WhatsApp, Apple and a hidden source code F-bomb: THE TRUTH

Facebook-owned chat app WhatsApp says viral screenshots of rude messages to Apple buried deep within its mobile application's code are not real.

A spokesperson told The Register on Friday afternoon that the screenshots posted to Reddit showing log strings with the phrase "Fuck Apple" spread throughout were not taken from its official Android app as was claimed.

"The source code message is not real," the spokesperson said matter of factly.

We also grabbed the app's official .APK file, unpacked it and searched it – and yup, no mention of telling people to fornicate with Apple:

$ mkdir whatsapp
$ unzip WhatsApp.apk -d whatsapp
$ find whatsapp -type f | xargs grep -li "fuck" | wc -l
       0

Zilch. So either the screenshots are faked or were taken from some weird unofficial ripoff.

The declaration puts to bed the too-good-to-be-true story that a handful of cheeky coders at WhatsApp were venting their frustrations towards the Cupertino App Store curators with angry outbursts never meant to see the light of day.

While not real, the shots elicited genuine responses from other developers, who vented their own frustrations with developing for and supporting Apple's iOS platform and echoed the sentiments of the fictional WhatsApp devs.

So, while it seems that "Fuck Apple" is a sentiment shared by some developers out there, WhatsApp is not one of them.

At least not at the code level. ®

Editor's note: This article was updated after publication to include WhatsApp's comments.