Apple confirms MySpace ban in retail stores
In New York City, you can go to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in midtown 24 hours a day, seven days a week and browse the Web from the Macs on display. But due to a new Apple regulation, you can no longer access MySpace.com.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple runs its retail Macs as an always-on public web experience — the Fifth Avenue store in New York browses around the clock — and this week the company confirmed that a new internal regulation now carves one site out of that openness: MySpace.com is blocked on display machines. The move lands in a busy stretch for the company, days before Steve Jobs is confirmed to show a feature-complete Mac OS X Leopard at WWDC amid rumors of an iPhone stage appearance.
The ban matters because these are machines Apple controls end to end — hardware, OS, and network environment — so the restriction is a deliberate editorial choice about which parts of the social web belong on Apple hardware, made while MySpace is the largest social network in the market.
First-order effects
- Store visitors who use the 24/7 display Macs to check MySpace hit a block instead of the site, and Apple employees enforce a written regulation rather than ad-hoc store discretion.
Second-order effects
- MySpace loses a free demonstration surface where non-owners — people considering a Mac purchase — encountered it on Apple hardware, while rival social networks remain reachable, turning the ban into a de facto ranking of acceptable services.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 'open computer' becomes conditional: Apple demonstrates it will restrict what its hardware can reach even pre-sale, establishing curation of the user experience as standard practice for its retail fleet.
The trend: Device makers are shifting from shipping open machines to actively managing how their hardware is experienced, with Apple's always-browsing store Macs as an early testbed for curated access.