Fortune's Apple 2.0 is reporting that the latest email exchange between Steve Jobs and a customer was entirely fake, according to statements made by Apple PR.
The conversation was published Thursday by The Boy Genius Report and linked to by more than three dozen other sites. In it, a writer pretending to be Apple's CEO tries several times to mollify a customer called "Tom" who is furious about the iPhone 4's widely reported signal attenuation problem. In separate e-mail messages Jobs purportedly tells "Tom," who grows angrier with each exchange.
Boy Genius Report had originally published and vouched for the emails claiming the exchange was legitimate. Apple PR says the entire conversation was fabricated. The statements originally attributed to Steve Jobs included:
"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."
Note that even before Apple PR's response, BGR had already retracted the last statement that they had originally attributed to Steve Jobs. The "Retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it." statement was later attributed to the customer, not Steve Jobs. Though, now it appears the entire exchange was fabricated. Adding further doubt to the motivation behind the original email poster, AppleInsider reports that the emailer had shopped the story around to several sites. It's not clear if BGR paid for the the rights to publish the story.
