When is an apple simply an apple? Never, says Apple

Even though Steve Jobs is no longer with us (and possibly hovering over Silicon Valley in a glass-encased heaven, if Buddhist monk Phra Chaibul Dhammajayo is correct), it’s nice to know some things at Apple never change.

Take this week’s iPhone 5 announcement, for example. The thing that has caused a lot of fanboys’ boxers to bunch is the new 8-pin Lightning connector, which immediately makes obsolete hundreds of millions of iDocks and other devices designed for the old 30-pin connector. Of course, Apple is happy to sell you an adapter for the old connectors for $30 to $40– or roughly the same cost as a lot of those old iDocks.

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In an era where nearly every smartphone maker is standardizing on MicroUSB (about friggin’ time, too), Apple had to go its own way. That’s just how it rolls. Don’t like it? There’s sure to be a Samsung Galaxy model that looks and acts just like the new iPhone — at least, until Apple obtains an injunction against it.

Now from Eastern Europe comes news that Apple is suing a company named A.PL Internet, which looks to be the Polish answer to Webvan or Peapod. Why would an online grocer 5,874 miles from Cupertino get under Apple’s skin?

According to The Next Web, it could be the store’s URL: a.pl. Or it could be the logo for A.PL’s sister site, Fresh24.pl, which is — wait for it — an apple.

Clearly Apple is concerned about brand confusion. You wouldn’t want people shopping for an iPad to order 15 pounds of kielbasa by mistake. You don’t want somebody looking for one of those nifty new iPods to have to settle for an iPierogi instead.

These kinds of suits are par for the course for the Cupertino crew. In October 2009, Apple sued the Woolworths department store chain after it unveiled a stylized “w” in the shape of an apple peel. In April 2008, it complained when the city of New York — otherwise known as the Big Apple — deployed a logo for its GreeNYC ecology campaign that looked vaguely apple-ish, though it also resembled an infinity sign that’s happy to see you. Apple has also taken legal action against the Victoria School of Business and Technology, a music promoter named Poison Apple, and an adults-only video service in Australia — all for the crime of employing a logo containing the forbidden fruit.

I understand Apple has been preparing to sue God over the ownership of the fruit itself. Or maybe that’s something I read once on the InterWebs.

You know what all of these logos have in common? Not the apple shape itself so much as the angled leaf at the top. Really, that’s what the Fresh24 logo is: a circle with a leaf. For all we know, the mystery fruit could be a peach. (Maybe it’ll end up getting sued by the folks who own Peachtree Accounting.) GreeNYC, that Canadian school of business, that porn channel down under? All with very leafy logos.

None of this matters to Apple because it apparently believes it invented these things and now owns them. Woz may be off on his own, enjoying his riches. Jobs may be on a higher plane. But Apple’s legacy of doing whatever it wants to whomever it wants remains. Call it the Divine Right of Steves, if you want. Or maybe just a leaf of faith.

Is Apple ripe for a fall? Share your thoughts below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “When is an apple simply an apple? Never, says Apple,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.