It's no secret that Apple is known for its loyal customers, but just how much do Apple users look up to the company's CEO, Steve Jobs?

Below is a photo of a car that was spotted in Apple’s parking lot a few days ago with a rather interesting license plate.

Instead of the traditional combination of numbers and letters, it reads WWSJD whichstands for What Would Steve Jobs Do? — a take on the popular religious meme WWJD?

According to TechCrunch, the owner of the car is actually an Apple employee. A die-hard fan or a bit of "stalker-type behavior" going on here?

WWSJD - "What Would Steve Jobs Do" license plate

Apple Store (Reuters)

A group of employees at an Apple retail store in Seattle, Washington are planning an October 3rd walkout, citing abusive working conditions and labor law violations.

ifoAppleStore writes:

According to insiders, the employees’ complaints haven’t been fully investigated by the company’s human resources department. After reaching an impasse with Sr. VP Retail Ron Johnson over the issue, a group of Specialists, Geniuses and Creatives say they will walk out to bring attention to their complaints, and that several former employees will join the protest.

Staffers at the Alderwood Mall (Wash.) - ironically where rival Microsoft is headquartered - say their complaints about “abusive” management and possible state and federal labor law violations at the store have been ignored by the company, and they are threatening to stage a walk out at 1 p.m. on October 3rd to protest.

If the walk-out takes place, it would be the first such labor action by Apple store employees.

In an ironic twist of events, Microsoft is reported to be stealing Apple store managers and sales staff as it prepares to open up its own retail stores. It seems it may not need to after all.

The changes Apple made to its App Store through the release of iTunes 9 have left iPhone app developers both excited and cautious.

There's appreciation for changes that improve app exposure but some developers, particularly smaller ones, are seeing a decline in sales.

Beyond the ongoing controversy over Apple's management of the iPhone app approval process -- which culminated in the unusual public posting of Apple's response to an FCC inquiry about the way Apple vets apps -- there's the more mundane difficulty the company faces in managing its success.

Earlier in July, Apple reported that the App Store was selling over 65,000 apps. And developers are submitting about 8,500 new or updated apps every week.

For Apple, which gets 30% of every app sold, more applications mean more revenue, assuming they're paid apps. But for developers, more applications mean more competition and more difficulty being noticed. It's a needle-in-a-haystack scenario with more hay being added daily.

Google has come under some strain these past weeks as it tries to diversifies into more and more areas. By doing so, the tech giant keeps bumping up against legal boundaries, turning them into a unfriendly giant monopolist.

Diane Mermigas at Seeking Alpha takes an interesting spin on the challenges Google are facing:

Like past monoliths of new growth industries, Google appears to be invincible. But Google is vulnerable just because it is thinly spread in a rapidly changing marketplace where rivals are eating away at the edges and fighting for turf. A major shift in technology or consumer behavior could alter the playing field, just as it once did for broadcast TV networks, music companies, telephone companies and typewriter manufacturers.

Google is locked in its fiercest battles over search, email, office applications, social networking, portals and brand advertising, Web browsers, mobile operating systems, ad servers and exchanges, and operating systems.

Mermigas goes on to list a number of other challenges including: real-time social search, Microsoft/Yahoo search and advertising, digital books, streaming video and video search, mobile search and mobile applications and advertising.

MySpace may be close to acquiring social music service iLike in a potential deal worth about $20 million, according to TechCrunch.

If the acquisition does go through, it will be the first since its new CEO Owen Van Natta took over in April.

iLike is a Web-based social music discovery service, and claims to be the dominant music application on several social networking platforms, including Facebook, Orkut, hi5 and Bebo. However, MySpace currently offers its own service, MySpace Music.

Founded in 2006, iLike has raised $16.5 million to date and now counts 50 million registered users for its service, which monitors listening habits and can make musical recommendations.

Some 10 million of its users access iLike via a Facebook application.

TechCrunch reports that MySpace is interested in the technology and the iLike team, which includes Ali Partovi, Hadi Partovi and Nat Brown.

Last week, iLike debuted its own music download store to complement its streaming service, with songs priced between 89 cents and $1.29.

Credit cards (Source: Reuters)

A federal grand jury has indicted Albert Gonzales, of Miami, Fla., for allegedly hacking into computers belonging to retail and financial companies and stealing over 130 million credit and debit cards.

Officials say it is the biggest case of identity theft in American history.

The Department of Justice said that Gonzales, 28, and two unnamed Russian co-conspirators hacked into the payment systems of retailers, including the 7-Eleven chain.

Gonzales was known online by the nicknames "segvec," "soupnazi" and "j4guar17."

Prosecutors say they aimed to sell the data on. If convicted, Gonzales faces up to 20 years in jail for wire fraud and five years for conspiracy.

He would also have to pay a fine of $250,000 for each of the two charges.

According to the indictment, the group researched the credit and debit card systems used by their victims, attacked their networks and then transfered the data to computer servers they operated in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

Earlier in May last year, Gonzales was indicted in New York, and in Massachusetts in August, 2008, for alleged involvement in the theft of over 40 million credit and debit cards from other companies including TJX Companies, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21, DSW and the Dave & Buster's restaurant chain.

He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Mozilla Corp.'s popular Firefox browser surpassed the 1-billion download milestone on Friday.

The figure includes downloads of all versions of the web software, dating back to its release in 2004. The browser has an estimated 31 percent share of the world market.

Firefox will also launch a new website called "one billion plus you" on Monday.

Last year, the foundation set a new Guinness world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours when the third version of Firefox was downloaded more than eight million times.

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer still dominates the browser market with about 60 percent, far ahead of the rest of the pack which includes Google Inc.'s Chrome and Apple Inc.'s Safari which have less than 5 percent of the market.

Video game sales in the US dropped to $1.17 billion in June - almost a third down on the same month last year - making it the biggest drop for nine years, according to research by the NDP group.

Hardware sales were down to $382.62 million for the month, compared with $617.25 million in June 2008. Microsoft Xbox was the only platform that saw year on year growth.

"The first half of the year has been tough largely due to comparisons against a stellar first-half performance last year," says NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

"This level of decline is certainly going to cause some pain and reflection in the industry. This is one of the first months where I think the impact of the economy is clearly reflected in the sales numbers."

Reports surfaced today that Apple will launch an $800 tablet computer in October.

The netbook is rumored to sell for about $800 and sport a 9.7-in. screen, a Taiwanese news site has reported.

"The screen size, the fact that it will be a touch screen, is pretty much along the route I think Apple should take," said  Technology Business Research's Ezra Gottheil. "The price point, though, is pretty high if Apple wants to do with [a netbook] what I think it wants to do.

"But then, Apple has never been above squeezing early adopters," Gottheil added.

According to InfoTimes, Apple has placed orders with three Taiwanese electronics manufacturers -- Dynapack International Technology, Foxconn and Wintek -- for components that will be assembled into a netbook. 

TechCrunch claims that Apple has placed an order for camera modules destined for the next version of the iPod Touch. The size of the order is "massive."

Given the sources of the evidence, though it still remains merely plausible conjecture.

MacRumors is taking the camera information a step further, claiming that both the iPod Touch and iPod Nano will receive cameras when they are updated. New case designs, purportedly for the iPods, show a hole for the camera.

This isn't the first time rumors of iPods getting a camera have come up. In May, AppleInsider said that iPods would get cameras similar to those found in iPhones.