Sure, and actual real people (even smart, nice, capable, well-meaning ones) sometimes turn out garbage, or don't even try to produce.

Ignoring that out of kindness is silly. Any good professional should welcome honest feedback; if you can't criticize a $T company because it might hurt someone's feelings...

Complaining about the docs is important feedback, aimed at ultimately making Apple healthier. And getting to the point where the docs are sub-par means priorities have shifted over a period of years, and will take that long to get back in shape. That's not on any one person, not even Cook, except in the ultimate responsibility sense.

You, and them, are not their work. Both are subject to constraints of time, manpower, and talent. I don’t believe the issue is with the employees as much as the company not investing enough in that area. When you see a company with the resources Apple has, you expect to see better from them.

Secondary example is XCode, their IDE. It is painfully obvious they don’t have enough people working on XCode.

And the author acknowledges that those individuals are not the problem.

> the problem is not individual engineers — who are not responsible for writing docs; that is the responsibility of dedicated coumentation teams. But that does not make it any less a failure of Apple’s engineering organization.

Should all corporations be above criticism because they're all made of people?

It's perfectly reasonable to say that a company of Apple's magnitude should invest in making sure their APIs are well documented. We're not talking about OSS projects with donated developer time.

and i’m sure those people are competent enough to notice that their documentation is below average.

Sometimes having people critize « your » work in public helps you convice your manager’s manager something needs more care.

I took a look at your comment history and you seem to be OK painting broad strokes on companies/institutions that you do not particularly enjoy. At one instance you were directly attacking a user.

It is clear, from your username, you like Apple. But ask yourselves whether you are being fair to the OP here.

A partnership is made of people. A limited liability corporation is not. Sure, it employs people, as do I, but I am not made of my employees and neither is Apple.