Support posts about Consumer Reports iPhone 4 review vanish, reappear

Consumer Reports said in their (very) recent iPhone 4 review that they couldn't recommend the device. You would expect a discussion thread to erupt at the Apple support forums. It did, or rather they did, and were promptly deleted.

It should be noted that those threads have mysteriously reappeared at the support forums. You don't even have to search for them as they are among the most discussed. The longest one, at the time of this writing, is here.

Humorously, the first reply to the post is "I'm sure this thread will be deleted soon lol...," while the next reply says "This thread being deleted in 5, 4, 3, 2...." Indeed, this wasn't the first time Apple has deleted such threads in its support forums. It also isn't the first time they restored them after a media blitz.

Apple surely has the right to delete what it sees fit in its support forums. We have no issue with that. What we continue to have issues with are their responses, such as Apple CEO Steve Jobs saying "Just avoid holding it that way."

Apple has said the issue is really software, with the signal levels on the phone being displayed improperly. Consumer Reports seems to disagree. You can bet that Apple is hard at work on a fix that does more than just change the display of signal levels on the device.

Whether or not they can come up with that fix remains to be seen.