上周四晚些时候，苹果（Apple）公关部门向包括《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal）旗下的科技博客All Things Digital在内的多家新闻媒体发布通告，称苹果（应用程序商店）曾出现“暂时性问题”，影响了“一小部分用户”，这个问题目前已经得到“修正”。

    不过，苹果公关部门显然把马可•阿蒙德忘了。阿蒙德是微博客Tumblr的创始人，并开发了大受欢迎的应用程序Instapaper 。作为一名iOS开发者，他的个人博客、Twitter账号（@marcoarment）以及“开发与分析”播客（Build and Analyze）都拥有数量庞大的粉丝团。

    或许这真的是个错误。

    苹果公告发布的前两天，阿蒙德就首先发现了这个问题。当时许多Instapaper的用户抱怨，升级到最新版后，Instapaper会在启动后立即崩溃。阿蒙德立即向苹果的应用程序审查团队发出了邮件，他还在Twitter上将问题曝光。两个小时后，一个正常可用的Instapaper在应用程序商店重新上架。

    不过，阿蒙德很快意识到，这个问题不仅仅影响到了自己的应用。在接下来的两天时间里，他整理出了一份名单，其中的应用程序数量竟然超过了100个。这些程序的升级版在提交给苹果时运行正常，但当其在应用程序商店上架，就无法运行了。阿蒙德警告用户和开发者在问题得到修正前不要更新应用程序，他还向苹果发出了一封用黑体字写就的紧急请求。

    所以，当阿蒙德在其他人的博客上看到苹果的声明后，他忍不住在自己的个人博客上对其进行了反驳：

    “所谓‘一小部分用户’是站不住脚的：根据我在7月3日统计的数据，仅仅Instapape的问题就影响到了超过2万名用户，而且，还有其他120多个应用程序受到波及，其中不乏知名应用，例如‘愤怒的小鸟’（Angry Birds）、GoodReader、雅虎（Yahoo）和《洛杉矶时报》（LA Times）等。”

    所谓“暂时性问题”，实际上是苹果应用程序商店运营四年以来发生的最为严重问题，这场灾难被《连线》杂志（Wired）称为“Appageddon”。正向阿蒙德之前预言的，问题的根源在于苹果的一台服务器出了问题，该服务器负责将苹果的数字版权管理保护软件添加到即将发布的应用程序中。不过总而言之，阿蒙德对苹果相当宽容。专业MacWorld网站有报道称，苹果也许会删除许多应用在这次系统崩溃期间蒙冤得到的一星差评。阿蒙德写道：“我不会想到这一招。假如苹果真这么做，将大大有利于修复该公司与受影响的开发商之间的关系。”

    阿蒙德对于那五十来个争相报道这起事件的科技记者就没那么宽容了。这些记者大都对阿蒙德的贡献只字未提，甚至试图将该报道伪装成自己发掘出来的独家新闻。在一连串阿蒙德称之为“改写搞定”的Twitter消息中，他曝光了这些媒体报道。读者可点击此处阅读相关报道。

    译者：项航

    Late Thursday, Apple (AAPL) public relations reached out to several news organizations -- including the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital -- to alert them that what it described as a "temporary issue" that affected "a small number of users" had been "rectified."

    Apple PR apparently neglected to reach out to Marco Arment, a co-founder of Tumblr, the creator of the popular Instapaper app and a iOS developer with an unusually large following through his blog, his Twitter account (@marcoarment) and his Build and Analyzepodcast.

    That may have been a mistake.

    It was Arment who first spotted the problem two days earlier when Instapaper users began complaining that his latest update crashed immediately every time they launched it. Arment e-mailed Apple's App Review team and started "yelling" about it on Twitter. Within two hours a working version of Instapaper appeared on the App Store.

    But he soon realized that the problem was more widespread than just his app. Over the next two days he compiled a list of more than 100 apps whose updates worked perfectly when they were submitted to Apple but were corrupted when they arrived at the App Store. He warned users and developers not to update their apps until the problem was corrected, and he issued an urgent request -- in boldface -- to Cupertino:

    So when Arment saw Apple's press statement on someone else's blog, he couldn't resist posting a correction:

    "It's probably worth nitpicking 'a small number of users': Based on my cumulative stats for July 3, Instapaper's corruption alone probably affected well over 20,000 customers, and there were over 120 other apps affected, including some very big names such as Angry Birds, GoodReader, Yahoo, and the LA Times."

    Apple's "temporary issue" was, in fact, the App Store's worst bug in four years of operation -- a meltdown that Wired dubbed "Appageddon." It was ultimately traced, as Arment correctly anticipated, to an issue with a server that applies Apple's digital rights management protection to apps before they are released.

    Arment was pretty easy on Apple, all things considered. He pointed readers to a MacWorld report that the company might be removing the one-star ratings many apps had unfairly received during the meltdown. "I wouldn't have predicted that," Arment wrote. "If they do, it will go a long way toward repairing their relationship with the affected developers."

    He was not so kind to the more than four dozen tech reporters who piled onto the story, often without giving him credit or -- even worse -- trying to make it sound like it was their scoop. In a series of tweets he calls "Rewrite Bingo," he covers the press coverage. You can read it here.