Nov 12, 2010 11:10 GMT  ·  By

Seattle iOS developer Ram Arumugam decided to take matters into his own hands when Apple rejected his Economy for iPad application, even though he knew he had used private APIs to work around a bug relating to the way the iOS virtual keyboard was working inside his app.

He filed an appeal to the App Store Review team, and went ahead to email Apple’s CEO himself to make an inquiry about the rejection.

“A couple of hours after I sent the email, I was at a noisy soccer (for kids) arena when I heard my iPhone ring,” Ram’s story begins to take shape over at his blog.

“The caller-id, the caller saying ‘Ram, this is Steve’ and that he was calling from Apple did suggest that it could really be Steve Jobs. He confirmed it when I asked,” he writes.

According to the post, Apple’s CEO took his time to personally explain the troubles posed by his iPad app, particularly outlining the fact that Apple has a “no private APIs” policy.

“I then asked him whether an exception could be made to the policy because the private APIs were necessitated by the SDK bug,” Ram says.

“He reiterated his point and I accepted it. I told him that I would replace the modal form sheet with alternative UI. Removing the form sheet (and therefore its bug) would eliminate the need for the private API,” the iOS developer writes.

Arumugam, currently the CEO of Cascade Software, was previously a principal development manager at Microsoft. He left the makers of the Windows operating system in 2007 and started the very company he’s running today.

They have a number of civic-centric apps for the iOS platform at the moment, three of which have notably topped the app sales charts in their categories.

As for Economy for iPad, the app is now the #1 selling financial iPad application. “Imagine what a [call] could do,” Ram says. He believes Steve Jobs is “a conscientious guy.”

“Steve Jobs has a well-deserved reputation for creating great quality products and for his passion for excellence and user experience. I’ve also read that he is a detail-oriented executive and a hands-on guy who is intimately involved with his company’s work (in a way that few other CEOs are)."

"His phone-call reinforced those notions and went further to suggest that he was also a very conscientious guy who cared about people. The fact that he took the time to read my email, think about the app and then personally call me was amazing," Arumugam concluded.

Download Economy for iPad ($2.99)