Thats a good point, I didn't think of precedent. But I think Apple could have gone with a cease and desist/stern warning letter rather than banishment from the realm
A C&D wouldn't make any sense at all, though--the entire reason OWC was unable to publish this information was their developer contract. That contract explicitly and unambiguously says that if you publish anything about pre-release hardware or software, your contract is immediately terminated. So if Apple says "stop doing this, you've violated your developer contract", they are already saying that the contract is terminated.
The contract doesn't technically terminate until Apple notifies you, but the way it's worded
you terminate the contract when you publish something considered confidential, not Apple.
Apple could have issued them a warning and told them to take it down or risk having their contract terminated, but again--if Apple was saying that it violated the agreement, they are by the letter of the contract confirming that iFixIt
already terminated the contract.
Obviously you can theoretically do anything you want, but when it comes to contract law and when you're a big enough company to have multiple lawyers on staff, it doesn't make sense and sets a bad precedent to say "You did something that instantly terminates this contract, so please stop doing it or else we will terminate this contract."
Now, the contract also gives Apple the opportunity to sue someone--for substantial damages--for publishing confidential information. Which they haven't thus far. In fact, they haven't to our knowledge even asked them to remove the information.
Now let's all open our iDevices and get banned by AAPL!
We don't even OWN what we buy from them, THEY own it !
I really hope this was intended as snark about the uninformed overreactions to this.
If not... did you actually even read the article or what happened? The part where iFixIt signed a developer contract that said "If we give you prerelease hardware and you publish anything about it, this contract is terminated", and then iFixIt got prerelease hardware from Apple (effectively
given to them--there's a $1 credit check, but that's it), did a teardown and published it and explicitly said "we're not allowed to, but it's worth the risk", and got that same contract terminated?
Whether you think Apple should let things like this slide or not, and whether you think Apple should just remove this clause from the contract or not, it's not in dispute at all that this was because it was prerelease hardware provided to a developer through a contract that expressly forbids publishing information about prerelease hardware. iFixIt had done teardowns of dozens (hundreds?) of pieces of Apple hardware purchased through regular channels, and Apple doesn't (and isn't legally allowed to) care.
Anyone who thinks companies other than Apple that provide unreleased products to testers or journalists in advance of public release don't also include an NDA and/or embargo on being able to publish information about it must have absolutely no idea how these things work.
