Marco Arment, on the aftermath of his “Apple has lost the functional high ground” piece:

Instead of what was intended to be constructive criticism of the most influential company in my life, I handed the press more poorly written fuel to hamfistedly stab Apple with my name and reputation behind it. And my name will be on that forever.

Had I known that it would go as far as it did, I never would have written it.

I understand his feelings, but I think he’s being way too hard on himself. I don’t believe he can be faulted for “handing the press more poorly written fuel”. It was far from being poorly written, for one, and sensationalist pieces were always going to get published, regardless of how carefully Marco had measured his words. Those outlets were obviously not interested in publishing accurate reports on his original piece, and they would have twisted his words to fit their narrative anyway.

I believe Marco’s original piece has merit, and it needed to be published. The quality of Apple’s software is a real issue and, despite all the noise, Marco has ultimately done Apple — and all of us, really — a great service by calling them out on it.

That said, I get how hard it must be to see your name attached to some of those sensationalist pieces, and it’s extremely unfortunate. We all end up losing when a great writer and developer like Marco gets pushed so far as to feel the need to censor his own work.