flop ya mac out

This episode is bought to you by the number 47. In this show - full of innuendo and Apple goodness - Jason whips it out of his pants with cunning skill and showmanship to the genuine surprise of Dan.

Barry the Monkey has a new job - working for Apple Inc. in the iPhone App Store division. eBay antics leave a sour taste in the mouth of Jason. And ole Jobsy is up to his old tricks again, this time giving motivational speeches to the MobileMe Team.

An uncustomary search of your iPod to become an airport standard? Mobile phone carrier Three, invites itself to the Aussie iPhone party. And Dan and Jase gear up to be disappointed by the rumoured laptop and iPod refresh, later this year.

Arnold Kim of Macrumors no longer servicing kidneys. First spyware for the iPhone in the wild? Do not bother asking Daniel! Gripes about firmware 2.0, and is the Mac-tastic life of Jason about to become a little more jerky?

The guys get themselves some 2.0 action - in the iPhone department. Jason continues to craft his master travel plan, and Daniel learns how to Precipitate.

As someone who is gearing up to head overseas, I’ve put my laptop into somewhat of a lock-down mode, password protecting everything to make sure that it can’t be molested if it falls into the wrong hands abroad.

However, the drawback of such tight security is that (with the omission of physical labelling), if my laptop falls into the right hands, there’s no way the finder can figure out who the laptop actually belongs to.

Enter this handy hint, sourced from Apple’s own Leopard Security Configuration Guide. The hack allows you to place a custom phrase in the OS X Leopard Login Screen, just above the user name and password.

Crank up the terminal, and enter the following:

su [your admin username]
sudo -s
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText “This laptop belongs to Jason Deacon, and you don’t.”

Of course, you may want to garnish your welcome message with maybe a contact phone number, email address or more impressive message than the example here.

The beauty of this hack is that as your contact details change when you travel, updating them is a simple as re-entering this into terminal. No more re-printing labels on the road, and you’re able to enter much more information here, too.

The Apple Security Guide is a good read, which I thoroughly recommend if you’ve got an eye for that sort of thing. We’ll explore more security tips in time!

Bubble Bobble, Canasta and turkeys are all things that do not get discussed in this special pre-iPhone 3G episode. Some MobileMe is thrown in for texture along with some Microsoft to sour the dish and a sprinkle of Telstra bashing is added to taste.

Dan and Jase dive into the jungle of iPhone 3G plans released thus far. And is Apple getting physical for the corporate world? Bob gets epic with his feature film explaining iPhone 2.0 Software and Telstra scores an elephant stamp from Jason.

Who would win a wrestling match between Steve Balmer and Steve Wozniak? Jason whispers sweet nothings about saving space. iPhone 3G release looms closer and eBay comes under scrutiny by the ACCC.

An employee at Optus has confirmed to flop ya mac out that not only does he enjoy a good book, but more importantly the iPhone 3G when purchased ‘pre-paid’ style with the Optus network will be able to be unlocked for a fee of $80. The ‘post-paid’ plan iPhone will be able to be unlocked for free. Free! Free.

Of course once you are signed up on a two year contract, typically the only way to cancel your contract is to pay out the full term of your contract, which is likely to be more than a grand.

But given most of the Australian carriers will end up offering iPhone it seems, having an unlocked Phone may not be all that important? I guess it depends if we can sell them to China for a decent price!

Our delicious source also mentioned that Optus is designing special iPhone plans, which is to be expected, given the data requirements for using iPhone and the mostly shite data plans currently available. They are also apparently upgrading their Optus Zoo service.

Optus Zoo is the awesome name for their Intranet that allows you to do cool things that are too cool for me to use, so much so I have never bothered to see what the service really offers with my current Optus plan.

The new Optus Zoo service is reportedly going to have an ‘i’ tacked onto its name so that people will know the service is Apple-like and therefore a service you can show off in front of your grandma and friends and still get ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’.

‘iZoo’ sounds more like the noise you make when you sneeze and hopefully will remain invisible to Optus iPhone users that don’t wish to engage in their carrier specific offerings, how ever ‘Apple delicious’ they may be. Oh, stop it!

More information about plans is bound to be released leading up the release of iPhone 3G around the world in 22 countries on the 11th of July, so let us all pray the plans available to Australian users won’t be as painfully pricey as our broadband plans are!

UPDATE: Further details to hand…

• iZoo will be accessed via an icon on the home screen, that will give access to further services, such as a petrol pump finder that locates the cheapest petrol available near you, then guides you to it using GPS.
• Unlimited data with plans, with the option of an unlimited calls plan at the high end.

UPDATE 2: Optus iPhone 3G pricing now available here.