Dear Mr. Cook,
You don’t know me and you will most probably never see this letter.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to write to you because it’s important, and it’s going to be significant for you.
First a little background. I’m a musician and record producer, and to compose and produce recordings, I have used a product currently made available by your company for over 30 years now. This product, of course, is “Logic” which began its life as a little unknown Atari ST program (back then, programs were called programs and not “apps”) called “Notator”.
I used Notator to record parts of my very first musical release, a cassette called “Devotion”, which I released under the moniker of “Lemon Power Music Projects” back in 1992.
The years went by and in 1995 I founded a musical project named “Botany Bay”, which lasted 25 years. Our first CD was called “Tales Of The Bitter Seed”, and again it was produced using Notator on that same old Atari ST because it was such a good system and I knew every inch of it. Using it to realize my musical ideas became second nature to me.
Around the year 2003 I bought my first Mac in order to be able to continue to use Notator, which in the meantime had been rebranded “Logic” and which your company had bought and continued to develop in 2002.
One could say that Logic is the reason I went with Apple and eventually became a quite successful software developer for that platform. I started working at a company which produced software for the photography business, and out of my hand came (for instance) the first picture-to-postcard app for the iPhone.
But I digress. Back to Logic and music.
Logic was my constant companion. I was still using Logic when Botany Bay suddenly became a success around 2007 and we had hundreds of fans coming to our concerts, singing along to our songs, founding a fan club and buying T-Shirts and stickers and stuff.
I was still using Logic when in 2012 both my parents got very ill and died, first my father, then my mother… which completely threw me out of releasing and playing music live.
I was still using Logic when Botany Bay recorded their last album in 2018, which was bought by 20 or so people. It was a wonderful album dedicated to the memory of my mother, but in the meantime social media had taken over, I wasn’t willing and/or able to play Mark Zuckerberg’s dirty “sponsored posts” game, nobody remembered Botany Bay anymore and quite frankly no one is interested in you when you’re down and out and mourning the only person who had ever seen you as the artist that you actually are.
I was still using Logic four years later in 2022 when I finally had successfully battled the severe depression that the failure of our last album had brought about, and was fit enough to make music again under the Moniker of “Schall und Stille” – regardless whether people cared or not.
Surprisingly, a number of people actually did care about “Schall und Stille” and since then I’ve been able to record three albums that (hopefully) brought joy to a few hundred new listeners.
I know it’s not the world, and I honestly think I deserved better – but ever since I started working at an animal sanctuary in 2020, gifting the world with beautiful music is not the main drive in my life any more.
Helping animals and experience their profound thankfulness is.
So I can cope with the fact that I ever only got close to being discovered as an artist. I mean, we can’t all be famous, can we?
Be that as it may, in all those years, through triumph and through tragedy, I’ve always used Logic to produce my music. It was my one lasting musical friendship over all those years, and I’m writing this just so you know how incredibly deep and profound it is what will follow in the section after the next. Logic never let me down and I learned it at least as good as good as the instruments I am playing.
It actually became one of my favourite instruments, and I never parted with it.
In the past couple of years, I didn’t always approve of the direction that Apple was going, but that never caused me to leave. I was once delighted by the openness of the first releases of OS X, but this openness began to change and to diminish and has almost disappeared completely with the App Store and the way you are walling in your users.
But I nevertheless stayed with Apple, because Logic simply was so fucking brilliant, and it could at least be argued that Apple stood for a diverse and tolerant society.
Sorry for being blunt here, but you sucking up to Trump has convinced me otherwise.
The Trump regime is just that: A fascist regime. And let’s be candid here: You donating a million to Trump’s inauguration and preparing your shareholders for “needing to make some changes to comply” with your Führer‘s order to cancel DEI programs, is just simply and plainly wrong, and I can’t in good conscience continue using your products given these circumstances.
I know you’re trying to please both sides – urging your shareholders to vote against some poor wankers’ proposal to shut down diversity policies and at the same time preparing them for you sucking up to the Trump junta even more.
But it don’t work that way with fascists.
We Germans have a bit of experience with fascist regimes, and based on what our history is vividly teaching us (well, apparently it’s lost on 20% of us, but that’s another story) I very regrettably have to inform you that you’re either against fascists or you are with them.
You have shown that you’re with them.
Of course it’s not a big deal to you and your multi billion dollar company. How could it be.
But then again… it actually is. Because I believe in Karma and I happen to know that you do, too. And you losing me (and a whole lot of other people) because of this is going to mean something karma-wise. You’re going to feel it. People like me abandoning Apple because of the way you are supporting a fascist junta is going to make Apple a sadder and much less valuable company.
That said, there’s still time to do the right thing. Maybe you want to think about it.
Sincerely
Stephan
P.S.: If you want to learn more about me and my music, you’re invited to listen to my current album, which is going to be the last one I produced with Logic.
Please give my regards to the Logic development team and tell them many, many thanks for their excellent software.
I’m going to miss it.
Leave a Reply