In case you missed it, Apple Computer has pulled all John Wiley & Sons titles from its 104 retail stores, apparently in an effort to remind the media that any public comment about the company or its CEO, Steve Jobs, must be utterly servile in nature. As this San Francisco Chronicle story sums it up, Apple is refusing to stock any Wiley titles because of one of them in particular: iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon. The piece goes on to quote Hayes Roth, a marketing consultant: “Any time clients or companies take actions like this, it amuses me because inevitably it backfires,” he says. “Almost always, it comes across as mean-spirited, not getting the joke, or petty. You wonder what Apple’s public relations adviser is saying about this.”

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Click here for the San Francisco Chronicle story