook

    I think the shutting down of Valleywag is simply because Valleywanks are promising a huge bounty that they simply cannot pay off, which would then get them into legal trouble. Apple does not want that kind of crap circus ruining and distracting the release of their tablet.

    I doubt that Apple, for a second, actually believes that the Valleywanks actually have the ability to PAY people thousands of dollars to pry out secretive Apple products.

  • Ken

    In this case, the tablet apparently really does exist, but I think Apple’s legal team would take the same action for an imaginary product. The reason being is that whether the product exists or not, they are breaking California law and harming Apple. The harm comes in generating disappointment when Apple doesn’t produce the rumored product they never intended to produce. We’ve all seen that happen.

  • http://www.grinningidiot.com JAYnLA

    I believe Apple’s movement against Valleywag is all about squashing the precedent of open bribery.

  • PBS

    A good point, though the tablet is really a foregone conclusion at this point. I also don’t think that Apple having its lawyers send a letter to Valleywag is really an “extreme” measure. Apple clearly has attorneys on retainer, so there is really no incremental cost to Apple here. But the wording of the letter is interesting, if only because it shows that Apple wants these rumors to continue to grow.

    I am just ready to see this thing already!

  • Ed C.

    I agree with what Ken wrote: “The harm comes in generating disappointment when Apple doesn’t produce the rumored product.”

    This is something that literally happens every year at MacWorld (2010 notwithstanding, however the rumored January 27th date makes up for it). For no less than five years there have been predictions of an “Apple Tablet” at MacWorld Expo. And every year so far there has been no tablet.

    I, for one, have been burned by these artificially raised expectations (the wide screen iPod comes to mind), so I take these rumors with a grain of salt. For example last summer countless sites predicted the demise of the hard drive based iPod, citing low sales of HD hardware and interviews with “people-in-the-know”; I’m happy to say they were ALL WRONG and I have my new 160 GB iPod here at work.

    If it weren’t for the iPhone, I would -never- believe in rumored products.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the Jan 27th event is just to announced updated MacBook Pros.

    I’m also skeptical that the legal letter Orrick, et.al., may be a rouse invented by Valleywag to draw attention to itself.

    I think one of the reasons Apple doesn’t try to squash these rumors is because it keeps their stock price inflated. One exception was when “colored iBooks” were forecasted and the rumor was doing obvious damage to iBook sales. Apple put a stop to that rumor right away.

  • CaryMG

    OK ….
    Now I’m OFFICIALLY sick of Apple Tablet “rumors ….

    * 10 inches ….

    * 7 inches ….

    * WebCam

    * 2 WebCams ….

    * No WebCams ….

    * OLED screen ….

    * LED screen ….

    * The PixelQi whatever-the-fuck-it’s-called screen ….

    * Kindle Killer

    * NOT a Kinde killer ….

    * iPhoneOS ….

    * OS X ….

    * iPhoneOS X ….

    All the “pundits” & “Insiders In The Know !!11!!11!” have said all of this bullshit and MORE.
    *I* can say blahblahblahwhateverwhatever & it’ll have *just* as much cache as these wastes of semen bliggers’ “info”.

    January 27th can’t come quick enough.

  • porkchop1234

    I’m with CaryMG whether there is a tablet or not I want the 27th to come so that I can finally Google something about Apple and not get hit with a plethora of tablet rumor posts. Its gotten completely out of control. Enough is enough already, Cult Of Mac editors try and go one day without an article dealing directly or indirectly about the RUMORED tablet. I’m having a tablet rumor meltdown :P

  • John Brownlee

    I’ve got to disagree with you, Mattzook: the only thing sure here is that Gawker can easily afford to pay someone $100k for that sort of publicity.

  • kayla

    I want this to fit into what John Tantillo calls adpublizting, but since there is uh..no ad..I guess it doesn’t quite work. Still, I think that Apple’s legal team may have been pushed by their marketing team? Just even better for Apple’s buzz.
    Tantillo had a post a few weeks ago naming Apple the brand winner for the positive buzz that has been generated surrounding the Slate–saying that the hype over a pretty unknown product is due to Apple’s amazing track record of consistently delivering superior products that people actually want. http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2010/01/05/john-tantillos-winner-and-loser-of-the-week-apple-again-slate-and-the-administration–terrorism.aspx