Freshman year is usually a hectic period of adjustment for any student.

But only a semester into his first year at Harvard, Nicholas M. Ciarelli ’08, also had to deal with being sued by a major computer company.

After enthusiastically keeping watch over Apple Computer, Inc. for the last seven years on his popular Mac information website, Ciarelli did not expect that the computer giant had also increased its scrutiny of him.

But on Jan. 4, the company filed a lawsuit against Ciarelli.

SCOOPING APPLE

Ciarelli, who goes by the name Nick dePlume on the internet, started thinksecret.com, which publishes information about Apple products and developments by soliciting insider tips, in 1998—when he was only 13 years old.

Ciarelli did not resemble a kid with technological brilliance so much as a journalist with a lot of initiative.

“When I started out, it was not, like, a serious thing,” says Ciarelli. “I already had this interest in Apple products. I was very interested in what was coming next. I definitely wanted to be able to report that kind of news to people.”

“I won’t say that I was terribly successful at that when I was 13 or 14,” he adds.

“I guess it’s really the same thing as any reporter who’s starting out on a beat,” Ciarelli continues. “In most cases, when you’re starting out on the beat, you know no one and you just have to start from scratch.”

Eventually, Ciarelli built up sources and thinksecret.com was able to report on products before Apple officially released them, increasing the site’s popularity.

“A lot of the site’s popularity has been tied to big scoops. Each big scoop just adds on to your track record for reporting on Apple,” says Ciarelli.

Thinksecret.com broke news of the arrival of the $499 Mac mini and iLife ’05 software package two weeks before their official release by Apple.

And it announced that Apple would unveil a digital music player one week before Apple released its first iPod in 2001.

In the early stages of the site’s development, Ciarelli remembers being “blown away” by the number of hits his website was receiving.