Jobs contentious exchange with angry customer faked: Apple

It's a well know fact that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will respond (occasionally) to direct emails sent to him.   That said, some of the conversations are posted at various news sites / blogs, and generally "check out."  In this case, at least according to Apple PR, it seems this example was faux.

Apple PR has responded to an email exchange earlier reported to be between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and an angry iPhone 4 customer. First reported by BGR, Apple public relations has said the conversation was faked.


Although BGR took the time to not just check the email headers of the messages, and also posted them as well, it is true that these sorts of things are easily changed to make them look like they came from a particular address.

In the original report, Tom, the angry iPhone 4 customer (name has been changed by BGR), emails back and forth with Jobs, with Jobs giving him the following responses about the iPhone 4's antenna issues:

• "No, you are getting all worked up over a few days of rumors. Calm down."
• "You are most likely in an area with very low signal strength."
• "You may be working from bad data. Not your fault. Stay tuned. We are working on it."
• "Retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it." (BGR later altered this to be a statement of Tom's, not Jobs)

As noted above, the story was originally posted by BGR saying the last comment was from Jobs.  Obviously that would be a really interesting comment.  While a truism that "x is just a y" (insert car, phone, MP3 player, whatever), Steve Jobs would never say the iPhone was "just a phone," just as he would never say the iPad is anything but a magicaldevice (just check his statements; he inserts that word into just about everything about the iPad).
 
What's most interesting is that AppleInsider says that the same email "story" was shopped to them two days earlier. While BGR used "Tom" as the name of the customer, AppleInsider had no qualms about saying that they believe "Tom" to be Jason Burford of Burford Advertising in Virginia, the same person who tried to sell them the story.

While AppleInsider related this information, they noted that, at least with thme, Burford did not ask for a specific amount of money for the emails. Meanwhile, BGR has not said if they paid anything to obtain the emails.

Hopefully, this is not the start of a trend.