[NewChief]

Originally Posted by Flybone McTimmerson

yep....that's exactly where my mind was at when I responded to you.

The incident was actually published anonymously in the NYT's online edition as the platform for a larger discussion about iMessage:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/08...ment.html?_r=4

Here's the NYT's columnist's reply:

A. The Haggler’s first thought upon reading this email was that it could be a hoax. But our letter writer had saved all of the correspondence from D.H.R., which she scanned and shared.

This is a true story.

The Haggler’s second thought was that this sounded like the sort of tale Franz Kafka would have written had he lived in the age of cloud computing.

The Haggler’s third thought: If this happened to our unnamed mother, it has happened to others. A quick frisk of the Internet found similar stories and an article in The Telegraph, the British newspaper, with the headline “Apple iCloud Sparks Divorce Cases.” In it, an English divorce lawyer discussed new clients he’d met courtesy of Apple software. They included the wife of a guy in his early 40s who, during a night of revelry with some friends, had downloaded the hookup dating app Tinder, contacted a few women and shared some saucy photos over Snapchat. All of the messages and photos were received by the wife, who subsequently filed for divorce.

It would be wiser for these people, and others in similar circumstances, to have their own Apple IDs. But that can get expensive. Imagine a family of five, in which everyone is buying repeat copies of the same app or film, just because they’re worried their private messages will suddenly become family fodder. Shouldn’t there be a way for people to share an Apple account but get a unique Apple ID, allowing them to buy one version of the same app, without risking a catastrophic loss of privacy?

Yes, there should. And let the record reflect that mere days after the Haggler contacted Apple, the company cried “uncle.”

“Uncle!” it cried, at the top of its lungs.

Well, not “uncle” literally. What it actually said, through a spokeswoman, is that the company would soon make it easier for families “to communicate and share purchases, photos and calendars within the same household. Family members can browse and download each other’s iTunes, iBooks or App Store purchases. Up to six members can participate, each with their own Apple ID.”

You see? Total and immediate victory, ladies and gentlemen. It’s called total and immediate victory. If there is a more vivid demonstration of the Haggler’s juice, the Haggler is unaware of it.

Wait just a minute there, you pompous charade of a consumer advocate, the Haggler can hear you say. This change you describe is a feature called Family Sharing and it was in the works long before you contacted the company. It was announced last week at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, in San Francisco. It will be part of the new version of Apple’s operating system being released in the fall.

That quote above was not prompted by you — it’s from a news release. By coincidence, you called just as the company was unveiling a solution to the problem you wanted solved. You need to take credit for that? How petty can you be?

The Haggler does not appreciate your tone, dear readers. It’s judgmental. But to address your two questions above, the answers, for the record, are “yes” and “very.”