Apple doesn't want me in their stores, and they're proving it with a modern-day book-burning. Except instead of burning my site with fire, they're using the Internet equivalent: a firewall. Any time you try to access my website using the Internet connection in an Apple store, my site is blocked. So from now until March 15th, 2013, any time anyone visits my site using an Apple product (including but not limited to iPads, iPhones, or Macs) they will see a splash page warning before entering my site. Update (02/20/13): I've decided to remove the ban on Apple products because a number of people have emailed to say that they're forced to use Apple products for work, so I've introduced a ban on Apple employees instead. All requests to my website from Apple IP addresses (as of this writing, I've received over 80 since publishing this article) will be banned. This is what Apple employees will see when trying to access my site.

Yes, the company that once alluded to an Orwellian future with controlled media, is now controlling media. I'd heard rumors of an Apple ban for months, but it wasn't until I sent a link to a friend of mine that he wasn't able to open from inside an Apple store that I confirmed the ban.

I decided to try being a different kind of dick for once: the investigative kind. So I went to an Apple Store to see this so-called ban for myself, and what I found was appalling:

Not only was my main page being redirected, but direct links to files came up as "404 - Not Found." This is troubling not only because it falsely suggests that my site is generating errors that it's not—reflecting poorly on me, and even my hosting providers—but it's also giving the impression that I don't exist. Apple's ban is redirecting my page to their site, so direct links are probably trying to resolve a file that doesn't exist on their server. But the perception still exists that my site is the one generating errors or is possibly non-existent.

Being that my site is blocked while countless other sites with questionable content are not suggests that the main reason Apple decided to ban me is because I was critical of them in the past. My iPhone article has been read over 5.5 million times as of this writing, and was at one point one of the most shared articles on the Internet. The article was so popular that it even got linked to from within Apple itself (I saw links in my access logs coming directly from the *.apple.com domain). So my criticism definitely got their attention. And now they're censoring me because they feel threatened by me.

Speaking of threats to tyranny, I received reports a long time ago about my website being banned in the United Arab Emirates. So I flew to the country and checked it out myself. My site is indeed banned. This is a screenshot I took in Dubai:

But I didn't come unprepared: I brought a bunch of print-outs of my website to leave behind in the country, because I'm like the Batman of pettiness:

And while I was at it, I made a cock out of the world's tallest building for my troubles:

So yes, essentially I flew 7804 miles (12,560 km) to another country just to litter:

I have mastered all things petty. Game over.

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