Tens of thousands of hacked iTunes accounts are now for sale

    Hacked iTunes accounts are available for sale across China at prices starting as low as a few dollars. These hacked account details, include credit card details, were being made available for sale via China's largest retail website, Taobao. An original report in the Global Times claimed around 50.000 hacked accounts were being peddled on Taobao at prices ranging from one to 200 yuan. Thousands of accounts have been sold over the past several months, it said. AFP has confirmed the claims.

    The retailer claimed it takes all reasonable and necessary steps to protect consumers. Hacked iTunes accounts are sold with the admonition to use them for just 24-hours.

    “At this time, we have not received any information from Apple or any other principal related to the iTunes accounts indicating that these products either violate our listing rules or infringe on the IP of others,” the company said, as reported by AFP.

    Well we're probably going to see a lot more Vietnamese books being sold/bought in record numbers but the question at hand is, what really makes iTunes such a good target; what happened to Amazon, Paypal, Ebay?

Apps by employees

    You know what sucks? Apple will tell you all the time to enrich lives, and that you are a very talented and creative individual and our products are here for people to enjoy blah blah blah, but if you have a great idea idea for an app, then you better quit right now. I can't remember the finer details, but it's either '"we fucking own everything you do" or "don't you dare even think about it". Thanks. I don't understand what they're so scared about, even if your app is totally unrelated to anything to do with Apple or the stores, they won't allow it. Bullshit.

[iPhone jokes] Saturday Night Live - the long lost and censored iPhone parody!

Movies you should watch: Waiting

"God I can't wait to quit this job!"

    My favorite movie parallel has to be Waiting. This film has everything. Take Monty, Serena and Raddimus first. They work there, they think it's bullshit and don't care in the slightest about the customer or the brand. They all get on well with each other and are just looking forward to a few drinks with some good people at the weekend. These are your classic 'sound' specialists- probably at uni or maybe don't have a degree and are just earning a few bills to pay the rent and spend on beer.

    Then you've got Dean. Although only slightly educated, he knows that he's too good for this place. Like everyone else he realizes that this is not a career and is just a job, but thinks bigger and knows he needs to leave.

    Calvin is your classic LOF, suck-up clipboard wannabe manager weener who does see this as a career and would do anything to sit in the office and conduct Daily Brownload.

Look at the hate on that face.

    And then there's Dan- a manager who loves telling people what to do but who wanders around and does NO work whatsoever. He is also very weak and folds like origami when a customer kicks off and demands some free shit.

    There's bitchy customers, Naomi has been there 'waahaahaay too long', and Mitch has to sit through some core training bullshit videos in which you'll be introduced to Apple-esque Shennanigans slogans like "the difference between ordinary and extraordinary... is that little extra!"

Brilliant.

Apple: Hey! Your bank account just got drained

     An unsuspecting reader of The Register, named Peter, woke up one morning to discover an email informing him of a "£10 Monthly Gift for wqfaqapk445@hotmail.com", an account he'd never heard of.

    The vouchers, sent to a recipient's email address, can be used to purchase music and audio books from the iTunes Music Store. Peter checked his iTunes purchase history, where to his horror he discovered scores of these "Monthly Gift" purchases, all of which had been generated within a short space of time on 19 January, but only one of which generated an email - because Apple really doesn't want to bother you while "you're" spending. He was informed of the theft by an e-mail from Apple, saying his £1,000 gift purchase had been confirmed, sum which didn't alert any of the iTunes security policies (if there are any) for an user that didn't spend more than 5£ a month. Ever.

    Apple describes iTunes Monthly Gifts as a "great way to give a gift that keeps on giving".

"How is it even possible for iTunes to be used as some type of glorified bank account? Why the hell would I want to use iTunes to transfer money to people?

"It is completely unacceptable that Apple has turned iTunes into some type of pseudo-PayPal without the security measures, monitoring and care being taken to run something so important,"

"iTunes isn't just a system for buying a bit of music; it's turned into a banking system that can wipe out your finances and put whole families into financial limbo." Peter concluded.

[UPDATE]

Sales Fails: Rhonda

     This dreadful technique lasted about 6 months, if that. The basic premise was if the customer wanted help from one of the Specialists, they would press a button in the centre of the screen and the desktop picture would change slightly from blue, to a kind of greeny blue. No buzzer or anything would go off, the Red Zone team were supposed to be vigilant of all machines on the shop floor, despite the fact they face in all directions and customer would have Safari over the top of the green screen. When they realised it wasn't working, they changed to to red, which freaked out the customers so much they would just walk away from the machine. Bollocks.

The Apple A4 CPU - a cheap replica

What is it and what devices use it?

    The Apple A4 is a package on package system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed by Apple and manufactured by Samsung. It combines an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU architecture with a PowerVR GPU. The chip commercially debuted with the release of Apple's iPad tablet; followed shortly by the iPhone 4 smartphone, the 4th generation iPod Touch and the 2nd generation Apple TV.

Why is it a "replica"?

    The A4 is based on Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC "Hummingbird" used in the Galaxy S, however it's missing features such as the FM module and others that are subtle and so far undisclosed, compared to the original. Check below to see the performance degradation.

Apple Store Marriages

He couldn't get it in white, as this model only comes in black.

What??? Jokes.

Oh god I hope this doesn't offend anyone.