Sour Apple

Just one week after patting Steve Jobs on the back for his accomplishments at Apple Computer, I find myself wanting to deliver a harder blow to a lower part of the anatomy of the company's infamously tyrannical interim chief executive officer.

I praised Jobs in this space last week for showing how even a relatively unfocused IBM and Motorola could power computers as fast as or faster than anything Wintel is delivering-and for demonstrating how a desktop-computer company can still add value to a seemingly commoditized product, albeit mainly through industrial design.I was still coming off the high of Jobs' keynote at Macworld and the promise of a competitive PC industry fueled by systems like the new G3 Macs.

A week later, reports that Apple is seeking royalties as high as a dollar per port for users of the 1394 interface show another side of the new Apple: one less concerned with proliferating new technology than profiteering from it.

Apple was the driving force behind development of the 1394 interface, which it dubbed Firewire. But the innovator fell on hard times, and Compaq, NEC and Sony implemented 1394 in Wintel PCs before Jobs signed off on a plan to put the interface on Macs that started shipping this month.

Now that Jobs is pushing the interface, word on the street is a relatively new legal team at Apple is also leveraging the heck out of it as a source of royalties for the company. Apple might be forgiven for joining the madness over the royalty mania in this industry. Pundits have long joked that Texas Instruments, which supplies 1394 parts to Apple, makes more revenue from defending its fundamental patents on the transistor than it does from any of its product lines. But as executive editor Ron Wilson wrote just last week, the patent madness in this industry simply has to stop. There are signs that small companies that roll out innovative products that spur a new interface like 1394 already have shelved plans to jump into this space until the dust settles.

Jobs gets credit for crafting crisp inspirational messages and for having focused a failing company on delivering world-class products. But when it comes to his technology agenda, he's a physician that needs to heal himself. My prescription: Think different.