On Saturday night, we drove up to Seattle to attend a memorial service for my wife’s grandmother. Shortly after checking into the hotel, I checked the inbox on my Android phone and found myself staring at the words “Philip Schiller”.
Needless to say, I had a minor freakout. People have questioned my sanity to raise hackles about the iPhone while simultaneously depending indirectly on Apple for an income. Which way was this going to go? I tapped on it.
I haven’t sought Phil’s explicit permission to republish the letter, so I won’t do so here. But to summarize, he said: “we’re listening to your feedback”. Not all of my suggested solutions were viable, he said, but they were taking it all in as they continue to evolve the app store.
He went on to say that the rumors of widespread e-book app rejection I’d heard were false — that specifically one e-book app had been rejected because it facilitated iPhone-to-iPhone sharing of (potentially copyrighted) books. But that otherwise, there was no sweeping ban on e-book readers.
First, I breathed a sigh of relief that this was such a courteous, polite, and reassuring email. Second, I wondered where this left me in terms of my self-imposed boycott.
Technically, nothing specific has actually visibly changed in the last few days. I said I wouldn’t go back until I could see actual demonstrable progress being made. And a boycott that lasts all of a week and a half comes off as more of a light comedy than any sort of serious movement.
What I do have is a comment from Phil that Apple has read what I (and others) have written recently, and that they’re taking it very seriously. Realistically, what more could I hope to achieve from my puny blog posts and arm-flailing?
I laid out my case to the best of my ability, and had a Senior VP from Apple tell me “we hear you”. It seems like at this point, continuing my boycott doesn’t really achieve anything in the grand scheme of things except making my life a bit more miserable. As I tried to explain in my response to Phil, I don’t complain about the things I hate — I complain about the things I love.
So, what do I do now, dear readers? Stick pedantically to my guns? Or take this new information at face value?
If nothing else, I am very grateful that Phil actually took the time to contact me. As I’ve said repeatedly, communication will solve this problem — not silence. Let’s push that communication down from executives-to-bloggers to app-store-to-developers and I think we’ve really got a breakthrough.
