This may be a geek burglar's dream come true: breaking into an Apple store filled to the brim with laptops and iPhones. Unidentified robbers have broken into Seattle's Apple Store at University Village, swiping all laptops that were being serviced and refurbished iPhones in the office.

The Seattle police was first alerted of the heist on 4 a.m. last Monday when the store's alarm notified them of a rear entry, but there was no indication of anything out of the ordinary. The police finally checked out the site at 8 a.m., only to find the store in disarray.

A large hole was found in the technician's room's ceiling, and 20 cubicles were emptied of laptops. Even a high-end laptop was cut loose from its cable lock.

One of the more pressing problems aside from the burglary is identity theft, since there is a plethora of customers' personal information stored in the stolen serviced laptops, including credit card information. The Apple Store employees called their customers and notified them of the theft, but they refused to comment to the Seattle P-I reporters.

If your own laptop or wallet gets stolen, you're a potential victim of identity theft as well. Don't just report it to the police; immediately alert your credit card company and place a fraud alert as well. It's better to be safe than sorry.

There's no doubt that the Apple iPhone's launch was a runaway success, and new owners of the handset couldn't be happier. But Gizmodo reports some flimsy incidents that might dampen the parade a bit.

According to the report, AT&T might be cashing in on the launch by forcing consumers to buy two accessories if they want to get the handset. This happened in two stores in Seattle, one in California, one in New York and a weird variant of the act in North Carolina.

According to sources, consumers who waited in long lines to buy the iPhone were required by shopkeepers to purchase two of the product's accessories. If they didn't, they were simply denied the privilege of trading. In the New York branch, it took a man hollering that AT&T was doing illegal stuff to get them to sell without forcing accessories.

In one Seattle store, a source reports that AT&T had 20 units in stock and declared them sold out after 10 people entered the shop. However, they did offer the remaining people that they could get them handsets through "special deals" within a couple of days if they ordered two accessories along.

Gizmodo also reports that there are sources saying that AT&T personnel were required to sell products on a given quota. Unless they perform according to the company's benchmarks, they were subject to termination.

In Greensboro, North Carolina, accessories weren't forced on buyers but accessories were placed within the package of the iPhone. This way, the store was able to charge an additional 10 percent for restocking if the box was reopened.

When you press that start key and nothing happens, it's more than an inconvenience.

If you're like a lot of Mac users, it's a betrayal. Suddenly, this faithful friend and servant that has worked with you for so long has decided to "check out" on you.

Remember, however, that Apple has traditionally taken very good care of its treasured customers. If your machine is still under warranty, they'll even send someone to your domicile to correct the problem. But even if its out of warranty, the Apple has been designed to be extremely user-friendly - and there are very few problems that the user can't often solve on his/her own.

The folks at Creative Techs in Seattle have come up with a  handy four-step process to get you back up and running, read the Full Article to start on the path towards recovery.

Consumer regulators in Europe claim that Apple places too many restrictions on consumers buying songs from the  iTunes store -- and the winds of discontent are blowing across the pond.

The Free Software Foundation carried out protests two weeks ago at Apple retail stores in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle. The issue is digital rights management technology (DRM) which limits what consumers can do with purchased content. These "Defective by Design" protests are aimed not only at Apple, but also at a  growing trend toward legal restrictions that bind digital content to particular playing devices.

"This isn't intended to attack Apple and its innovations, but really to draw attention to the existence of DRM technologies, and how they restrict what consumers can do with their music," says Ted Teah of the Cambridge Massachusetts-based FSF.

Leaflets were passed out at the protests in which Apple CEO Steve Jobs is quoted as saying, "If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own," suggesting that the company is being hypocritical in its use of DRM.

Last year, Sony BMG drew criticism when the company programmed CDs with a hidden code that secretly installed itself on users' hard drives, relayed information back to Sony, and left computers vulnerable to viruses. The result was the recall of  5 million CDs, customer boycotts and class action lawsuits.

Apple's use of DRM  isn't as invasive. Teah says those restrictions may become more onerous, however, and may be used as a basis of legal attacks against consumers by various music industry organizations which have sued consumers found to have downloaded pirated songs from the Internet.

"A teenage girl making a mix tape for a boy she has a crush on could become a target for an expensive lawsuit in the future," says Teah.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst for JupiterResearch,  says that concerns about the iTunes DRM system are unfounded. "It's fairly innocuous," he says. "You can easily get around the restrictions by burning your songs to a CD, and then reimporting them as an MP3 or any other format you wish."

I once saw Steve Jobs at a coffee shop in Seattle, but I didn't look at him. Thought he might want to sue me for something if I did. Bought him a danish as a peace offering/settlement when my eye wandered over to see what he was playing on his iPod.

A new year, a new suit. Apple has filed a suit against Burst.com, a company it has been dealing with over the past few months in an attempt to quell charges by Burst that Apple is violating patents of theirs. According to Information Week, the suit is a pre-emptive strike in anticipation of Burst coming forth with those charges in court.

"Apple is seeking a declaratory judgment from the court that its products do not infringe upon patents held by Burst.com. Apple declines to specify which products are the focus of the dispute. Burst.com says it has been pursuing licensing for Apple's QuickTime, iPod, and iTunes products, including Apple's iTunes Music Store."

The article doesn't say which of Burst's patents Apple is reportedly in violation of, but Burst.com settled a similar suit against Microsoft last year for $60 million.

To Richard Lang, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Burst.com, Apple's rejection of his company's claims represents something of a double standard. "Big companies love patents as long as they're not owned by someone else," he observes.

It seems Steve has met his match.

[Via, Information Week]

Will blaring your favorite music through your iPod and those overpriced headphones cause deafness? Former 1960s The Who's guitarist Pete Townshend thinks so. The former rocker, who spent his lifetime listening to studio-grade headphones during his musical career, has seen first-hand the effects of feeding loud streams of music directly into an inner ear canal.

He warns parents and kids about the dangers of listening to musical devices at a loud volume on his website:

"Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired," he said. "If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK. ... But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead."

"I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," he said. Referring to the increasingly popular practice of downloading music from the Internet, Townshend said: "The downside may be that on our computers - for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience - we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound."

So if you feel like you're losing a little of your hearing, be careful and put that iPod down for a few minutes. It won't kill you to lower the volume every now and then.

[Via, Seattle Post Intelligencer]