Panic co-founder Steven Frank recently detailed his outrage at Apple's rejection of the Google Voice application and other controversial App Store policies. Given that there's been no signs of improvement after a year, Frank decided to personally boycott the iPhone:
I've reached a point where I can no longer just sit back and watch this. The iPhone ecosystem is toxic, and I can't participate any more until it is fixed. As people have told me so many times: It's Apple's ballgame, and Apple gets to make the rules, and if I don't like it, I can leave. So, I don't like it, and I'm leaving.
Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller has since personally responded to Frank to provide him some reassurance that Apple was listening to his feedback.
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.
The email seemed to provide some reassurace to Frank that Apple was taking the App Store criticisms seriously and will hopefully address them in the near future. Schiller also recently personally responded to Daring Fireball's John Gruber addressing some other App Store criticisms.
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