Taking a little bite of the Apple…

State insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler has fined Apple Computer, Inc. $100,000 for selling tens of thousands of service contracts in Washington without registering.

Under a seven-year-old law, any company that sells a service contract — a promise to repair or replace a computer, appliance or other product — must register with Kreidler’s office.

Customers who spend the extra money for such a plan, Kreidler said, “assume the company has taken the basic step of registering in our state.”

Apple, he said, didn’t. Yet it sold 43,080 service contracts here between 2000 and 2004.

The company is now registered.