Mark Fiore’s political cartooning app

Mark Fiore’s political cartooning app Apple executives have often behaved as though the ultimate custody and control of information lies with them, and the company has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect its interests. Yet for all of its spectacular achievements, Apple is exhibiting a remarkable tone-deafness in the issue at hand. As Apple is changing into a media company, as well, its Silicon Valley brand of aggression is running up against its broader ambitions.

For the iPad, Apple is eager to partner with all manner of content providers, but here the decisions seem capricious and punishing. The swimsuit girls of Sports Illustrated? There’s an app for that. But Dirty Fingers, the scantily clad girl that wipes your screen clean? Nope.

A guide to gay New York and a phone directory with caricatures of public figures from a conservative filmmaker did not make the cut. And that app from the media writer and Jobs antagonist Michael Wolff? Not happening.

The cartoonists’ app having a bit of fun with Tiger Woods was not approved, but the one that does a similar thing with the visage of the president of the United States? That’s O.K. And Mark Fiore’s political cartooning app got rejected and then suddenly approved after he won a Pulitzer.

Then again, it will take you anywhere on the Web, unless it involves the use of Adobe’s Flash software, which Mr. Jobs has found wanting. The churlishness about Flash again goes to the issue of control, of wanting to have dominion over all aspects of the customer experience.

More broadly, Apple’s behavior and choices in the Gizmodo affair threaten to interrupt the séance between the company and an adoring press, who have looked past all the frantic secrecy and reverently stared in wonder at what was eventually revealed behind the curtain.

The media’s crush on Apple has always been an unrequited love affair. The company has a few familiars in the press whom it favors, but Apple has “no comment” programmed on a macro key. The company has unsuccessfully sued bloggers who, it believed, had punctured its veil of secrecy, and DVD Ripperimportant tech news organizations like Wired have been shut out as a result of coverage deemed ill-mannered.