“Apple can handle it — it is a matter of general states. If you evaluate every scenario by that rule of not punching down, you can sometimes realize hey it's okay to get a little feisty with our marketing when it comes to competing with a company like Apple.”

It's OK to be feisty with giants — punching up is different from punching down

When a small app calls out Apple Weather for going down, that's punching up — the giant has infinite resources to fix it and can absorb criticism. When an app gloats over a small competitor's shutdown or a category of people losing jobs, that's punching down — and writers, audiences, and even potential customers will notice. The rule: feisty is fine at scale, mean-spirited reads badly at any scale.