Apple and Gawker Media seem to have a fatal attraction that continues to plunge into a death spiral. If it wasn’t bad enough that Gizmodo’s asshole antics ruined the reputation of an Apple employee, or slimy/shady deals involving a good scoop, Gawker Contributing Editor Ryan Tate engaged in a heated discussion with Steve Jobs himself yesterday evening.
Ryan Tate admits, professional, his unprofessional heated discussion with Steve Jobs over the iPad’s latest commercial. Deemed as a revolution, Tate felt that this was an extreme overstatement, and perhaps a little TWD (Typing While Drunk), started messaging Jobs about his distaste. A dumb question turned into a rant; while we won’t publish the full discussion here, partly due to the entire discussion being contained in image files, here are a few select quotes.
Tate: “…I don’t like Apple’s pet police literally kicking in my coworkers’ doors. But I suppose the courts will have the last say on that, and I can’t say I’m worried.”
Jobs: “You are so misinformed. No one kicked in any doors. You’re believing a lot of erroneous blogger reports.”
Tate: “…I don’t think it’s a technical issue at all – it’s you imposing your morality, about porn, about ‘trade secrets,’ about technical purity in the most bizarre sense.”
Jobs: “As for us, we’re just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision. You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure.
By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you…just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?”
I don’t think the conversation should have happened. While we don’t know just how intoxicated Tate was after bragging about the Stinger cocktail he was currently enjoying, clearly he was sober enough to admit his faults (and of course Jobs’) from the conversation. Every accusation was met with a firm, well rounded response that were pretty fair.
You can catch the entire conversation over at Gawker, but you just might want to have a cocktail yourself before diving in.
