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.
