@unnumbered Special Report: Apple's New Look and Feel You might have read about the new look-and-feel copyright lawsuit, Apple vs. Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. Apple claims the power to stop people from writing any program that works even vaguely like a Macintosh. If they and other look-and-feel plaintiffs triumph, they will use this new power over the public to put an end to free software that could substitute for commercial software. In the weeks after the suit was filed, USENET reverberated with condemnation for Apple. GNU supporters Richard Stallman, John Gilmore, and Paul Rubin decided to take action against Apple's no-longer-deserved reputation as a force for progress. Apple's reputation comes from having made better computers; but now, Apple is working to make all non-Apple computers worse. If this deprives the public of the future work of many companies, the harm done would be many times the good that any one company does. Our hope was that if the user community realizes how destructive Apple's present actions are, Apple would lose customers and have more trouble finding employees. Our method of action was to print 5000 buttons that say ``Keep Your Lawyers Off My Computer'' and hand them out at the West Coast Computer Faire. The center of the button shows the rainbow-apple logo with a Gigeresque mouth full of ferocious teeth. The picture was drawn by Etienne Suvasa, who also drew the cover for the GNU Emacs manual. We call the picture ``Apple's New Look and Feel''. We gave out nearly 4000 buttons at the show (saving the rest for afterwards). The result was a great success: the extent of anger at Apple was apparent to everyone at the show. Many of the invited speakers at the show wore our buttons, spoke about them, or even waved them from the podium. The press noticed this: at least one Macintosh user's magazine carried a photo of the button afterwards. Some of you may be considering using, buying, or recommending Macintoshes; you might even be writing programs for them or thinking about it. Please think twice and look for an alternative. Doing those things means more success for Apple, and this could encourage Apple to persist in its aggression. It also encourages other companies to try similar obstructionism. [It is because of this boycott that we don't include support for Macintosh Unix in GNU software.] You might think that your current project ``needs'' a Macintosh now. If you find yourself thinking this way, consider the far future. You probably plan to be alive a year or two from now, and working on some other project. You will want to get good computers for that, too. But an Apple monopoly could easily make the price of such computers at that time several times what it would otherwise be. Your decision to use some other kind of machine, or to defer your purchases now, might make sure that the machines your next project needs are affordable when you need them. Newspapers report that Macintosh clones will be available soon. If you must buy a Macintosh-like machine, buy a clone. Don't feed the lawyers!