Just because it says Steve Jobs in the header, doesn’t mean it’s the real Steve Jobs. That’s the lesson that tech site The Boy Genius Report learned yesterday after publish an alleged email exchange between a “Tom” and Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
In these fakey emails, a fake Steve Jobs (not to be confused with the Fake Steve Jobs) tries to calm down an angry “Tom” who can’t get his iPhone 4 to work properly with a selection of comments such as:
- “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.” The Boy Genius Report now credits this last missive to “Tom” rather than fake Jobs.)
According to Apple PR, this email exchange was a fake, and not sent by Jobs or any other Apple employee on his behalf.
The revelation that this email is a fake casts doubt on the validity of the “you’re holding it wrong” email allegedly sent from Jobs last week to another disgruntled iPhone 4 owner.
I didn’t comment on this yesterday because the whole exchange smelled on fakey right from the start. Not only did the responses seem unlike anything we’d seen before from Jobs (longer, more ranting, and multiple emails) but the tone was dialed in to annoy rather than inform.
My friendly advice to Steve Jobs is to now stop responding to emails from random bods. He must get so much crap anyway that sifting through it must be a chore, but now his willingness to engage is being turned against him and Apple and used to disseminate lies.
Time to put the iPhone/iPad down Steve. Not worth it.
