Christopher Jon Uriarte
cju.com: online since 1994.
how to get an email reply from steve jobs

[Reader note: This page was first posted several month's before Steve Job's passing. RIP, Steve.]

Well, I have to be honest:  I don't really have any good advice as to how to get Steve Jobs to reply to your email. I think it's just a matter of asking a relevant question and catching the dude at the right time.

However, I was lucky enough to get a reply from Steve - or, perhaps, Apple's own internal Fake Steve Jobs - when I wrote him a simple email in April of 2011.

The email exchange went like this:
    From: C.J. Uriarte <chrisjur@cju.com>
    Date: Tue, Apr 26, 2011 5:11 pm
    To: sjobs@apple.com
    Subject: Improving iOS System Notifications?

    Dear Steve:

    I love my iPhone and love iOS, but I have to say that iOS's system and application notification facility drives me insane.

    As you are probably well aware, iOS can only display one system notification at a time, so if I get a text, followed by a Facebook friend request, I'd never know that the text came without unlocking my phone and noticing the little number atop my "Messages" icon.

    On top of that, notifications often cause various running applications to pause, hang or require re-login.

    Any thoughts on re-working this iOS facility?

    Appreciate your thoughts,
    Chris Uriarte
To my surprise, less than two hours later, I received the following email reply from the supposed second coming of Jesus Christ, himself:
    From: Steve Jobs <sjobs@apple.com>
    Date: Tue, Apr 26, 2011 7:24 pm
    To: C.J. Uriarte
    Subject: Re: Improving iOS System Notifications?

    We're working on it. Stay tuned.

    Sent from my iPhone
And when Steve speaks, he speaks the truth. A few months later, Steve would highlight the forthcoming iOS 5's re-built notification system in the Apple Special Event Keynote on June 6, 2011.

The response was curt and to-the-point, but, historically, this has been the case for much of Steve's email replies, so I didn't take too much offense to the fact that he couldn't find the time to tap out a tome on the subject of OS-level notification interrupts.

I should note that I really didn't put much thought into the content and the body of the email and, truthfully, I'm not even sure why I wrote it, other than the fact that I was particularly pissed off at my iPhone that day (we have our ups and downs).

Amusingly, the one thing I thought about the most was how to close the correspondence. I remember first typing the following:
    Best regards,
    Chris
- but I thought that was, maybe, too informal. It made it sound like Steve and I were old drinking chums when, truthfully, I don't think I've ever been in the same building as the guy. After contemplating the typical and mundane "Thank you", "Sincerely" and, even, "Best", I decided on "Appreciate your thoughts", which was, both, honest and polite.

And you know what, Steve, I do appreciate your thoughts...
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