The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Apple is not so happy about people making other mobile devices look just like their upcoming phone:

Savvy coders have developed iPhone “skins” that work with most smartphones based on the Windows Mobile and Palm operating systems.

The issue has angered Apple to such an extent that it has sent its lawyers after a number of those involved – both directly and indirectly.

In other words Apple not only tried to get the skins taken down, but also attempted to shutdown any discussion about the existence of non-Apple device skins:

Apple’s lawyers also sent letters to journalists who simply reported on the fact that the skins were available.

“It has come to our attention that you have posted a screenshot of Apple’s new iPhone and links that facilitate the installation of that screenshot on a PocketPC device,” law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP wrote to Paul O’Brien, who runs the MoDaCo website.

“While we appreciate your interest in the iPhone, the icons and screenshot displayed on your website are copyrighted by Apple.

Naturally, this has only increased the fame and attention given to the skins. The article also mentions the time when Apple argued that bloggers are not true journalists and therefore do not deserve speech protections. That did not turn out so well for them, for obvious reasons that unfortunately seem to have escaped them again, this time around.

In somewhat related news, many sites are starting to complain that Apple is actively working to squash discussion of hardware issues related to NVidia due to some kind of IP arrangements between the companies. Slashdot points to an incident where the Cupertino giant quietly deleted a question from their support site that had raised a system failure concern:

I eventually found out (from an official Blizzard poster) that NVidia has a bug in their drivers that kernel panics a Mac Pro if any memory past the 2GB boundary is addressed in the driver. After waiting months for a resolution to this, I decided to post on Apple’s support site. Here is an image of my post.. Within a few hours, they removed it from the site, placing it under ‘Posts Removed by Administration.’

Uh, hello Apple? Do you remember that 1984 ad you did with the brightly dressed woman who runs in and throws her hammer at the screen watched by all the submissive people in drab grey? Yeah, that one. Um, well…see, she’s kind of like one of those bloggers, and you’re kind of like sending those guys with the masks and bats after her…