Steve Jobs Promises 'Freedom From Porn' In Fiery Email Exchange

Steve Jobs Gawker Emails: Jobs

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been known to reply to users' email queries--questions about everything from iPhone support, to water-damaged laptops, to his liver transplant--but his missives are usually pithy, one-liners.

Over the weekend, Steve Jobs engaged in a lengthy (and heated) email exchange with Gawker blogger Ryan Tate, the CEO firing off a total of four email replies during the course of their online conversation between 9:34PM and 2:20AM ET.

The exchange focuses on Apple's control over the iPhone OS platform, which some mention of the recent investigation into Gizmodo's purchase of a lost iPhone prototype.

Tate, annoyed that Apple's new ad described the iPad as "a revolution," emailed the following to Jobs:

If [Bob] Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?

Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with "revolution?"

Revolutions are about freedom.

Jobs' reply:

Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.

Tate writes in later email, after noting, "I don't want 'freedom from porn!' Porn is just fine,":

You have the chance to set the tone for a new platform. For the new phone and tablet platform. The platform of the future! I am disappointed to see it's the same old revenge power bullshit.

Steve Jobs asks Tate why he's "so bitter over a technical issue such as this," to which Tate replies, "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."

He adds, "And I don't like Apple's pet police force literally kicking in my co-workers' doors. But I suppose the courts will have the last say on that, I can't say I'm worried."

Jobs fires back (with a jab at Tate):

You are so misinformed. No one kicked in any doors. You're believing a lot of erroneous blogger reports.

Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platform they want. If people don't like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did.

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 create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?

Read Steve Jobs best--and snappiest--email replies ever here.

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