Hey, look! Apple wins a court ruling today affirming their right to subpoena names and sources for recent leaks of company information. Although the ruling doesn't explicitly name bloggers, one assumes that it's a broad blow for them as the suit was Apple vs. three Apple/Mac enthusiast sites.

According to Judge James P. Kleinberg, "unlike the whistle-blower who discloses a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or the government employee who reveals mismanagement or worse by our public officials," the Web sites are "doing nothing more than feeding the public's insatiable desire for information."

Apple may win this one on legal technicalities, but many a well-timed press leak has rocket-booster interest in a Silicon Valley product. More importantly, the aforementioned leaks doesn't seem harmful to company health—inside numbers or truly visionary projects, for example. They simply predated public announcement of already-developed products by a couple of days.

Case in point: My mother called about a whole matrix of PC woes two days after the Mac mini was officially announced. She's always selflessly been last in the line of computer inheritance, but in the past couple of years has spent more and more time online, communicating with relatives around the world and jumping headfirst into a new career and business. At that point, I'd already been able to spend several days scheming how perfect that machine would be for her and was able to recommend it more enthusiastically than I could have for a product I'd heard of two days prior.

A few hours later the decision, Think Secret tells us that Tiger is due this April.