Stefan Mileschin

Secret squirrel Apple has started to project its obsession with shutting up upon its customers too.

It seems that if anyone quotes an Apple staff member in a blog they will receive a visit from Jobs' Mob's legal department which will tell them to shut up.

David Boles' Apple monitor died on him and he had a bit of trouble transferring AppleCare coverage to his new monitor.

Writing on his blog he did not wade into Apple at all. He just warned his readers not to forget their AppleCare accounts when they get something new. Apple went completely ballistic because he had mentioned them without permission and talked, publically, about what a staff member had said.

The poor victim, er, customer, was practically treated like he had exhumed the body of Steve Jobs and had made merry with it before drinking the blood of a freshly violated fanboy.

Techcrunch thinks that the Apple letter was written by someone who was not that familiar with English, although that probably applies to the entire United States.

Whoever wrote it appears to have had their sense of perspective removed by Apple's HR department. The letter more or less said that if you talk to a member of Apple staff you cannot repeat what they say to anyone. You cannot even tell your mum, or confess to a priest, so putting the conversation in a blog is beyond the pale.

Apple told him that he had 24 hours to take the post down. We are not sure what would happen if he didn't.

Apple's normal approach is to send a legal letter, followed by one of its tame cops from San Francisco to raid your home and steal your servers.

The post has not been taken down and to make matters worse the web is publishing it, just in case Boles loses his nerve.

The thing is, if Apple really wanted people to stop talking about what its customer services staff say, threatening customers with legal action is probably not the way forward.

It was recently revealed that Apple staff members were regularly threatened with legal action if they talked about anything that went on at work and this created a climate of fear.

http://news.techeye.net/business/app...hut-up-or-else