You know, Apple's made some pretty serious strides in the realm of public relations over the past few years, what with the transformation of its standard press description from "beleaguered" to "once-beleaguered" to "resurgent" and beyond. The media, in general, seems to think that Apple's back and one to watch. Wall Street concurs. The average consumer no longer thinks Apple went out of business, and probably even thinks that one of those new-fangled iMacs would look real purty in the den, if they weren't so much more expensive than one o' them Celeron thingies. In fact, we'd be willing to hazard a guess and state that the only group of people that still holds a primarily negative opinion of Apple is-- strangely enough-- the Mac community.

Now, when we say the Mac community, we're overgeneralizing a bit. We don't mean, for example, "everyone who uses a Mac." We mean the hardcore fans-- the ones who used to bleed six colors back when there were six colors to bleed. We're talking about the folks who are so crazy about all things Macintosh that they might even tune into a daily soap opera about the subject, or, in extreme cases, produce one. This is the Mac community to which we refer: the fiercely loyal band of longtime Mac users who are simply in love with the platform, and have stuck with it even through the bad times. So why, pray tell, does this group have a problem with Apple?

How much time ya got? No, seriously, right now we'd have to say that the biggest reason to love the product and loathe the company comes down to just two words: legal action. None of us minds much when Apple's gung-ho legal department tackles Wintel cloners who seek to sully the iMac's distinctive design with cheap knock-offs, or defends Cupertino from spurious billion-dollar lawsuits that threaten the future of our beloved platform. But this increasingly frequent tactic of strongarming fans for copyright violation, well, that's getting more than a little tired. When MacCards got shut down, we understood why, but chafed a little at the hard-nose manner in which Apple's lawyers steamrolled a loyal fan. (The proprietor's new site, EyeCards, is a hoot and a holler, though.) When Apple went after that German ad agency for printing that "We love you" ad without permission, we felt Apple probably wasn't stern enough, though we could see why some Mac fans were peeved.

But now Apple's legal eagles have gone after AdCritic, so this time it's personal. We love AdCritic; it's an invaluable source for scads of cool commercials, and they're all in QuickTime format. But now this is simply yet another instance in which Apple has threatened legal action against an entity that's showing its support for Apple's own technologies; according to MacNN, AdCritic has pulled all of its Apple commercials at the demand of Apple Legal, posting instead links to several ads served from Apple's own site. It may not seem like a huge deal, since most of the commercials are still available elsewhere, but we have to say, the zeal with which Apple seems willing to threaten its supporters and alienate its user base is more than a tad disconcerting.

We understand fully that Apple needs to protect its copyrights and trademarks or else risk losing all such legal protection, but the way its gone after actual supporters of its own products and technologies seems really harsh. Is there a reason Apple couldn't grant AdCritic a license to serve those commercials? It's free advertising, and if AdCritic would then be serving the content legally, where's the harm? Unless, of course, Apple really does have a pathological drive to torment its loyal supporters, in which case we figure we're all in trouble...