Duck and cover, kiddies-- this is not a drill! There's an icky new Trojan floating around out there in Macdom, lurking in the shadows and biding its time... and it's already nuked the data of more than one curious cat. We may not have been able to share in the recent Sasser mayhem (or any of the six kazillion other Windows wormy virusy type thingies that have plagued the industry over the course of the last six minutes), but at least there's some guy out there getting his jollies when all-too-trusting Mac users double-click what they think is a Microsoft app and wind up with most of their data destroyed. We know, we know-- that's the sort of thing you're supposed to expect when running Microsoft software, but this time the data loss doesn't originate from Redmond after all.

See, faithful viewer Stephanie tipped us off to a Macworld UK article about the dodgy app in question, and apparently it's been showing up on peer-to-peer sharing networks "cunningly disguised as a Word 2004 for Mac demo." One reader states that he grabbed the file via Limewire "in the hope that perhaps Microsoft had released some sort of public beta"; after the file was unzipped, it sported a Microsoft icon that "looked genuine and trustworthy," so the hapless victim double-clicked it and subsequently found himself sans one home directory.

Now, maybe we're just naturally suspicious people, but while we feel bad for this guy, it seems to us that there's a sort of Darwinian thing going on here and anyone with a Naïvete Quotient above 130 is being culled from the gene pool. First of all, downloading anything from the peer-to-peer networks with apps like Limewire seems to us to be a sure way to wind up with malware of some sort, or, at the very least, a raging lice infestation and a case of one of those diseases you aren't supposed to talk about in polite company. Secondly, upon spying the supposed Word 2004 demo, the victim proceeded to download it off of Limewire instead of visiting Microsoft's site to get the software from its official distribution point, or, indeed, to check to see if such a demo existed in the first place. (It doesn't.)

Thirdly, the victim apparently thought nothing of the fact that the alleged Word 2004 demo was 108 KB in size; sure, small "web installers" are all the rage these days, but the file size should have triggered at least a little suspicion. Fourthly, the victim judged the download to be safe because its icon "looked genuine and trustworthy," which is, quite frankly, a lousy criterion. Fifthly, we're very glad that after nearly seven years of producing AtAT, we finally got to use the word "fourthly." And "fifthly," too, for that matter.

As far as malware goes, the "how" of this particular specimen is about as subtle as a swift kick in the groin. Whoever slapped it together apparently just banged out an AppleScript that runs the UNIX shell command to delete all files in the user's home directory, saved it as an application, and pasted an altered Microsoft Word icon into its Get Info box-- all of which took about as much finesse and technical ability as throwing a rock at your mom. Still, there's a sucker born every minute, and with the millions of active Mac OS X users out there, obviously at least some of them would fall for this thing. Even the most vigilant and paranoid are going to get suckered once in a while.

Time to buy stock in companies that make Mac OS X backup software?

And the intellectual property just keeps on piling up; we have to wonder where Apple even keeps it all these days. Surely the shelves are all full, the drawers are overflowing, and the basement is crammed with so much IP it's practically polluting Cupertino's groundwater by now. But environmental concerns be damned, because it's patents Apple wants, and patents Apple gets-- more and more, in an unyielding stream issuing forth from the PTO like some kind of... of... patent-spitting firehose.

Okay, so it's a dumb image. The patents are cool, though. Honestly.

The particular recent patent you might want to consider is U.S. Patent number 6,731,312, which, as faithful viewer Rich points out, apparently covers the user interface of iTunes. We say "apparently" because this freakin' patent makes the tax code seem clear and exciting by comparison: "What is claimed as the invention is a computer readable medium comprising media player application code which implements the following procedures: generating in a user interface an application window having a window frame and a plurality of stiles to define a plurality of panes within said frame; displaying in a first one of said panes a user selectable index of a plurality of media files; displaying in a second one of said panes first selected information for said media files; and displaying in a third one of said panes second selected information for said media files wherein said second and third panes are each initialized with a selection to view all of said user selectable index of the plurality of media files in said first pane." Holy cats, are we dead yet?

Anyway, CNET confirms that, as of last week, Apple has secured a patent on the iTunes interface (note that this is not the same as the iPod interface patent application we mentioned a few weeks back), which ought to give the company a nice layer of protection from the bane of its existence-- namely, other companies swiping its interfaces and then making lots more money off them then Apple ever does. Remember, Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement when Windows came out, and eventually lost big. Patents reportedly offer far greater protection of intellectual property than copyright does, so now Apple's legal department has a much bigger stick with which to swat down those that would seek to capitalize on Apple's research and development.

You know, like those jokers over at Lindows, er, we mean Linspire. Remember when we told you about Lsongs, the iTunes ripoff that practically duplicated every single element of Apple's interface, shifted one row of controls from the top of the screen to the bottom, and then just made the whole thing look as ugly as possible? Well, it sure looks like Apple will now be able to smack 'em down for a licensing fee, and if Linspire doesn't want to pay, it'll just be that much more courtroom drama for the rest of us. And it'd be a fun tussle, too, seeing as Linspire is a veteran of defending itself against none other than Microsoft itself. Bring on the pain!

You know, if we did invent a patent-spitting firehose, we bet we could patent it. Oooh, the irony!

Macworld Expo Boston is right around the corner, and all over the world, Mac users are saying "...whatever." You know the drill; Apple worked itself into a snit and declared that no way, no how would it deign to attend the show after it moved from New York back to Boston, despite the fact that Boston had built a nice, new convention center and promised everyone lollipops. Meanwhile, as of right now, the show will go on exactly as planned, only without Apple, without a zillion third-party vendors who decided it's not worth showing up if Apple isn't there to draw the crowds, and without two-thirds of the attendees, who were only planning on showing up for the Stevenote anyway, and who are now shaking down small children outside of schoolyards to amass enough pilfered lunch money to afford a ticket to WWDC instead.

In fact, it's starting to look like we're going to have the whole place to ourselves. It's gonna rock.

Anyway, what do you suppose that Apple is doing that week which is so important that it can blithely pull out of Macworld Expo? Guitar lessons? Fat camp? Oral surgery? Well, wonder no more, because faithful viewer frozen tundra stumbled upon the answer: Apple's going to attend DV Expo instead. Yup, the proof is right there in black and white (and blue and sort of a bluish-grey hue) on the exhibitor list: Apple, booth 101. Apple's "other plans" consist of attending a different trade show that week.

Now, you could take this as a sign that Apple is prioritizing and putting the professional video industry ahead of the general consumer Mac market, but it's not like there aren't enough Apple employees to exhibit at two shows simultaneously, so that'd probably be a groundless interpretation. No, it's been pretty clear from the beginning that Apple-- okay, let's face it, Steve-- has a real problem with Boston for some reason. Why, we can't recall him setting foot in this town even once since the 1997 summer Expo when he announced that the platform wars were over and accepted a $150 million investment from Microsoft and kissed Bill Gates's Big Giant Live-Via-Satellite Hinder in front of the assembled masses and... Oh. Say, we think we might have an inkling of why Steve objects to the return to Boston!

Bad memories aside, though, we're starting to suspect that it's less of an aversion to Boston and more of a New York thing-- specifically, a Javits Center thing. You did notice, didn't you, that DV Expo just happens to be taking place at the Javits Center, where and when Macworld Expo would be taking place had it not moved back to Boston? We have a feeling that the International Knitting and Embroidery Expo could be there that week and Apple would still attend. We don't know much about the life cycle of beings from Steve's home planet, but are you starting to get the feeling that there's some sort of annual molting process or something and Steve has a nest for that purpose hidden deep in the bowels of the Javits Center? Because we are.

Then again, we don't sleep much. Have we mentioned that?