Well, one way to look at it is that they have no need for any public relations of the kind he talks about. One consequence over the endless fawning and hyping over everything they do is that people are willing to let everything slide and will still buy and hype their products.<p>Anyone remember the iPhone launch when people asked about an SDK? Jobs said there's no need for one ("the web is your SDK!" or something along those lines) and people started parroting that line whenever this valid criticism was brought up. Now that they have an SDK, albeit one with ridiculous and draconian restrictions, people are still parroting Apple's lines: You can't have background processes because of security[1]! You must submit to the App Store because Apple knows better than people what they should be allowed to have!<p>Think I'm being hard and unfair towards Apple? Then just imagine other companies doing what Apple does and ask yourselves what the reaction will be:<p>-What will happen if BlackBerry's email service goes down periodically and loses your email?<p>-What will happen if Microsoft demands 30% of all developer revenues for their products and limits the distribution of applications?<p>[1] Choosing security over liberty... where have I heard this line before?
Apple is doing the minimum that the market will let it get away with. Fortunately for the company, that bar is pretty low by the alternative: Microsoft.<p>This is a pretty good example of the power of branding. Customers (on the whole, not necessarily individually) are willing to overlook poorly functioning applications, lost data, expensive hardware, DRM, near-instant depreciation, lack of APIs, and so on because the positive feeling that brand imparts balances out the negatives.<p>As martythemaniak points out in his comment, if Microsoft were to try some of these things, the press and blogs would be all over it.<p>At the least, this sort of behavior from the big players in a market has one upside: It creates an opportunity for an upstart to come in and compete on service.
If you want a good look into Apple, develop a long-term relationship with a sales rep. Within 9 months, assuming you're actually purchasing product, you will be colossally jerked around. (Shipment delays, EOL on products with 1-day notice.) The longer you work with this person, the more their frustrations at the system will come out, and you'll actually start to feel lucky when things go as planned.<p>Then watch as the sales rep (assuming you have a good one) struggles to help fix the situation. But they are as powerless as you are. And they weren't told any sooner than you were.<p>So then you go to the Apple support forums to see if anyone's figured out a way around the problem. Except the thread that had decent activity and a few decent leads disappeared.<p>But it sure feels good pulling out my Mac in an airport.