How do we know who apple people are on discussions?

As a general rule there aren't any Apple staff answering questions in the discussions. You are just talking to other users who may be able to help you solve any problems you are having.

Tom's right. Apple staff are pretty rare on the Discussions. But if they do post, their posts are usually marked in some way. Either with an Apple icon, or some text identifying them as an employee. I've also sometimes seen a link to a disclaimer in their posts.

charlie

On the old discussion software, they had distinctive avatars and identifiers under the avatars. They could have adopted distinctive avatars with the new forum software but they didn't. The reason that they didn't, I assume, is because the new software allows secondary icons to identify users. Every level had its own icon, the Hosts had their own icon, and Apple employees had theirs. This identification system was temporarily disabled along with the rest of the levels and reputations because of the performance hit that was being caused. It may come back if they can fix the performance problems.

Until then, Hosts and Apple employees have been using text signatures, such as "Apple Discussions Host" to identify themselves. There may be Apple employees who have not gotten the word about the text signatures.

BTW, to see what I mean by the identification icons, look at how Jive has implemented this feature on their own support forums. On this forum page, look to the right in the box labeled "Legend".

You won't see any sign of any thing official as an apple staff person. However the info you marked as solved isn't correct. Apple staff do indeed read the discussion boards. If you ever have a discussion with tech support and mention the discussion boards and what you have read they will acknowledge what you are saying as things they have seen as well. While it is correct that apple officially doesn't respond to direct questions here they are watching and listening. They use the discussion boards and beta tester feed back. It isn't as cut and dry as your solved point winner made it seem.

That is correct, you will not find any official statements from Apple, but you will see Apple employees identifying themselves. Obviously, the Apple lurckers don't identify themselves - kind of hard if they are only lurking. ;-)>