APPLE CEO Steve Jobs is known for regularly responding to emails sent by the average punter to his much-publicised email address, sjobs@apple.com.
And while the emails fired off from the billionaire’s iPad are customarily brief (after the iPhone 4′s antenna problems came to light, he once told an owner to “just avoid holding it in that way”), rarely are they quite so dismissive as the emails he sent to a 22-year-old journalism student who was having trouble getting a response from the company’s PR office.
Chelsea Kate Isaacs, who attends Long Island University, had been asked to write a story on her college’s plan to buy every new student an iPad for use in academic settings – but had left six voicemails with the company’s press office without reply.
Out of sheer frustration, Isaacs wrote a lengthy email to Jobs, not expecting a reply from him.
“I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line,” she wrote, “and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.”
Only half an hour later, though, Jobs wrote back to say:
Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry
Replying to say that Apple’s PR department surely had a duty to respond to her query in the first place, Isaacs received a second response:
We have over 300 million users and we can’t respond to their requests unless they involve a problem of some kind. Sorry.
Corresponding once more to complain that Isaacs was one of the 300 million users and had a problem, Jobs simply wrote back:
Please leave us alone.
Isaacs told Gawker she believes Jobs’ refusal to prompt a reply from Apple’s PR department will mean she is unlikely to score higher than a B on her assignment.
Ironically, one commenter on the Gawker story has noted that one of Apple’s ads directed at students does, in fact, promise “better grades. And higher scores.”
TechCrunch has cast doubt on the veracity of the reported exchange, however, noting that Isaacs is a former regular face of advertisements and shows on children’s TV network Nickelodeon. Gawker says that having examined the email headers, they believe the mails to be legitimate.
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