I suppose it's better than Steve Jobs not calling him.
I think the part he appreciates is that his complaint was heard, even if the resolution wasn't to his favor. His complaint could have gone into a forever-unacknowledged black hole instead. That would be far more frustrating.
I do, however, agree with you that "having a bug in the SDK and not allowing you to work around it the way they do" is not grounds for talking about how great Apple and Steve are.
He could hit an automated response telling him the same. Jobs doesn't change anything in this story apart from perception. Why would we assume that a call from Jobs means not being in an unacknowledged black hole? Did he get any new information? Any timescale for fixes? Any help?
How do we know Jobs isn't just going through the list of "put it a the end of the list and let it die" issues and randomly selecting one to respond to? Feels good, but doesn't change anything - doesn't even promise to change anything.
I get an impression that getting an answer on launchpad from Shuttleworth is pretty much equivalent to unacknowledged black hole - they've got some plan they're not going to make public and your issue will not change its status for the next 1 year (then go to invalid / not an issue / won't fix). (from past experience)
Because the author had Steve Jobs on the phone and was able to speak the issue directly to Steve's ear. It's not that complicated.
An automated response doesn't tell me that my emails haven't gone straight to /dev/null. If I'm talking to Steve, and he responds to the sentences that I'm speaking to him, then I am confident that the issue has been "heard". (Promptly ignored, perhaps, but not just black-hole'd).
I think the part he appreciates is that his complaint was heard, even if the resolution wasn't to his favor. His complaint could have gone into a forever-unacknowledged black hole instead. That would be far more frustrating.
I do, however, agree with you that "having a bug in the SDK and not allowing you to work around it the way they do" is not grounds for talking about how great Apple and Steve are.