It seems that somebody at the Apple Headquarters got a whiff about my article on iFags vs. Mac Users and their tendencies, and they decided to launch a lawsuit against me. Their claims, according to the papers I was served, is as follows :

“Your incident on your blog has damaging consequences to the reputation and revenues of Mac users and Apple Inc. Apple and its subsidiaries find the article to be very disturbing in its derrogatory nature, its obscenity, and the falasity of the accusations against Apple Inc. We have assessed the collateral damages caused by your blog entry … to a total of $500,000 US Dollars, and this letter officially serves you the civil lawsuit, filed in the Cupertino Superior Court, which is part of the State of California judicial circuitl”

Well, I do not have money for a lawyer, and the lawsuit amount is for $500,000 US. They figured, judging by the number of people who come each day, and the number of backlinks to that post on the internet, that’s about how much business they lost. I’ll spare you the detailed calculations the corporate lawyers at Apple included.

The jurisdiction of this lawsuit falls under the USA, not my own country Canada, based on the following factors -

• Apple Inc. is an American company.
• My blog has more readers from the US than from Canada. Well, considering the US has 10 times the population, and they too have the internet, it’s a given. I wonder if I can dispute this? My web hosting server is in Vancouver, and so is Jeff Kee Consulting!
• The “incident”, as they refer to it in the legal documents, happened over the cyber space, so the jurisdiction must be set based on the audience, not the physical location of the writer (myself).

What a pain in the ass. I have to fly to California JUST for a settlement conference in the civil courts!!! And they’re not even paying for the tickets!
Apple, however, hinted in a later article that they are offering to settle this – basically, they want the article removed, and replaced with a positive review about their Macbook products. And they are requesting that I make a purchase of a Macbook Pro 15.4 inch or higher, out of my own pocket, so that I can write credible reviews of it in a positive tone only.

I suppose I should be thankful this did not spread to a human rights lawsuit – the term “iFag” could be offensive in nature towards homosexual people, but thankfully, I had the disclaimer on my entry, so I think I dodged that bullet.

Well, since I don’t have cash for a lawyer, nor the $500,000, I guess I have no choice. I guess I’ll have to return my new Windows Vista laptop and convert again to a Mac. Oh well, to avoid bankruptcy, it’s worth it.

I also just realized that you are a fool if you took this seriously up until this point – it’s April 1st.