Steven Frank is a well-known Mac programmer who along with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington created quite a stir a week or so ago when they announced, separately, that they were giving up their iPhone’s as part of a moral protest against Apple’s draconian app store policies.
Now comes word that Phil Schiller has reached out to Frank, much in the same way he did to John Gruber of DF, to address some of Frank’s iTunes App Store concerns. While Frank hasn’t republished Schiller’s email, he noted that the thrust of it could be summed up thusly – “we’re listening to your feedback.”
So given Schiller’s response, will Frank’s self imposed boycott of the iPhone be coming to an end? Frank writes:
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?
We think choosing tech products as a function of ill-placed moral concerns is ridiculous to begin with. The app store can’t make everyone happy all the time. Apple slips up from time to time, just like any other company, but the important thing is that Apple appears to have its finger on the pulse of its critics, and is keen on doing all it can to improve the iPhone experience even more for its users.
Related: Dropping the iPhone over the removal of Google Voice.. Seriously!?
August 12th, 2009 at 6:43 am
“We think choosing tech products as a function of ill-placed moral concerns is ridiculous to begin with…”
Seems reasonable – this isn’t boycotting apartheid-era South Africa we’re talking here.