It appears that identity theft has hit Apple’s iTunes store.
ComputerWorld is reporting in their article Phishers point scam at Apple’s iTunes that some people are receiving email messages telling them that a problem must be corrected in their iTunes account. The email contains a link to a bogus iTunes billing page, requesting the user re-enter their information, including credit card number, security code, and other information for identity theft.
iTunes Store users beware.
Several sites are now reporting that Apple will launch the 3G iPhone sometime in June, 2008.
This is really no a great surprise since rumors of the 3G iPhone have been around since before the last iPhone release. The interesting buzz is about the possibility that AT&T may offer subsidies of as much as $200 on this phone for a two-year contract. If that’s the case, this would bring the 8GB down to $199 and the 16GB down to $299.
The other buzz is that the new phones will have a slightly different form factor. Early rumors suggested the phone would be slightly thicker. But more recent rumors suggest the new iPhones will be 9.2mm thick, compared to the current 11.7mm thickness. So, I guess this means that they’ll either be thicker or thinner. Such is the nature of rumors.
Unfortunately, I just bought my 16GB iPhone a few months ago. So. I’ll not likely be getting one of these next generation iPhones this year. Perhaps it’s better to first hear reports of the 3G network,
The cover story on last week’s Business Week was about the Mac’s growing presence in the corporate world.
While this trend is not particularly surprising to most seasoned Mac users, it’s notable for the fact that Apple has spent very little resources directly targeting this market. And yet, March, 2008 sales for Macs exceeded all forecasts, climbing 51% over the previous year. The article points out that combined Mac, iPhone and iPod sales grew from $5.2 billion in fiscal 2002 to $24 billion in 2007. Apple’s share price has risen 2,300% over the past 5 years.
It appears that a number of factors are at work here, including cross over from iPod and iPhone sales. However, one major factor may be the troubled Vista operating system, which seems to have been a dog from the start. Microsoft’s own Steve Ballmer calls Vista a “work in progress.”
As most of you know, the Mac OS is a UNIX-based operating system. UNIX systems have a way of maintaining themselves through scheduled maintenance routines that clean up a variety of system logs and temporary files. These automated scripts generally run in the wee hours of the morning (somewhere between 3am and 5am). However, if your Mac is turned off or in sleep mode during these hours, these maintenance routines will not run.
A healthy Mac is a regularly maintained Mac. So if you don’t leave your Mac on and awake over night, it’s best to run these maintenance routines on a regular basis.
You can do this manually by typing the following into a Terminal session:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
Using Maintenance Applications
There are a number of 3rd party applications that do this work (and more) for you. Some of these are free, some cost. Check them out:
My current preference is Cocktail, which has a free version and a paid version.
I’d like to hear from folks who have other opinions and experience with these types of applications.
Note: Please see a more recent post on Apple TV hacks.
ATVFiles is an application (or plugin) that lets you browse part of the ATV file system using the Apple Remote. This allows you to navigate to files that do not normally sync to the ATV. ATVFiles allows you to play any of your media (with the proper codecs installed) right from the Apple TV interface.
Note: These steps assume that you’ve already enabled SSH on your Apple TV using the procedures in this post: Hacking The Apple TV to Enable SSH.
The first step is to download the ATVFiles package. Unpack this file to the ATVFiles-1.1.0 folder. In this folder you’ll find another folder called ATVFiles.frappliance. Copy this folder (see this post for using Fugu) to the following folder on your Apple TV:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns
Now restart your Apple TV (hold down the ‘-’ and ‘menu’ buttons on the Apple Remote for 6 seconds).
You should now see the addition of a Files menu item on your Apple TV. This will allow you to navigate to any files placed in your /mnt/media directory.
