The Journal's online executive editor Alan Murray quickly deleted the Feb. 4 tweet, which, it is now obvious, was issued during Apple CEO Jobs' show-and-tell with select Journal staff. A tipster told us the deletion ultimately traces back to a furious Jobs. We asked Murray for comment, and he wrote back "I would love to talk about this, but can't." In a later email, he added:

I will say that Apple's general paranoia about news coverage is truly extraordinary— but that's not telling you anything you didn't already know.

Indeed, Apple is a notoriously tight-lipped company, particularly under Jobs, and is constantly trying to control the flow of news about its product. Apple sued a teenaged blogger who published scoops about unreleased products; it lied about Jobs' health problems; Jobs called a New York Times columnist a "slime bucket" for writing about said health problems; and an employee of key Apple contractor Foxconn had his apartment illegally searched after losing an iPhone prototype (he later committed suicide amid intense pressure from his employer).

If Jobs did give Murray a tongue lashing — his withering verbal abuse is infamous — the editor can console himself with the knowledge that this is is an especially touchy time of year for the paranoiac. And not just because of the pressures of shepherding and unveiling a new product.

At Jobs' meeting at the Times, the CEO was mostly on point, painting a utopian picture of happy future world awash in iPads. But at one juncture in the meeting, we hear, he took a detour, telling assembled newspaper staff that he gets tons of hate mail from people whenever he launches a new product — people who have never even used it, including angry Apple "fans." Jobs reportedly described the mail as "really nasty stuff... [things] like 'Fuck you and your family.'"

It sounds like Jobs has been fighting this sort of backlash his whole career, judging from this 1994 Rolling Stone interview:

"I've always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don't know why. Because they're harder. They're much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you've completely failed."

Of course, "fuck you and your family" sound less like fanboys than regretful stock speculators. That's the sort of e-note to go ballistic over.

(Updates: Added background on Apple secrecy, Rolling Stone quote.)

We're reliably informed that Jobs showed up for an iPad show and tell at the Times building, with newsroom staff present. The meeting was strictly off the record, though a person present indicated Jobs is preparing to gear up the iPad for magazines and newspapers, having put books first on his list of priorities. Magazines and newspapers got short shrift during Jobs' presentation to unveil the tablet computer last week.

Jobs also visited the Journal, a source there confirmed, though that meetings sounds decidedly less open than the Times affair. We're told Jobs was confined to the third floor of the News Corp. building, where the cafeteria, gym and some conference rooms are, and that many Journal staffers who wanted to see him, including even some higher-ups, could not. (The Journal newsroom starts on the fifth fourth floor and goes up for several stories. Most of it is on the sixth floor.)

Meanwhile, New York's Daily Intel broke news of an intriguing, top-secret dinner Jobs convened at Pranna in the Flatiron district. The sometime pescetarian dined with 50 New York Times Company executives in the cellar dining room, and sat with Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, according to Daily Intel. He showed off his new iPad and ordered off menu, getting a mango lassi and penne even though neither are normally served at the South Asian fusion spot.

More intriguing: Jobs showed up wearing "a very funny hat - a big top hat kind of thing," said Daily Intel's source. So apparently the obsessively secretive Apple chief was disguised as the Planter's Peanut guy for his trip to Gotham, with his John Lennon spectacles replacing the Peanut's usual monocle. We're told, however, that Jobs was wearing no plutocratic hat or other headgear for his visit to the Times newsroom, which, given his already all-too-imperious image, is probably for the best.

If you know more, do get in touch.

(Pic: Jobs talking to the Journal's Walt Mossberg and the iPad unveiling in San Francisco last week. Getty Images.)

Capping months of mounting tension between former allies Google and Apple over competing phones, Jobs called Google's "Don't Be Evil" mantra either "bullshit" or "crap" over the weekend. Now the Googler Diaspora is letting him have it in this FriendFeed thread. "I don't know where people get the idea that competition is evil," writes Paul Buchheit, the ex-Googler who invented "Don't Be Evil," along with Gmail and FriendFeed. One current Googler says he plans to tack up Jobs' "very motivational" quote beside his monitor; another says Jobs myopically "sees all competition as zero-sum." And former Googler Kevin Fox says Apple is worse, "holding Google's iPhone apps in limbo because Apple is afraid they might succeed." Your turn, Apple guys.

(Pic Jobs, center, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, left, and co-founder Sergey Brin, right, at Macworld, Jan. 2008. Getty Images.)

What I want to know is: Which Apple employee hasn't drank enough Kool-Aid/has the balls to stand up in a room with Jobs, and grill him about Google and Flash? Either way, they got the answers. But how do they stand up on the REALTALK-o-Meter? Graded on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Sign Language, 10 being REAL TALK.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there's no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don't be evil mantra: "It's bullshit." Audience roars.

Emphasis mine, though Wired later clears up that Jobs may have said "crap," instead of "bullshit."

REAL TALK-o-Meter: 6 if he said "crap," 7 if he said "bullshit," somewhere in Whitney "Hell to the No" Houston territory. Because any companies in the business of technology telling people they're out to make the World a Better Place are basically full of it, which obviously includes Apple. In fact, aren't most passive-defensive declarative statements bullshit? When someone says "I can't stand stupid people," it's like, why would you say that? Are you insecure about being stupid? How is everyone else stupid? Etc.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

REAL TALK-o-Meter: A low 3. Yes, he was talking about the Decision Makers of Adobe, but writing an entire company off as "lazy" to your own employees is pretty disingenuous. Is Adobe really not up to speed because their guys are sitting around on beanbag chairs all day, smoking weed and playing Dolphin Olympics on their laptops? No. And is the reason the iPad and iPhone don't support Flash because it's buggy? Might have been taken into consideration, but to speak to it as the primary reason Apple's are crashing at least sounds misleading. So many of the websites you visit every day utilize flash. Why can't Apple's products—among other things—crash less, even if Flash is buggy? Then again, it's Jobs' decision to use Flash or not, REAL TALK. As for HTML5, if by "the world" Jobs means "Apple and whoever follows," he's correct. Which he probably does mean, because he's a computer nerd who's trying to run the universe.

Other notable notes that Wired picked up in the MacRumors forum:

- Apple will deliver aggressive updates to iPhone that Android/Google won't be able to keep up with
- iPad is up there with the iPhone and Mac as the most important products Jobs has been a part of
- Regarding the Lala acquisition, Apple was interested in bringing those people into the iTunes team
- Next iPhone coming is an A+ update
- New Macs for 2010 are going to take Apple to the next level
- Blu-Ray software is a mess, and Apple will wait until sales really start to take off before implementing it.

So, in this grading of the REAL TALK-O-Meter, Steve Jobs gets a 4.25 average, for which he gets nothing. At 8, we'll send him a Golden Shirt Microphone. Any employees who dare question Jobs and still have their testicles fully intact get figureative salutes from people all over who are too afraid to stand up to their power-crazy nerd bosses, and any tipsters who have anything else to say about how REAL the REAL TALK of Steve Jobs is (or the employees who questioned him, for that matter) gets an email address to say it to.

Oh, and as a reminder: this is what REAL TALK looks like.

You know what? Don Lemon is a stylish guy and we are not afraid to say it. He is certainly classier than Ross Douthat, who was "that guy" at Harvard. And, obviously, classier than Dennis Hopper, who is being "that guy" on his death bed.

In non-death-bed-related break-up news, Chelsea Handler broke up with her boss. John Edwards finally split from his wife, too, as the news grew worse and worse for him. Like: he has a sex tape. And he hated rednecks. Former aides reminisced.

Barack Obama kissed Diane Sawyer. Then he had this speech thing. We thought he would pander, but in the end we decided it was awesome. (Not awesome enough to save America, though. For that, we need a map.)

Kari Ferrell went to Las Vegas and we were told about this fact.

Brian laid out the rules for calling in sick. Then he drafted a contract for straight girl/gay guy relationships. And then he refused to take his shoes off at your house. Even if you act super nice.

Sometimes you can be both gay and not gay at the same time, depending on what magazine you are doing publicity in.

Arianna Huffington's favorite charitable cause is her wacky website, which tried to eat Twitter in the middle of the night. And then Gerad Butler tried to eat a human female lady in public for some cameras. And then everyone did some foodie yoga.

Tim Tebow may not work out in the NFL, on account of his constant proselytizing (and also because he cannot take snaps from under center).

Steve Jobs Apple iPad tablet Apple slate menstruation joke etc. etc.. It was anticipated by everyone (though you guys were more psyched for Lost), but Olde Media was not saved. (It also couldn't save Miramax. Why does the iPad hate our shared culture?)

Television! There was Big Love and two American Idols and Project Runway and Real Housewives.

The Hasids and the Hipsters had a meeting and nothing was solved. Someone or other is maybe this person who writes letters to editors of newspapers, but it might not be the person who says it isn't them! Also there is a woman out there who is not Donatella Versace.

We examined wonderful celebrity mom advice and looked into allegations of sexy escapades at the New York Post. We also decided who should return to the mystical Jersey Shore. And a Fox reporter Tweeted a link to a whorehouse. It looked more fun than Sundance.

Do you know (or are you) a literary manboy? Probably! Let's hope Tinsley doesn't fall for one.

We hired John Mayer. And Kanye died. He fell of a cliff in New Zealand.

Some wacky kids got in a heap o' trouble for breaking into a Senator's office to tamper with her phones. We jumped to (perfectly reasonable) conclusions. It was just the latest embarrassment for poor Andrew Breitbart.

Oh, hey, a perk of working for Goldman!

Lauren Conrad knows that reading is fundamental. Scott Brown drives a truck. Steve Jobs walks like an old man. Henry Hyde might've been on the take. We'd like to have terror trials here, please.

J.D. Salinger died.

Yet we're told that isn't the case. And the fearful words of Jobs' entourage are only driving more chatter about that longtime obsession of Apple watchers: the CEO's health.

After yesterday's keynote, when Jobs left Apple's demonstration event for journalists, he left right out of the front door of the building where the press demos were being held. Somewhere around 50 reporters and photographers were mulling around, and some started to snap pictures and video.

But Jobs' entourage tried to put a stop to it, according to one of the people there at the time. Said the witness:

He was doing the 70-year-old man shuffle, surrounded by an entourage. Not the walk of a healthy man. And his entourage was telling people not to take pictures...



It was extremely surreal.... It was a labored shuffle. Reminded me of my older grandpa, not a spry guy in his 50s.

Our tipster added that Jobs seemed to be walking at maybe half the speed of a normal walk, and "looked frail."

Now, Jobs just pushed through what he hopes will become a breakthrough product, a big success in a category that's produced basically nothing but failure. He's known for pushing his staff — and himself — hard to meet deadlines in the months leading up to product announcements. And, though he was seated part of the time there, on stage Jobs gave his usual intense performance.

So it's no surprise he might be exhausted at the end of all that.

But trying to restrict pictures only pushes people away from innocuous explanations and toward old concerns about his health. It's a touchy subject, one Apple hushed up for a long time and even made false statements about. But pancreatic cancer survivor Jobs nearly "starved to death," a source told the Wall Street Journal, before receiving a liver transplant last spring.

So we're curious what people saw. If you were there, email us and tell us how Jobs looked to you. Or better yet, if you spot video from Jobs' building exit — a cameraman appeared to be filming at one point, we understand — send us a pointer.

In the meantime, we've put some video of Jobs walking on stage on Wednesday above, along with some older footage from events in 2005 and 2003. Jobs clearly hasn't piled the weight back on yet (compare to 2008 and 2009 pictures here), but his deliberately slow on-stage gait was only a bit faster in 2005. And it's hard to guess why Jobs was slower on entrance (we've muted the sound) than in 2003 — but easy to speculate wildly, which is why we hope Apple pivots to a policy of releasing more information about Jobs' health, rather than trying to restrict people from gathering scant data of their own.

UPDATE: Here's a YouTube of part of Jobs' departure:

For all the talk that the Apple Tablet will be the best platform yet for digital books, magazines and newspapers, and for all the evidence of Apple's quiet talks with publishers, little if anything is known about Jobs' priorities for his forthcoming device. Sure, Jobs wants glossy magazine and textbooks on the tablet, but he might pitch the product to consumers primarily as a great way to watch videos, check email and play games. E-books will likely be a major selling point, too, given Amazon's success with the Kindle, but at what length Jobs will emphasize sales of magazines and newspapers remains to be seen.

One could hardly fault Apple for focusing on media other than print. After all, the company's only real priority is to make money selling attractive products to consumers. And consumers show they are less interested in buying print content every year.

On the flip side, Apple has repeatedly shown that it leads consumer demand as much as it follows it, expanding markets (online music stores, smartphones, MP3 players) through elegant and simple design and ease of use.

So the tablet's potential impact on the oldest of old media is ultimately bounded by Jobs' own priorities. If he keeps his reality distortion field focused on their products for a good portion of his speech, magazine and newspaper executives will take heart. (The book guys, again, have less to worry about.) If he doesn't, they'll no doubt be reaching for their heart medication.

A few specific things to watch for:

• Does Jobs bring a print exec on stage? +1 point
  
• Does Jobs bring a magazine exec/editor (Jann Wenner?) on stage? +2 points
  
• Does Jobs bring a newspaper exec/editor (Robert Thomson?) on stage? +3 points
  
• Does Jobs demo an interactive magazine or newspaper? +2 points for each minute (or fraction thereof)
  
• Does Jobs demo an e-book? +1 point for each minute (or fraction thereof)
  
• Does Jobs spend more showing off print on the tablet, or on shiny video and videogame content? +/-5 points
  
• Is there a print media store ready to go today? +5 points
  
• If the tablet isn't shipping today, is a print media store promised to be ready when it does ship? +3 points
  
• Does Jobs tell a personal anecdote highlighting his own personal love for a particular piece of print media (Rollling Stone, New York Times, etc.)? +8 points
  
• Does Jobs reference Gutenberg or Moses? +5 points

Post your own rubrics in the comments and we may include them in our post-announcement analysis.

It's hard to choose, we know. But our media-supersaturated culture is rapidly converging all planetary communication — whether about politics, media, technology or imaginary warring castaways — into an omnipresent digital singularity. And in this singularity, only one topic can "win," by amassing the most tweets, Google searches and mythical conversations around the office "watercooler."

Thus far, the Apple Tablet seems to be dominating the discussion. But let's not forget, nothing has actually happened yet. So we'll run down the contenders below, then ask you to vote on the most important event so far this year, aside from the inevitably forthcoming John Edwards-Hipster Grifter sex tape.

Apple Tablet

The big event: Apple's John Lennon wannabe CEO is universally expected to unveil a tablet computer at a special company event in San Francisco Wednesday. Think iPhone, but much larger.

Why it matters: Print media companies like the New York Times and Condé Nast hope it will save their declining business models by giving people a convenient and compelling way to read lengthy, high-quality content on a digital device. The tablet could also change the way people watch movies and TV shows, and even where they compose emails (read: on the toilet).

Why it might 'win': Americans love shiny expensive plastic things. They buy them with money they don't have so they can show it off to friends, producing a sort of "consumer's high" that lasts literally minutes. Jobs is by far the most skilled "pimp" for this orgasmic consumer experience.

Lost premiere

The big event: ABC's shamelessly manipulative castaway mystery series has been running for five seasons and will finally, mercifully end in its sixth, set to begin next Tuesday. Obama once considered giving his (technically) first State of the Union address on this date, but decided not to do so after an outcry from fans of the series. Go democracy.

Why it matters: Lost is America's shifty, conniving boyfriend. We're stuck in an emotionally destructive relationship but we just can't quit this show. We keep thinking, "this time he isn't transparently screwing with my fears and insecurities, there will be a real payoff," or, "he will learn the importance of solid interpersonal communication skills, such as telling your friends before you attempt to cross a lethal sonic fence and steal something from a well-armed gang of sociopaths." That usually doesn't turn out to be the case, but every now and then — just often enough — we're pleasantly surprised.

Why it might 'win': Americans get off on the neverending drama of a group of people slightly dumber than themselves, especially when it's utterly pointless. Especially when it's pointless. Which brings us to politics, which seems to be relatively unpopular except when rendered as trivialities.

State of the Union

The big event: Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress last year, but technically this is the president's first State of the Union address. Drama is high: The Democrats just lost their all-important supermajority in the Senate thanks to an upset loss of Ted Kennedy's seat to a Massachusetts Republican, and the president's one big achievement, health care reform, is now imperiled.

Why it matters: It's a gauge of Obama's priorities and strategy for implementing them at a pivotal time in his administration. There's been a lot of talk in the press about how he'll adopt a "tougher" and "angrier" posture to try and win over disgruntled independent voters, and maybe even shift focus to the economy.

Why it might 'win': Because the ideas it contains could ultimately touch the lives of millions of jobless and sick Americans, not to mention those of the many wealthy Goldman Sachs executives who are paying scandalously high taxes on their federally-funded. multimillion dollar bonuses this year.

But why wait to tweet and Facebook status and Tumblr? Tell us now which event is currently making you metaphorically squeal with anticipation:

Just ask Google. Steve Jobs' imaginary Jesus Tablet is the number one trending topic among U.S.-based users of the search engine. Barack Obama's big speech about the economy and health care and the future of this badly divided country and whatnot barely registers (see Google chart below). Obama obviously should have kept his "health care reform" idea secret until the last possible second, manufactured it in China, and unveiled it using a Power Point deck and a Gap outfit he hasn't washed since 1997.

Steve Jobs is "supportive of the old guard and [he] looks to help them by giving them new forms of distribution," says an anonymous person who's worked with him. As Apple has a track record of leaking information to the Journal, in a process outlined here, the rest of their information may prove true too:

• It'll have a virtual keyboard
• And a camera on the front that will recognise users
• They've talked with The New York Times, Conde Nast, HarperCollins Publishers and News Corp. Despite the Times' claims yesterday that they are wary of the tablet, the Journal gets a quote from Sulzberger saying "stay tuned." Which is as glowing a confirmation of the NYT on the tablet as we'll get. There's also a hint that Apple and the Times have worked on a new way to pay for news.
• Apple also want to do a "best of TV" subscription service — users would pay monthly for four to six shows from each network that they could watch on demand.

Sure, one event, involving a room full of sweaty computer geeks, is at 1 pm ET, while the other, involving a joint session of Congress, is at 9 pm ET. Dates for both were announced today, and clearly both will get some press coverage. But it's only natural to wonder which presentation more people will still be talking about the next morning. You don't have to think too hard about it: This is the president who was hounded with press questions about his speech pre-empting Lost, until he promised that wouldn't happen.

Of course it does. CEO Steve Jobs is as much a detail-oriented obsessive as he is press-hating dissembler. What's surprising is that one of the secretive CEO's former lieutenants would dare break the company's code of silence and explicitly show how the company lays the groundwork for possible intentional distortions. John Matellaro, a former Apple senior marketing manager, has written in the Mac Observer about how the company staged "controlled leaks" of information, such as, in all likelihood, the Wall Street Journal's Monday article on the Apple tablet.

The whole process, Matellaro writes, is orchestrated in a way as to make it easy for Apple to deny that they ever said anything:

The communication is always done in person or on the phone. Never via e-mail. That's so that if there's ever any dispute about what transpired, there's no paper trail to contradict either party's version of the story. Both sides can maintain plausible deniability and simply claim a misunderstanding. That protects Apple and the publication.

Such leaks are typically done to solve problems like an unclosed partner deal, uncertainty over how the public will react to pricing or to dissuade competitors. The goal is never, as far as Matellaro is concerned, never to drive up Apple share prices, as happened after the recent Journal story. Because it's not like Steve Jobs has ever been accused of manipulating stock prices.(Pic: Jobs, announcing the arrival of the iPhone in Germany, September 2007. Getty Images.)

The Apple Tablet has been something of a holy grail for gadget fiends. Now print publishers are enlisting in the cause with just as much fervor. Condé Nast's plan, as described by company execs to Peter Kafka of All Things D: Port Wired to Apple's tablet by mid-2010, followed later by all 17 other titles. By using a special digital format now under development by Adobe — which makes the publishing software that Condé and most other magazine publishers use — Condé also hopes to gain compatibility with tablet and other touch-screen devices made by Hewlett Packard and others.

Jobs should be flattered that such a high-profile publisher is chomping at the bit to get onto his new gizmo. Condé joins New York Times editor Bill Keller in talking up Apple's device; News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch is another recent print-media convert to the tablet religion.

Condé, clearly eager, should keep its enthusiasm in check. The company has closed six magazines and slashed budgets 25 percent at its remaining titles this year, setting off a wave of layoffs. It's doubtful that even Steve Jobs can come up with a silver bullet to rescue businesses that have spent many years squandering past digital opportunities. Especially if the company rushes too quickly and turns out a slapdash tablet product that burns its readers on the format forever.

(Photo illustration by Photo Giddy on Flickr)

TechCrunch is running pictures of Apple's c. 1990 prototablet today. Not much more than an inch thick, supposedly, the device was a portable Mac that responded to stylus input. The design was ahead of its time: judging from the photo above, it might actually pass for an Amazon Kindle 19 years later. But then-CEO John Sculley killed the deal so the company could focus on the doomed Newton PDA. Short-sighted? Hardly; here's what resurrected Apple messiah/CEO Steve Jobs himself said about tablets in 2003:

We look at the tablet and we think it is going to fail.... Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. And people accuse us of niche markets.

Tablets: They suck and are useless until the day Apple says they don't anymore.

Just witness the position Apple is in with the New York Times. After we pointed out that Times editor had casually mentioned "the impending Apple slate" at an off-the-record confab, the newspaper's editor clammed up. When Peter Kafka of All Things D Keller asked him to elaborate, he got a stern quote via PR: "I ain't sayin'" anything about Apple's rumored device. But the horse was already out of the barn. One can only imagine what sort of conversation Keller might have had with Apple's famously caustic CEO Steve Jobs after that slip.

It's a clash of cultures: Keller specializes in publishing information as quickly as possible; Jobs in keeping in secret, for long stretches of time. It's also an unavoidable situation for Apple. To get beautiful content to show off the capabilities of the tablet and its (presumed) sharp color display, Apple has been meeting with magazines, newspapers and book publishers, who have lots of glossy, high-resolution content. There's no way Apple executives would talking to these guys about a forthcoming device if it didn't feel they absolutely had to.

It must be a painful situation for Apple. At least the company has lots of practice in manipulating the media. Just not usually from such an uncomfortably close distance.

Earlier this year a stealth team from the newspaper was rumoured, along with magazine and textbook publishers, to have met with some of Steve Jobs' representatives.

Last week the Keller gave a speech that was apparently supposed to be off the record, but that was posted by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. He said that he now reads the Times online himself and some other stuff that can best be summed up with: pay versus free, integration, more efforts by the print side, why can't we all just get along:

But then, at about 8.30 in the video, he includes the Apple tablet as part of a specific list of platforms they're working on bringing Times content to, saying:

"I'm hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate..."

Maybe he just reads other tech-related parts of the internets, as well as the Times, believes the rumours and doesn't know anything we don't. But if the paper of record is engaged with Apple in developing the savior of journalism it seems hard to believe no-one would have informed the boss.

Realizing that they've lost their edge as the world's great evil empire, Disney has called on Apple overlord Jobs, who joined the board back in 2006, to help them steer a new path toward consumerist greatness. And, to that end, Jobs gave Disney access to his Apple Store blueprints and encouraged engineers to "think bigger," which means stores are no longer retail centers, but "Imagination Centers" that bubble with "Pixar-esque winks and nods."

Yes, gone are the days of plush toy displays and in are the days of video clips on demand, fake trees that sing happy birthday and, while they're at it, olfactory experimentation:

There will be a scent component; if a clip from Disney's coming "A Christmas Carol" is playing in the theater, the whole store might suddenly be made to smell like a Christmas tree.

Wow! This all sounds totally necessary!

Taken with Disney's plans for a brand-centric Comic-Con, it seems the company's poised to recreate the broken world in its own nightmarish image. And, in a move that would finally validate all those "Disneyfication" critiques of New York, Disney may open a new flagship store in Times Square. Sigh.

As our colleague Brian Lam at Gizmodo has reported, Apple — and presumably CEO Jobs — is trying to woo magazine, newspaper and texbook publishers to provide content for Apple's forthcoming tablet device, rumored to resemble an overgrown iPhone. It must have been humbling for magazine publishers, a notoriously egotistical bunch, to be summoned to Apple's Cupertino campus to submit their vision of the future to Jobs, as Lam reported.

So it's not entirely surprising that a backlash is said to be forming. Here's how one newspaper executive described Jobs and his previous iTunes Store deals, in Ad Age: "People put their hands out and let him put the handcuffs on them... The same thing now is happening with the publishing industry. They are afraid to do anything, to say anything. At the same time, they're saying, 'Let's see what other options we have.'"

The dissident publishers are talking about putting their own storefront app on the tablet, selling content from all the different publishing companies, according to Ad Age. That way, their thinking goes, the content doesn't become a "commodity" eclipsed by the device, as happened with Apple's music store and iPod.

Never mind that the iTunes Store has provided the only significant source of digital revenue for the struggling record labels, and became the largest single music retailer in the U.S. this year, according to an NPD estimate, moving 25 percent of units and turning about 70 percent of the gross proceeds over to content creators.

It's entirely likely print publishers will be able to create their own Apple tablet storefront if that's what they decide to do. After all, Apple recently enabled the selling of content within iPhone Apps, and there's no reason to think the situation wouldn't be the same on an iPhone-like tablet, particularly with Apple under government scrutiny about apps it vetoes.

But withholding print content from Apple's own store would be like the self-destructive act of a petulant, confused teenager. Consumers are already running searchers within the iTunes Store for music, movies, TV shows, e-books, audio books and other media; if newspaper and magazine publishers are in the mix, they get the chance to sell related content in the search results. Assuming a reasonable revenue split can be reached, why wouldn't publishers want to be where the media consumers already are? It's not like they've been irrationally lashing out at the internet lately. (Ahem.)