Up until that rumor explosion in December, some things were absolutely certain about Apple. For one thing, Steve Jobs would never allow the company to sell a cheap Mac or a cheap iPod. There was no profit in it, and it was better to get large profit margins and remain a boutique computer company. This belief was so ingrained in some quarters that folks who dared disagree were labeled as “deluded.”

Through it all, there was the ever-present tendency to first throw cold water on a possible product, then eventually find a way to produce it. The ultra thin form factor of the iMac G5 is a telling example. When Jobs first introduced the flower pot version of a flat panel iMac, he said that the possibility of putting the computer within an LCD display was discarded. Just too plain ugly. But never say never.

But let’s go back even further. Do you recall the Cube? At the time, I wrote that its stunning looks made it suitable for a museum, and I would facetiously quote a similar line from an old Indiana Jones movie. I recall a press briefing at Apple headquarters when Jobs was asked to comment on the possibility the Cube would soon be discontinued. Jobs shot back “You don’t know what you’re talking about” in his inimitable style. It wasn’t very long after that when he threw in the towel, realized the Cube wouldn’t never be a true sales success and discontinued that model.

Today, folks cherish their Cubes, and some suggest that the basic form factor of the Mac mini is little more than a slimmed down Cube. Apple just continued to work on the concept till it got it right, and I think the mini is probably what the Cube should have been all along, a cheap no-frills personal computer that had all the basic elements that made a Mac a Mac. In creating its first sub-$500 model, Apple found a way to ignore its own advice and deliver a compelling product. There was also an opening, at long last, that revealed the possibility of gaining market share for once as more and more PC users became disgusted with spyware, virus infections and all the rest of the ills that plague the Windows world.

Sure enough, the Mac mini, like the iPod mini a year ago, is back ordered for weeks, and the folks who managed to acquire one when it officially went on sale last weekend are just plain lucky. The iPod shuffle? Forget about it.

Now about that Shuffle, when the iPod mini was first unveiled, Jobs sharply attacked the concept of a Flash-based model. Wouldn’t work, not enough capacity, and, besides, people would just toss them in the closet after realizing how impractical they truly were. What happened? Flash memory became cheaper, and the stunning success of the hard drive-based models made Apple strike while the iron was hot. And speaking of movie quotes, remember the unforgettable comment that “greed is good”?

The first reviews of the Mac mini actually disputed the low price factor, suggesting that once you optioned it up with a decent keyboard, mouse and monitor, it would still cost a lot more than a low-end PC. But if you actually visited a PC retailer, you’d see input devices for $10 each or even less, and monitors priced below $100. So the price of admission wasn’t so great after all. And let’s not forget about all the stuff left over when you toss out your malware-ridden PC box.

Now about the cost of those options: Apple quickly cut the price of its Pro keyboard and mouse to $29 each, and shaved $10 from the price of its wireless variations. And, without fanfare, the price of official Apple RAM and wireless networking upgrades went down. You want to max out at 1GB of RAM? The original price of $425 seemed a bit much, so Apple cut it to $325. You could still do better on the open market, where prices would dip to $199 and perhaps even less, but for Apple this is a pretty drastic price reduction. In fact, it’s downright aggressive in the scheme of things.

But that’s not all: The cost of adding Bluetooth and Wi-Fi decreased from $129 to $99. The $100 SuperDrive upgrade will provide an 8x drive, twice as fast as the one first announced; unfortunately the specs have since reverted to 4x, but it was nice while it lasted. You want to upgrade from 40GB to 80GB? It’s just $50.

One more thing: If you never ventured beyond the bundled software, or similar products, the stock 256MB of RAM was probably enough for decent performance. Even adding Microsoft Office wouldn’t drag it down, so long as you avoided large files. It’s fun to toss conventional wisdom on its ear, but I still go for more RAM every time despite the benchmarks. In addition, it seemed at first that the closed box form factor of the Mac mini precluded easy RAM upgrades. But Mac users quickly discovered that a thin putty knife, and some extra care in using it, made the process a little awkward but not all that hard. In fact, that’s how Apple does it. I can just imagine Steve Jobs asking his product design people how to open the thing, and staring with astonishment as they pulled out their putty knives and went to work.

Just how many Mac minis can Apple shove out the door? Well, if the folks disappointed by the non-availability of the iPod shuffle want to add another hard-to-get model to their shopping list, you can see where it’s all going. This is not to say you can’t find a mini. I expect you can get one fairly quickly if you shop around. I’ve seen Mac mail order houses quoting three to five days for delivery and even less. Of course, things change rapidly, and I wouldn’t be surprised if those estimates prove to be strictly come-on’s to get your order. Once you place yours, you’ll probably get a letter suggesting that they ran out of stock just five minutes before your order was received. Or maybe not.

I’m really curious to see what products Apple will produce in 2005 that it originally said wouldn’t or couldn’t be done. An iPod video anyone? What about that PowerBook G5? Maybe cooling the thing presents the “mother” of all obstacles, but don’t think for a moment that it’s not going to happen.

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My work experience includes the broadcast, print and online mediums, so I can’t say that any of this applies to me, but with the growth of so-called blogging, the issue is becoming more and more important. Apple’s lawsuit against the popular Mac-rumor site, Think Secret, simply means that this is an issue that cries for a solution, even if it has to come from the courts.

In preparing material for the next episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, I talked about the matter with two of our guests. One important point came up, and that is that if a story delivering secret information about the Mac mini and iPod Shuffle appeared in The Wall Street Journal or a similar mainstream publication, Apple wouldn’t dare file a complaint. The same can be said for CNET, although most of its content appears online. A journalist’s privilege, the refusal to disclose sources for a story, wouldn’t be an issue, and besides those places have a team of lawyers on hand or on call to deal with such matters.

Apple’s opening in the case of a rumor site is no doubt the assumption that its editor and publisher, Nick Ciarelli, isn’t a real member of the press. This opens a very serious issue. Let’s for example, compare Ciarelli’s site to, well, CNET. Both publish news and commentary content online, and both accept advertising. The difference, of course, is that CNET is much, much larger and has a greater depth and breadth of information. But where’s the real line of demarcation? Is Ciarelli less of a journalist because his company is small and CNET is large? Should he be taken less seriously because he is a teenager?

After all, how old was Steve Jobs when he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple? What about Bill Gates? Lots of brilliant young people have been doing marvelous work in the computer business over the years. Let’s not forget StuffIt was originally created by a 15-year-old high school student, and the list goes on and on.

To some, Ciarelli’s site is just another blog, but that goes against the common definition of the term, which is a personal Web site that essentially serves as an online diary. But even the question of the status of a blog is fraught with controversy. Is the author of a blog entitled to the same First Amendment rights as a more traditional journalist? Lest we forget, bloggers originally broke the news that those documents about President Bush’s military service that served as the cornerstone in that CBS News report were fake. In that instance, the bloggers were actually investigative reporters.

And it’s not that those “traditional” journalists aren’t facing threats. Over the years, reporters have been sent to jail because they refused to reveal the sources for some of their stories. It’s not that I expect to happen to Nick Ciarelli. In his case, I suspect Apple is primarily on a fishing expedition to discover the names of the person or persons feeding all this stuff to rumor sites. I do not think Apple just wants to close down rumor sites, although I suppose that’s a possibility.

But before you regard Apple Computer as the major offender, be assured that it’s not the only computer company going after bloggers publishing supposedly secret information. According to an eWeek report, “In a Jan. 18 letter it said was issued on behalf of Microsoft, the law firm of Covington & Burling asked the publisher of tech-enthusiast site Engadget.com to remove screenshots of a forthcoming Microsoft operating-system release known as ‘Windows Mobile 2005.’”

Microsoft claimed that the material contained “proprietary trade-secret information belonging to Microsoft.”

Now before I go any further, although the folks who run that site consider it a blog, it doesn’t really fit into that category, since it publishes news, commentary and carries ads. Or maybe I got it all wrong, which pretty much makes just about all Mac sites blogs.

In any case, here we have another case of Microsoft following Apple’s lead, although it is now reported that the issue has been resolved. Is this the start of a trend? Are other technology companies going to jump into the game in search of so-called bloggers that are publishing alleged proprietary information about possible new products?

More to the point, does this amount to a true threat against free speech? Well, on the one hand, a company that uses confidentiality agreements to keep information about new products under wraps has the perfect right to go after people who violate those agreements? In fact, the agreements will, as a rule, detail potential penalties for violating those terms. Certainly anyone who signs such an agreement and then breaks it must expect legal repercussions. But what about the news resource, blogger or whatever that publishes information about the alleged new product or trade secret? Can the blogger be compelled by the courts to reveal the names of its sources, despite the promise of secrecy? Can the blogger be forced to pay damages because it published those trade secrets, even if it received the information from a third party?

Of course, one of Apple’s arguments is that Nick Ciarelli somehow encouraged folks to violate nondisclosure contracts, though I can’t see how. He’s not, after all, offering huge financial incentives. In fact, he didn’t even have enough money to pay his attorney, who has agreed to work pro bono on the case.

These incidents all go to the core of the free speech argument. But it won’t be Apple or Microsoft who get to decide the rights of a blogger. The case of Apple versus Think Secret may set some legal precedents, but that’s up to the courts to decide. I’m sure anyone involved in Web publishing is going to be extremely interested in how it all turns out, but after possible appeals and all, this is one issue that could take years to resolve.

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