Boom. One after the other. Don’t show the Windoze fanboys!!

Perhaps the beginning of a spin-off site ala UnexpectedlyQuit.com?

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!

Sounds like the new 3G iPhone. Perhaps. Sorta. Hopefully!

Well… It’s not. It’s Sumsung’s new “iPhone killer”. Stated in the video below, this thing is set to come out ib June. But will June be too late?

If this new version of the iPhone can deliver on most of the features above (as it really should have in it’s original incarnation – I mean no video recording – really!) then I think it’s pretty much still gonna shit all over the Instinct.

There’s no going past the iPhones sexy interface, and soon to be hundreds of applications and games to make the Apple touch platform the yummiest thing since a really yummy sandwich. That was surprisingly yummy in a rather non-sandwich way.

Sandwich goodness plus “seem-less” interoperability with the iTunes world of content is just part of what makes the iPhone a force to be reckoned with.

Fingers crossed for the WWDC keynote! Check out the promotional ad for the Instinct below. 

Within a number of hours, this ad could become extinct, irrelevant and just downright incorrect. And good laugh.

(via TUAW)

UPDATE: Well well well… Post-WWDC, it looks like Samsung, for now, will have the last laugh! That is unless Apple just wants to surprise us all with video recording capabilities closer to the release date of the new iPhone 3G!… 

“Tut tut tut, Apple” is all I can say…

Dan and I journeyed to our local Australian Apple Store this evening and were nearly met with a rousing applause.

The install went smoothly, thought the damn thing seemed to take longer ‘verifying the disc’ than actually installing the thing. If you’re in a rush, I certainly see no harm in skipping the verify step. If you are installing a family pack on multiple computers and are cool like me, then I would definitely recommend skipping this lengthy time-waster.

My first impressions are thus:

• The whole install process is so breezy, it really has been perfected.
• Spotlight flies like an absolute bitch! Amazing! On my MacBook Pro it took about half an hour to build the library and was off and racing. It automatically highlights the top entry now, a nice change.
• Sleep/wake times on the MacBooks are the same
• There’s no ‘Loading OS’ screen per-say, it just gets it straight on! Sexy.
• The Airport menu loads instantly, at last!
• Time Machine most certainly backs up over the Airport Extreme Base Station, providing you perform your initial backup with your external HDD connected to your mac, and then when connected to your Airport, manually logon to it once through Finder and set it to remember the password.
• The new side-panel of Finder is brilliant. .Mac is enabled by default, but that can be pissed off through the settings pretty easily.
• Safari feels snappier. Really. It’s out of BETA finally, too. I’m going to try and make the switch over from Firefox one last time. Firefox runs like an absolute dog for some reason, too. All the more reason to go Safari.
• I’m not entirely sure what to think of the new translucent menus, or gratuitous use of drop-shadow. I’ll sleep on that one.
• All the Help menus have been rehashed, to better serve the kind of people who click on them.
• Screen capture gives feedback for the exact pixel that you are hovering over. Awww.
• Time Machine is a handsome bitch.

I’ll certainly add more as it comes up. But on the whole, this is one of those upgrades that doesn’t smack you in the face with joy straight away, but instead gently flicks marbles at you until you realise that all-in-all, it is actually freaking awesome. I think I might sleep in my free Leopard tshirt.

Geared up for the long waiting line at the Apple store, along with the patented Apple buzz and anticipation, Daniel and Jason were in for something rather different…

Time for some first person narration. Jason took to the wheel of his BMW, and money in hand, we took off into the sunset to get ourselves some sexy spots.

One of the first there! Excellent. That meant that we were the geekiest of the geeks around. Ready to line up to purchase a computer operating system, and prompt.

So we lined up next to the man in the red monkey suit, who had audio equipment there with him. Leopard Sir? No? Oh okay. Lemme guess… Busking? Failed Australian Idol contestant looking to make a comeback in front of a group of mac fans? Perhaps running some Karaoke to warm up the voices for when we cheered “Shit yeah! Six o’clock! Die Windows!”.

He told us he was there to help let people know, the action was here. Fair enough!

But hang on, where was the line of people leading a mile down the footpath from the store? Hmm. Something was up. Was it Friday today? Yep, definitely Friday.

Maybe everyone was jam packed inside? Inside we go to find out!

…

Chapter 2.

(Third person) Daniel timedly stepped over the threshold and took in his surroundings… Jason jumped through the doorway and shouted “Woohoo!”. And… And… More after the break.

(What’s with the break thingy? Back to first person.) Silence. There was practically silence. No one even looked around to see who the enthusiastic youth “wooting” was, let alone give him a huge cheer!

Sadly enough, we took the total number of patrons up to about four.

WTF?!? WTH!?! WTFWGOH? There’s a singing monkey out the front, big Leopard signs up in the window, but more macs in the room than people! Damn! What a let down!

And what else was a little disconcerting, perhaps more so than the lack of mac fans was that the other patrons in the store consisted of one teen geek, and middle aged men who’d stopped masturbating over images cut out of the Womans Weekly long enough to come and pick up a copy of Leopard to pull off over. Sorry guys. No lingerie models in that Leopard manual.

But i kid. We were no better than them, and they no better than us. We were all present for a common purpose. And so the countdown began, counting down (in our heads) and on the computer screens.

To fill in the time until we had to fight our way in front of four, no five now, pale Caucasians, we had a wander round the store. And what is this i saw! I thought Sennheiser was generally a pretty groovy outfit, with some really nice products… But what was this? A bad German translation? Or just a really bad attempt to get some teenage purchases?

And thanks to that stylish PC tool for modeling that package wonderfully.

At 5:55pm, the gang of mac fans were surprised with an early treat of Leopard savouries. One of the staff members booted up an iMac with Apple’s retail demo installation of Leopard – complete with John Appleseed and co. populating the Address Book.

The staff member gave a little bit of a demo of cover flow in the Finder and a few other token things like Stacks and that.

Then the geek contingent very diplomatically took a few mouse clicks in turn. I watched on as another enthusiastic youth got his jollies.

No porn was loaded on this computer, so Jason decided to entertain the crowd with some sexy dancing.

And as if that wasn’t entertaining enough, our red friend outside started up some fun of his own!

I wasn’t too far off when i joked to him about doing karaoke either. He busted out a saxa-ma-phone and got tootin’ alongside some backing tracks! Pure gold.

Surely the Mac fans would now come in droves!!…

Okay, so Leopard time was… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, finally here!

Everyone politely lined up (Airport Extreme in Jason’s arm) and purchased their copy of Leopard. Non-event!

But what was super cool was the hologram on the box! You gotta see it in person. Really cool!

Oh yeah! And we each got a Leopard t-shirt. Rather shit actually! Bit of a let down, but free, so who cares. If it was one of those cool retro changes-colour-with-heat t-shirts, that would have made it just-pissed-higher-than-my-body-height! cool.

So into the car and off home to install the thing!

And so what did Jason and i learn from this whole experience?

I think it would be that if you are looking for a great OS X purchasing experience, don’t expect it in Australia. Go to America.

(Did anyone have a more exciting experience at one of the city stores in the land of Oz?)

We’ll get back to you on how Leopard panned out for us! Happy installing, all!