'It is not something you are good at, so please think twice'

Quotw This was the week when Apple was not having fun in the cloud, with its own co-founder dissing the whole concept and its iCloud easy ID recovery contributing to a very public hack.

Woz couldn't have been more clear about his lack of faith in the cloud, saying:

I really worry about everything going to the cloud. I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.

What's that, Woz? You think the (i)cloud is horrendous? What more can you tell us about it?

With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away. I want to feel that I own things [...] A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say: the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it.

And an Apple-enabled hack was doing a pretty good job of proving Woz right. Journalist Mat Honan had his entire iLife scrubbed when hackers got hold of his Apple ID.

The scribe was such a fanboi that all his tech gear was fruity... so once the baddies had his Apple ID, it was sayonara to pictures, documents, emails and access to any of his online accounts – including, unfortunately, the Twitter feed for gadget blog Gizmodo.

Honan managed to strike up a conversation with one of the alleged hackers, Phobia, through Twitter and then email, to be told that no brute force was necessary, just some sweet-talking to first Amazon's and then Apple's tech support for the necessary details to unlock everything.

Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information - a partial credit card number - that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification.

In the Californian court, Apple and Samsung continued to duke it out over patents, trading snarling insults and pathetic pleas draped in legalese in their attempts to win over the jury.

The fruity firm was in the driving seat for the first few days of witnesses and got in a few good digs at the Korean chaebol. Apple said Samsung was "in crisis" because the iPhone was SO DAMN SHINY and produced an internal doc that showed the Korean firm comparing its phone with the Jesus-mobe feature for feature, while recommending that Galaxy phones should be a bit more like iPhones.

On top of that, a few well-paid experts were on hand to say how confused they were. Between the phones that is, not in general.

College prof Peter Bressler said:

The overall impression that the ordinary observer would have of that design is that they're substantially the same.

While ex-Appler and graphic designer Susan Kare said:

There was a big conference table with many phones on it, and some of them were on. I could see the screen. I went to pick up the iPhone to make a point about the user interface, and I was holding a Samsung.

Kare, who was involved in early Apple icons, also said the icons on the phone were similar, to which a Samsung lawyer responded drily:

Have you ever seen triangular icons?

Meanwhile, Acer told Microsoft it might like to think again about moving into the hardware world with its Surface tablet... or else (well, it didn't say "or else", but that's probably what it was thinking).

Acer chairman and CEO JT Wang warned:

Think twice. It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at, so please think twice

Wikipedia was down in out for a brief period, only memorable for the massive amount of sarcastic feedback on Twitter, including:

oh my god, Wikipedia is down. WHERE IS ALL THE KNOWLEDGE? WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE?

and:

Fights are breaking out everywhere. I hear sirens in the background. A house down the street is ablaze. #Wikipedia #WikipediaIsDown

And something pretty important happened that topped the Google Science news stats practically all week long. That's right, NASA's next-generation Mars-nuclear-tank-like rover Curiosity reached the Red Planet.

It sent back loads of lovely pics, including coloured ones and 3D ones, but all anyone seemed to care about was that guy with the Mohawk.