This is no different to any other company. There are some company who can call up Microsoft, or even call up people on the Linux dev team, if they know them.
This drastically reduces who you can develop for, and is one of the silliest reasons I have ever heard to not develop for the iPhone.
Of course it's different. We sell and support (very expensive) software on Linux and Windows. If our customers thought the Linux dev team could stop us releasing updates, they'd be looking to migrate to more reliable platform sooner rather than later.
Curious story. If there’s one good thing about this whole thing, than it’s that a lot more people now know about this app and will maybe even buy it.
My little theory is that the New York Times saw the bad press rolling in and called up Apple.