Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Do No Evil: Steve Jobs on the Moral Superiority of Apple over Android
Steve Jobs popped his head out of his turtle neck long enough to issue one of his prized responses to a customer’s e-mail last week, and he just couldn’t resist dropping his now-played-out attack on the porn-ridden, adult’s only, lock-up-your-children Android Market. Can’t we all just get along? I really wish Apple could drop the petty attacks and get back to letting their devices do the talking. Here is the e-mail exchange in question:
Steve,
I was converted to Apple products with the announcement of the iPhone 3G. (My friends have been trying to convince me for years.) Since then I’ve purchased 4 iPhones, 2 computers, several routers, and miscellaneous other items. Unfortunately, I’m really starting to have a philosophical issue with your company. It appears that more and more Apple is determining for it’s consumers what content they should be able to receive. For instance, the blocking of Mark Fiore’s comic app (due to being political satire) or blocking of what Apple considers to be porn.I’m all for keeping porn out of kids hands. Heck – I’m all for ensuring that I don’t have to see it unless I want to. But… that’s what parental controls are for. Put these types of apps into categories and allow them to be blocked by their parents should they want to.
Apple’s role isn’t moral police – Apple’s role is to design and produce really cool gadgets that do what the consumer wants them to do.
Thanks for listening
-Matthew
And Mr. Jobs’ response:
Fiore’s app will be in the store shortly. That was a mistake. However, we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.
You can’t dislike Apple for consistently pushing innovative products that create friendly competition and push advancements for other manufacturers as well. Without the original iPhone, Android would not be seeing the huge number of new, cutting-edge handsets that are currently coming to the market on almost every carrier imaginable. Their app store also paved the way for mobile development to be a viable business model. That is plain and simple, deal with it.
But Apple has taken the competition from the smartphone marketplace to a world of ad hominem arguments. Feeling snubbed by old pal Eric Schmidt and backed into a corner where Android devices and apps are starting to compete head-to-head with the iPhone, Jobs has been flinging around the words ‘porn’ and ‘Android’ without regard. Customers need to know that ANDROID is synonymous with PORN and that by limiting the consumer’s choice in handset and apps, Apple is freeing the cell phone market from ethical peril. He is making it his personal responsibility to be a source of moral guidance, taking Google’s supposedly “bullshit” mantra of “Don’t be Evil” and rebranding it for his iPhone’s app store.
Yeah, maybe Google didn’t mean it that way, but Apple is here to let you know they are making it simple to avoid all the rape, incest, and sodomy plaguing the Android Market. Hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil: all you need to do is buy an iPhone and Apple promises they will eliminate those pesky things called choice and temptation that would otherwise make it unavoidable to infest your mobile device with smut.
[via TechCrunch]