The closest thing we'll ever get to an official Apple blog | Hacker News Reader

The closest thing we'll ever get to an official Apple blog

stevemail.tumblr.com

51 pointsbarredo22 comments

I thought the URL for that was http://daringfireball.net :P

And this guy seems like he could be hired by Apple's Official Blog - "So, it's not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, 'Oh my God, Microsoft didn't aim high enough.' It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'"

Bill Gates on the iPad (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/12/ipad-bill-g...)

I actually expected to read a blog post talking about how Gruber's basically become Apple's official blogger in the wake of Steve Jobs replying to an email about the 3.3.1 fiasco redirecting the person he was writing to to Gruber's blog post defending the changes.

To me that email kind of validated the idea that Gruber is a real-life Apple shill. Meaning, on the take from Apple to publish their desired propaganda.

The first link currently on Gruber's blog is about an iPad DHCP problem. The first long essay currently on his blog criticizes Apple's app store policies (something Gruber does on a regular basis - see also his recent posts on the rejected app by the Pulitzer winner). Then there's his criticism of the HTC lawsuit...

Certainly Gruber is a fan of Apple, but so are a lot of people if Apple's consistently increasing sales are any indication. I get sick of people labeling him a "shill" because he happens to like the company, and/or has developed an insight into what Apple's management is thinking. Throwing around those sorts of accusations is the paranoid style of tech punditry, and a disservice to rational discussion.

Yep, this is a good description of his blog.

As a daily reader of his blog, there still is this deep, deep seated arrogance against any company other than Apple. Apple gets a fair set of positive and negative coverage, but any other company almost always gets _only_ negative coverage.

For example, the current frontpage has depressing things to say about Flip(Cisco), Adobe, RIM, Motorola, Goldman Sachs, Palm, Sony and Ning.

Positive mentions: Just 2. One each for Adobe(this is rare, and only because of hard evidence -- 2x speedup in Photoshop CS5) and Google. (One neutral mention of Unity).

The more worrying concept is that he is widely read by all of Apple's employees, all the way up to the top. Clearly some of his views resonate _in_to the company as well, so even if he is not on their payroll, I very much consider him an Apple evangelist, and take every negative comment of his with a huge pinch of salt.

I'm not sure how likely it is that they're actually paying him money; seems like a bit risky thing to do. It could simply be that incentives align: being the most prominent public Apple defender is a role that pays well, in ad-views/influence/etc., even if Apple isn't literally paying you. And he could, you know, just really like Apple; the company has a lot of pretty earnest fans, who, like fans everywhere, tend to be keen to defend their heroes.

For a little background, John Gruber tweeted "Someone should make a Tumblr site for (and only for) these Steve Jobs email replies." earlier today. It seems a few people have ran with the idea. He's retweeted[1] about 6 of them now, this one seems to be the most complete though.

[1] http://twitter.com/gruber

I wish http://www.fakesteve.net/ could be as succinct.

Really interesting point. While I love Fake Steve, it's hard now to imagine Real Steve as having so much to say. Minimalism seems to pervade his very being. Will Fake Steve have to change his schtick?

From MacStories.net, there are at least five other similar blogs:

http://stevejobsemailreplys.tumblr.com/

http://fromstevejobs.tumblr.com/

http://stevejobssays.tumblr.com/

http://emailsfromsteve.tumblr.com/

http://saysstevejobs.tumblr.com/

(from http://www.macstories.net/news/steve-jobs-email-replies-now-...)

As mrduncan noted, these all seem to be inspired by John Gruber's tweet asking for such a site:

http://twitter.com/gruber/status/12358833629

I can only dream of being so direct and to the point.

This is usually how I respond to emails as well. Doesn't seem to be an issue.

And I was just wondering if someone was going to think to compile all of those. And now that you are, will he stop answering them?

And oh, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple PR decides to do an "Email to Steve Jobs" section of the Apple site now.

I think Steve's generally succinct responses would be better acclimated to the Twittersphere. Steve should start tweeting, but I think even he knows his "reality distortion field" defies the laws of the Twitterverse.

Would be nice if his replies had a signature so we could be sure they actually came from Steve

This will go a long way to stopping Jobs from replying to emails.

I doubt it. Every email already gets a ton of press. How much higher profile could they be? Jobs knows exactly what he's doing with the responses.

It just seems like, if this catches on, external control of such a dump would threaten Apple's PR department pretty extensively. Perhaps the emails have been excusable heretofore because it's not all that common that they come up and get "tons of press", as you claim, or because they figured those isolated emails that do get attention are relatively harmless and not a big deal as independent, one-off stories.

For instance, I check HN a lot, and I used to check reddit a lot, and I've heard of perhaps only two of these emails. Most of them do not cast Jobs in an overtly positive light. It's a publicist's nightmare, basically, because they lose control of the image.

And Apple is all about image. I don't know, I just think that there will be a lot of internal pressure on Jobs to stop emailing people who may go and repost the conversation verbatim. He might not stop, we all know that Jobs has a general contempt for business-as-usual and does what he wants, but making a thing like this just seems to kind of be "looking a gift horse in the mouth", as it were, because most CEOs have the sense not to even try personal responses to customer complaints or feedback for the reasons mentioned in this post.

I suspect Apple's PR team plays a role in at least some of the email responses. The emails serve as a channel that's 'official' enough for people to take it seriously, without Apple having to bother with making an official announcement or giving a reporter a quote.

It also helps make the company seem more accessible ("hey, Jobs will answer an average Joe's email, he loves us!") when in reality Apple PR is notorious for ignoring the press unless it serves them.

Apple is in no danger of losing its image because of Steve Jobs expressing himself too much. Christ, just the opposite.

Awesome.

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