When Steve Jobs wanted to quell discontent from early adopters over the $200 price drop to the iPhone, he wrote a letter to all the iPhone users. When his company’s stock started to rise and fall based on rumors about his health, he issued a letter explaining his situation (which may or may not have been the truth). When he wanted to rally public support for the elimination of DRM in the iTunes Music Store and make it clear Apple didn’t really want it in the first place, he wrote his “Thoughts On Music.”
Steve Jobs’ words carry a lot of weight and it’s time to hear from him again about the problems with the App Store. There are far too many examples of lives being impacted by the App Store approval process for the silence to continue any longer.
So, like any Apple obsessed fanboy with a little too much time on his hands, I decided I couldn’t wait for Steve Jobs to write a letter.
So I wrote the letter myself.
What began as a geeky exercise became a way for me to try to understand Apple’s erratic behavior over the last year. It’s been one bizarre event after another, from the unexpected announcement of an SDK to the approval and rejection of NetShare and finally to the elimination of Google Voice, which is arguably one of the most useful apps that could ever make it onto the iPhone.
No matter if you hate Apple for the way they’ve hurt hardworking developers or if you still have faith that Steve Jobs has some master plan, hopefully this letter can help you understand Apple’s reasoning a little bit better too. If nothing else, it’ll prepare you for the types of things we can probably expect from Apple when the company finally decides to talk about what they’ve been doing in the upcoming weeks or months.
Here it is.
Interesting take. I think you are being far too nice to Apple in this letter though. This differs from the past when he wrote the “Thoughts on Music” letter, because at that time Apple’s hands really were tied. They did not own the rights to distribute the music freely. In regards to the App Store they don’t want to open it up. If they did, they would. They can! They are the gatekeepers, there is no RIAA to blame.
Right on about the fact that Apple has to monitor apps if they are going to distribute them, and if they didn’t distribute them then apps would attract a far smaller audience. It’s easy for people (including me) to jump on the “Apple Fail” bandwagon, but this letter makes us stop and think about the issues. I am sure Apple would want the best apps available on the iPhone, it makes them look good and they sell more units. Apple is not rejecting apps for the sake of rejecting apps, let’s stop and think about the reasons.
This letter starts good, but does not explain the rejection to Google Voice. None of the reasons about why Apple has to distribute and *reject* apps explains why Google Voice was rejected. The letter was fun to read, but I don’t think it answers our questions.
Albeit some punctuation and grammar errors, the letter sounds pretty close to what Jobs would write.
Plus, it is quite informative in that it puts all issues into perspective.