Marco Arment:
No sensible developer should be worried about angering “Apple” by fairly expressing legitimate criticism.
Agreed.
There is no single “Apple” to anger, as the company comprises thousands of people across many different departments, all of whom can think for themselves. I’m sure some of them can’t take criticism well and may be vindictive — any large group of people will contain almost every personality type — but that’s not the attitude of any of the Apple people I’ve interacted with.
This has been my experience as well.
That article from Marco was terrible. The second sentence: “But the software quality has fallen so much in the last few years that I’m deeply concerned for its future.”
No, you don’t just get to make an assertion like that and move on. If the remainder of the article had been proving that, he’d have been on to something. But he put it down there, called it obvious, and moved on. And this is why I think he regrets the post. I think he’s crazy — Apple’s software has always been hit and miss! — but a better article might have supported his thesis instead of being laughable.
For the record, I think Apple’s software quality has improved vastly. There are a few bugs, even embarrassing ones, but they’re nothing compared to the disasters of Apple’s past software releases. Yes, iOS 8.0.1 was a disaster. But one point really doesn’t make a trend.
As for criticizing Apple: I have no problem criticizing Apple. But I don’t think going public with a review concern first makes any sense, and I don’t think sharing exact wording is helpful. The rejection copy from App Review is not meant to be a public document. Apple keeps the warts on my writing private, why would I publish theirs?
The idea that marco somehow “forgets” or “doesn’t realize” how large his audience is or how influential he is in the Apple dev market is perhaps the most disingenuous part. He knows his numbers, he knows his audience. There isn’t a podcast or dev conference he isn’t invited to be a part of. if he wants to contribute to a web site, I have a hard time thinking of one in the Apple market he’d have a scintilla of trouble being published on.
Yet every time he writes anything that gets the slightest bit of blowback, he starts in with this unbelievable tripe about how “oh, I just keep forgetting how many people read my site.”
The idea that the author of as many major web apps as him has no idea about his numbers? That he “forgets” them, and thinks there’s like 6 people reading them?
Bull.
Shit.
He does come off as a bit coy.
Which is why so much of what he writes is so grating.