Steve Does a Jobs on WozSteve Does a Jobs on Woz

Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, has written an autobiography. He asked Steve Jobs, his old HP co-worker and Apple co-founder, to write the preface, but, Woz told The AppleInsider that Jobs said no. "I don't know why" he declined, Woz told the Insider, "because I'm nice to him, so there must have been something he didn't like."Jobs, who apparently never read a book he liked (or maybe never read a book at all?), is famous for going after authors and publishers who mistakenly thought the constitutional freedom of the press they enjoy in publishing on other subjects extended to Jobs and his company.

Apple has used lawsuits like a billyclub against bloggers and Web sites -- including AppleInsider -- and in a display of large-scale pettiness it threw the books of publisher John Wiley & Sons off the shelves of the Apple Stores after Wiley refused to cancel the release of "iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business."

Apple is currently in a California state court defending an appeal against the decision in one of the blogger cases. In that decision a judge came to the very creative conclusion that journalists lose the protection of California's constitutional provisions and statutes if what they publish is deemed by a company to be a trade secret. It's a case Apple and Jobs richly deserve to lose, and the citizens of a free society badly need to win.

But I'm not counting on miracles. If I were Steve Wozniak right now, I'd be talking to my lawyers about the possibility of defending myself against my old pal and co-founder's lawsuits.