The feeling I get reading that is that you shouldn't interpret that conversation as a verbatim quotation. Even though the author did everything possible to make it seem like it was verbatim; a hunch I get reading the entire thing is that its summarized and viewed through the author's eyes.

E.g. maybe they actually said some variation of "your app is bricking iPhones? how did you get through app store review..." and the author interpreted it as "squashing his company like a bug".