If it happened once, maybe you'd say it was a glitch. But what if it happened twice? Three times? Four times, five, six?
I'm not prone to hysterics or a subscriber to conspiracy theories, but it's fairly hard to imagine any good way to interpret this. Every post that I saw listed in a Google search of Apple's discussion boards lead to the same result: "Error: you do not have permission to view the requested forum or category."
Sadly, this isn't the first time we've heard about Apple deleting discussion board threads on topics which are unflattering to Apple's products. It's closer to the fiftieth time. In fact, we've heard so many reports about this happening that it seems safe to call this standard operating procedure for Apple's discussion boards. That's not to say that there are no negative threads on the discussion boards, but the ones that are there are the ones that Apple's moderators have decided to leave active. This also happens on "Cult of MAC", "MacRumours" and most "3rd party" Apple oriented sites.
Another Apple standard is wiping off mentions of an application existing on other platforms, as some of the most popular apps that come from Symbian (Shazam, most office and messaging suites) have already made their way to Android/Maemo/Meego. It looks like Steve doesn't want you knowing that leaving iPhone will not only not make you lose your favorite apps but will also get you some extra functionality ;)
It's hard to imagine what Apple hopes to gain by doing this. Instead of having one negative news story, now we have two: not only did Consumer Reports come out and say they don't recommend the iPhone 4, but now Apple seems to be trying to prevent people from talking about it on their support board, extending the poor support for iPhone 4 into a complete mess.
Want some overwrought comparisons to Orwell's 1984? Apple seems to be begging for it.
VIA: tuaw
