Let’s start with the accidental… ;)
A reader dropped her iPhone (pictured above) shortly after buying it, from a distance of only two feet up, but managed to crack her screen on the thinly-carpeted floor. But with no replacement plan, insurance, or any sort of clumsy-protection, she found herself screwed out of $600. That was, until the Apple store from which she purchased the unit emailed her and replaced it free. Wow. Her quote: “I guess they felt sorry for me.” galleryPost('iPhoneBroke', 3, 'iPhoneBroke');
If you are, you’re probably familiar with the image above. You’ve probably seen it about 100 times while pawing hungrily at your $650 paperweight while waiting for that activation email from iTunes/AT&T. It’s not your fault, it’s AT&T/T-Mobile/Sprint/Verizon’s. Join the club. Post your grief in the comments and we’ll all have a pity party.
What would you do if you opened up your iPhone box and dropped your precious phone before you could even look at it? We’d cry like a toddler that got kicked in the nuts, but Shawn is a braver man than we could ever be. Good on you for keeping a straight face, Shawn.
Thanks Ray!
Don’t ask how we know, but if you happen to be using a copy of Leopard you found on the internet, you’re probably having some trouble activating your iPhone. iTunes updates and installs to 7.3, but hangs on the first activation screen when the iPhone’s plugged in.
Anyone else have similar experiences? Similar to this theoretical person, that is.
Early reports/rumours are coming in that some iPhones are bricking during activation. [MacDailyNews]
There’s been some pretty hardcore pirate bashing lately, and I don’t mean the bad reviews for that latest Caribbean movie (take THAT, Disney!) They’re worse than real world thieves, apparently, because the dollar value of ‘goods’ stolen runs to billions of dollars! These guys are the Dr. Evil of thievery… if only they could work out how to turn it into cash like those pirates that make and sell actual discs in Asia, huh?
Anyway, seems one of our own bad guys, Hew Raymond Griffiths, formerly of Bateau Bay on the NSW Central Coast, has now met his match in the form of a US prison cell where he’ll spend the next 15 months of a 51 month sentence (he earned time served after spending years in a local cell while fighting extradition).
Well, there’s falling in with a bad crowd, and then there is getting involved with a Russian warez crew (the notorious DOD). If I lived on the Central Coast, I’d probably take up surfing. -Seamus Byrne
US gaols Aussie piracy kingpin [SMH] Thanks M0les for the tip. Don’t visit his blog. It’s crap. His words, not mine.
To Mac owners who have yet to upgrade to OS 10.4.10, you may want to wait a bit before slapping on the double digits. A huge thread worth of upgraders found themselves subjected to what has now been coined as “snap, crackle and pop” during audio playback.
The problem seems to occur on multiple systems through built-in speakers and output jacks alike. So unless you enjoy eating Rice Krispies via inner ear ingestion, we’d recommend you hold out on the update.
And now we’re hungry. Apple Discussions [via digg]
We always knew the Xbox 360 failure rate was high, but the only time Microsoft’s put any sort of solid numbers on the thing it was always somewhere around 5%. Retailers here in Australia, on the other hand, have just reported a failure rate of somewhere over 30% historically, though things seem to be getting a bit better. That’s pretty ridonkulous. It’s a good thing Microsoft support is usually pretty good about taking them back, so you don’t have to go all Picard and shout about how many lights there are over the phone.
From what we’ve seen in unconfirmed reports on the Net, the problem comes from insufficient cooling for the GPU. This in turn causes the three red lights, which means you’re going to have to send back your 360 to Microsoft and possibly get a dirty refurbished unit in return. If you’re really, really lucky (and French), you’ll get a unit with added cooling as well. – Jason Chen
Microsoft confronts Xbox 360 hardware failures [Current.com.au]
Over on AVS Forums, a few members are complaining about a problem with copies of The Prestige: disc rot.
You have to have a certain special kind of fetish to enjoy watching German ladies in bikinis destroy gadgets with a scowl on their face, but if anyone fits the bill, we’re sure they’re in our readership.
These sets of videos belong to Bikinirama, three German ladies that enjoy swimwear and destroying electronics equally. The video above shows them demolishing a PowerBook, but there’s monitors, CD players and record players as well. No ball breaking, but that’s probably more of a hobby than something they need to be paid for. – Jason Chen
Bikinirama [via Fake Steve via Wired]
