Retraction: The App Store Rejection of the Week That Was, in Fact, a Correct Rejection by John Gruber

To the best of my recollection, this is the first post I’ve retracted in the 24 years I’ve been writing Daring Fireball. I hope it’s the last. I was misled, both overtly and through omissions, in several ways, but what I publish is my responsibility, and I apologize for the error.

This is how you do a retraction—explanation, preservation, ownership, and an apology.

I've written about Terry Godier before and his RSS app Current, same as Gruber. This whole situation has convicted me to move back to NetNewsWire and put a notice at the top of that article.

My disdain for astrology is so utter, and my esteem for Godier’s previous work so high, that it simply never occurred to me that he might have actually made and submitted to the App Store an astrology app, let alone that he’d then feign surprise and frustration that an astrology app was rejected for being an astrology app. I showed him a draft of my post before publication, to make sure I had the story straight, and he offered not a word of caution, only gratitude for my drawing attention to the matter.

It gets messier...

Terry's character on display is not the kind I want to support.

John's character, on the other hand, is the right kind of character.

To tie it to video games (because of course I can), it reminds me a lot of when Filip Miucin was caught plagiarizing at IGN. It doesn't mean everything Filip did was stolen, but the character of the man was revealed, and you can't put that genie back in the bottle.