I've been a loyal Apple/Mac user since 1984—have never owned a PC and hopefully never will. But Apple has crossed the line when it comes to using its clout and capital.
Yes, Apple is a private company that answers to no one except its shareholders (which I am not). But it is also dependent on not arousing the ire of its ever-growing consumer base to continue expanding its presence and profit in the marketplace. And they have awakened a sleeping giant of conservative, fair-minded citizens who want Apple to back off their social engineering efforts and stick to technical engineering.
What did they do? Over the Thanksgiving holidays they quietly withdrew the iPhone/iPad app for the Manhattan Declaration citing "objectionable content." Apple had previously given the MD app a strong rating ("no objectionable content") and all was fine -- until Change.org mounted a petition to force Apple to remove the app because of its "hateful," "divisive," "offensive," "pro-life," "pro-traditional marriage" content. In other words, the extreme left (pro-choice, pro-homosexual) crowd told Apple they were offended that the Manhattan Declaration -- which supports religious freedom, traditional marriage, and is against abortion -- was allowed to have an app in the iTunes store. So when Apple received the Change.org petition with over 7,000 signatures they caved and pulled the MD app.
Manhattan Declaration has mounted a campaign to ask Apple to reinstate the app. So far, more than 39,301 people (as of 1:21 p.m. EST on 12-4-10) have signed the MD petition. If you are in favor of what the Manhattan Declaration stands for I encourage you to sign the petition.
You can read about the Manhattan Declaration and what it stands for on their web site. But recent activity has slowed their servers to a crawl, so you can read the Wikipedia article instead.
You can sign the petition either here (very slow the last two days [update: now seems to be loading fine]) or here (faster). You can also drop Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) an email to express your views here.
Here's a good summary of the issue written by a Catholic columnist.
Posts
Thanks for the links to articles and petitions. I used the Colson link and was able to sign the petition very quickly. When I signed the number was up to 12,000. Within a matter of days MD supporters have dwarfed whatever sizeable constituent from Change.org Apple was listening to. Hopefully the word will continue to spread.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Daniel
Wow-- it was just 9,000+ this morning -- you have to hand it to the Internet and social media for the ability to "gather a crowd" in a hurry. I added the Jobs email address to the post which I forgot this morning -- and which I know you have already used to send an email to him.
ReplyDelete