And given that nugget of actual evidence, I can decisively say that he definitely screwed himself over.
This is how the business world works. Sometimes you can't get the best deal, but it's still in your best interest to accept it regardless. You have to act rationally; you can't just defect (to borrow some game theory parlance -- this literally resembles Prisoner's Dilemma) in the name of "principles."
One moderately-crafted blog post later (saying Apple wasn't at fault, and he wasn't either -- his account was "only" linked to the other one), this guy would have been back in business. It's no surprise that this guy hasn't ever worked at a big company before, if you don't swallow your pride every so often and keep your mouth shut, you get kicked to the curb, and it's surreal that he was a self-professed businessman because of how often this happens in the game.
He WAS winning, and he would've won (nobody would've taken his PR damage control post seriously, and initially everyone believed his fabricated narrative of innocence), but he royally #$!@ed up because he thought he could've had his cake and eaten it too.
I can't under any circumstances imagine any possible outcome to this scenario where Apple would've both admitted wrongdoing AND reinstated his app. Let's not get too greedy here...
It's not a fact that had he written a blog post admitting guilt that his account would have been reinstated. That's just a carrot dangled by Apple, without a hard contractual obligation to follow through.
If anything, actually writing that something wrong happened would make it easier for them to justify their decision. It could be a trick representatives sometimes use when they assume the party they are dealing with is guilty. It's admitting to fraud and can hurt him more, especially if it didn't work out. And they can always reverse their decision.
That's nonsense. Even if Apple was trying to trick him (which they definitely were not), his blog post didn't have to admit any wrongdoing. Nothing he needed to say in there would have been admitting to fraud. It merely would have admitted that his account was linked to one with fraud (which nobody is disputing) and that he's working with Apple to unlink it and restore his account.
I thought his post fulfilled that criteria, which I do agree is reasonable for Apple to request, so I was under the impression that OP was arguing he didn't go far enough.
If his post is not enough, then Apple should consider just sending him a statement including the correct wording for him to use.
He drafted a post and sent it to Apple for approval, but didn't get a response before Apple's PR statement was released and before he reacted by posting that phone call. It's plausible to me that the drafted blog post would have been sufficient, but him posting the phone call probably immediately torpedoed it.
Okay, then you release your recorded call AFTER they defect (I'm not saying he shouldn't have covered his ass by recording the call, that's the smart thing I would've also done). Imagine how bad that would look for Apple.
If I had to guess, Phil & co. wouldn't want to risk that nuclear scenario (and they are definitely smart enough to know better).
Not at all. Apple released a PR statement about what led up to the termination. And nothing they said in there was incorrect, and nothing they said in there would have contradicted his blog post. The PR statement explained that the fraud was detected across 2 linked accounts and from the way it was written it was obvious that Apple was treating both accounts as being a single developer. The blog post would have explained that his account was linked to another one with fraud, and that he's working with Apple to unlink it. Everybody who reads both posts would understand that his account didn't have any fraud on it directly, but was linked to an account with fraud.
This is how the business world works. Sometimes you can't get the best deal, but it's still in your best interest to accept it regardless. You have to act rationally; you can't just defect (to borrow some game theory parlance -- this literally resembles Prisoner's Dilemma) in the name of "principles."
One moderately-crafted blog post later (saying Apple wasn't at fault, and he wasn't either -- his account was "only" linked to the other one), this guy would have been back in business. It's no surprise that this guy hasn't ever worked at a big company before, if you don't swallow your pride every so often and keep your mouth shut, you get kicked to the curb, and it's surreal that he was a self-professed businessman because of how often this happens in the game.
He WAS winning, and he would've won (nobody would've taken his PR damage control post seriously, and initially everyone believed his fabricated narrative of innocence), but he royally #$!@ed up because he thought he could've had his cake and eaten it too.
I can't under any circumstances imagine any possible outcome to this scenario where Apple would've both admitted wrongdoing AND reinstated his app. Let's not get too greedy here...