Every now and then there’s some focus around the Mac communities because of their intense passion for the platform — such focus even becoming a strong hatred at some point. Such was the case with a recent hacker calling himself Malcor. He launched his own war against Mac websites, starting with GlennWolsey.com because of “excessive Apple fanboism”. When the website was hacked, he displayed a stern warning to other Apple websites to tone it down before they were the next victims of his attacks. The hacker gave advanced hints — if not being specific — of which websites were next in his own blog. The following Apple websites were hacked in this order: MacApper.com, AppleMatters.com, and iPhoneMatters.com.

Many people, including non-Apple users, pleaded Malcor to stop. After all, many interpreted these acts as terrorism. But most surprisingly, another good amount of people also praised him for his great work against the Apple supporters. Was the Apple distinction between users more hated than loved? That’ll be a another discussion, because one of latest hacked sites, AppleMatters.com, just clarified that all of this was a PR stunt gone too far — as previously suggested by Norwegian Apple site, Mac1.

Did they really go too far with this PR stunt? And by “they”, we mean the website owners — since the real master-mind hasn’t revealed himself yet — although the speculation is that this PR stunt is for the next Mac Heist. But, well, whether there was fairness in this stunt is were people disagree, as it has achieved its purpose of gathering everyone’s attention — but just as well messed with the community’s feelings in the process. The thing is, the stunt wasn’t contained only within the Mac community, as the fear eventually spread to users of the Expression Engine platform, where the Expression Engine people had to go ahead and find out the truth from the affected one, AppleMatters.com, on whether the platform was really ever hacked (and eventually brought out the confession from the website).

I’m disappointed. The Mac community enjoyed great PR stunts in the past that didn’t bring out any negativity — why couldn’t this one be as well? Just as someone may have taken some entertainment out of this, it was a bad move. As long as people feel betrayed, it may as well be considered a loss. This will probably serve as a lesson in how to set the limits of PR interaction, and then stop. These websites have lost some trust from their faithful readers, who may as well feel deceived by them. That trust will take some time to be regained, but this time it should come from positive actions that don’t victimize anyone at the end (as those who support “Mac fanboism” were the ones in this case). I do not claim to know why they did it, or try to justify the truth behind all of this. But as a Mac enthusiast, I do feel the ripples from this event coming — we’re one big Mac-loving community, after all — and hope everything passes without further repercussions.

UPDATE - Yes, it was all about the next Mac Heist. The rest of the stunt participants are also confessing their involvement, and asking for everyone’s forgiveness. You can read their posts here, here, and here. But the backlash of MacApper’s readers isn’t going so good, truth to be told.