As the media begins to recover from bashing Apple about the purported online leaks of nude celebrity photos, an iTunes outage and other ills, speculation turned again to just what will be revealed on Tuesday, September 9th (The Night Owl’s birthday). There are certainly more clues than usual that it’s about more than a couple of new iPhones and the release of iOS 8.

There was, for example, the report that some fashion reporters are among those invited to the media event. That implies far more than smartphones and operating systems, and such mainstream newspapers as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have offered information from the usual “informed sources” that a wearable, perhaps the rumored iWatch, will also be on the agenda.

Now with the iPhone 6, we may have already seen it, in the form of a procession of leaked photos and movies. One report claimed that Apple’s announcements were thus “ruined” because of information posted on a Chinese site. But it’s not as if such things haven’t happened before.reasons.

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The lurid headlines couldn’t be more explicit: Apple is in deep trouble, total disarray, just a week ahead of what might be their biggest new product launch in years. So what went wrong? Was it really about a problem that put Apple in a bad place?

First, there was that report of an iCloud fix that blocked so-called “brute force” attacks. These are repeated attempted logins with different sign-on information until a connection is made. Most services allow you to login unsuccessfully a few times before locking you out. Evidently Apple failed to add this important level of protection for the Find My iPhone feature, which allows you to wipe your device if someone steals it, or at least locate its whereabouts if you lose it.

Now some suggest brute force attacks may have been used to grab the login information from some celebrities, which allowed the hackers to retrieve their explicit photos from their iPhones or iCloud accounts. But whether brute force attacks or not, most people make it real easy to break in to their accounts. Aside from using common usernames or known email addresses, passwords may be simple, perhaps someone’s birthdate, the name of a child or a pet, or where they were born. Even the secret question to recover a password may require a response anyone can provide, particularly if the account is owned by a celebrity whose life story is well known.

Although entertainers by and large favor Apple gear, celebrities do use Android or Windows smartphones, so it’s not as if usernames and passwords can’t be hacked there as well, but why not make it all about Apple? Apple is, after all, hit bait.

Regardless, Apple announced that an investigation indicated that episode wasn’t caused by a security issue with iCloud.

But these episodes occurred during the same week that portions of the iTunes service were down for nearly six hours. It’s not the first time it happened, but the timing wasn’t favorable.

All of this combined with news of updated smartphones and smartwatches from Samsung, so Apple’s stock price took a big dive, which continued through the Friday trading day. But the stock price isn’t going to change the announcements expected from Apple, though I suppose someone might mention the hacked celebrity accounts.

In fact, Apple wasn’t alone in encountering an outage this week. A brief system shutdown was reported at Face-book and other services. In fact, Face-book has had several outages so far this year, and you can find similar problems with Google, Amazon and other services. Outages are par for the course. People seem to forget that the cloud is just a network of shared computers, and failures in the hardware, the software, or on the network can bring a service down.

You could, I suppose, collect all the outages so far this year and see where Apple stands in relation to other large tech companies with a high dependence on the cloud. Indeed a day-long outage in June impacted Microsoft’s Outlook system, thus impacting businesses all over the world. In passing, this was probably the most significant failure of a cloud system so far this year. It’s not so significant if Apple’s customers can’t buy a new app, rent a movie, or download some music for a few hours.

But as you see, when Apple has a problem, it becomes far more significant. Even if the failure is fairly routine doesn’t change anything. Apple is in a big mess and needs to get things in order.

Now it does turn out that the media was not very impressed with the latest Samsung announcements. Take the Galaxy Note Edge, a 5.6-inch phablet with an AMOLED wraparound display. This means that the image extends to the sides of the unit, which is a choice that’s beyond absurd. It serves little purpose other than needless decoration, and also reduces the amount of usable space for viewing content.

Of course, failing to consider user needs in favor of needless fluff is nothing new for Samsung. Consider all that extra junk on the Galaxy S4, which included the Tilt to Scroll feature that seldom worked, or the Galaxy S5, with a barely-functional fingerprint sensor.

In the end, Samsung, in the face of flat sales and profits, appears to have made choices that smack of desperation in order to gain a leg up on Apple. Call me dense, but I fail to see the value of these features other than having something to promote that you can’t find on an Apple product.

Indeed, the only genuine advantage of a Galaxy smartphone these days is the larger display, assuming the one on the iPhone 5s isn’t big enough for you. That perceived advantage is expected to vanish on Tuesday, September 9th, when the iPhone 6 is introduced with two predicted sizes. The 4.7-inch version is expected to be the mainstream model, while the 5.5-inch model, which may be in short supply at the beginning, will cater more to people in Asia and other countries that have embraced such all-in-one mobile gear.

Is Apple in disarray? Not by a long shot. But iCloud needs to be made more reliable, and, in an interview with Tim Cook published this week, he has already promised that Apple will do better to warn you about changes made to your iCloud account and extend two-factor authentication. This is certainly an effort to get in front of the message and clear next week for the new product launch.

It rarely matters what happens in the tech business. Far too many alleged media analysts and reporters will devise a scheme to get Apple involved. And even when they appear to be involved, the truth may be different from it may seem at first glance.

So we have those predictable reports in the wake of the reported hacking of the accounts of a number of celebrities, and the posting of their private nude photos. It was all about Apple and iCloud. How could they possibly allow this unseemly behavior to happen? It couldn’t possibly be the fault of people who aren’t taking steps to protect their stuff. Ahead of what may the most important product intros in the company’s history, Tim Cook’s dynasty was in disarray.

And what about that nearly six-hour iTunes and App Store outage last Tuesday?

Apple certainly took it all seriously, and went about investigating what happened. At the end of the day, though, they announced it was not about any lapse in iCloud security. It was about the people who don’t show appropriate caution in putting their stuff online.

Indeed, the problem has become part of pop culture. The other day, I watched a TV crime procedural where the office computer nerd was trying to guess the password on a murder victim’s computer to open some encrypted documents. They tried the usual offenders, such as the name of their cats, dogs, or even the word “password.” Finally someone suggested they try the name of their boyfriend, and, sure enough, it worked!

It’s par for the course, and nobody on any of these shows ever remarks on the stupidity of the people who use passwords that are so easy to guess. The audience no doubt smiles, but I’m sure most people don’t realize that, being guilty of such poor planning, they are susceptible to hacking. It’s just that they aren’t famous, so they aren’t on anyone’s radar except for random hacks that might infect a bank, retailer, or computer network.

So this celebrity attack was against some entertainers, not the service. If they used Android or Windows Phone, with their own connected cloud services, it wouldn’t matter. They’d achieve the same results because the passwords were most likely insecure, and that’s the major problem.

But the media wanted to make it about Apple. I heard an interview the other day featuring NBC correspondent Chris Matthews, in which it was mentioned that Apple ought to have two-factor authentication. But they do, and such features are being added to other services all the time. With iCloud, you can login with your password, after which the system send a text message on your iPhone with a number code. Only when you enter that code will you actually connect.

Yes, two-factor authentication may take an extra few seconds to complete, but it also makes it harder for hackers to login to your accounts in search of the things you do not want outsiders to see. While I won’t comment on whether it’s appropriate for anyone to take nude photos of themselves, their family or friends, the very decision to store them online puts them in a less-secure situation.

If that person is among the rich and the famous, you just know that hackers around the world are only too happy to break into their accounts in search of incriminating messages, photos and videos. How could it be otherwise?

Now I haven’t really gotten into the conspiracy theory about how all this came about, coincidentally, the week before Apple’s media event to launch the new iPhone and perhaps the iWatch and other products. Curious indeed!

But one of our readers suggested that Samsung might be behind this dirty trick. Perhaps, perhaps not. Sure, Samsung is hoping the media will pay attention to the announcement of some of their new mobile gear this week. One of those products even sports a wrap-around screen, which seems among the stupidest “innovations” yet. Do they expect you to flip the device to its side to catch the rest of a message? Get real! Of course, Samsung also sells costly TVs with curved screens, a questionable advantage unless you want to duplicate IMAX in your living room.

Still, I wouldn’t care to suggest which company might be responsible for this sorry episode, or even that any Apple competitor was involved. The timing, however, is surely curious. Still, Apple clearly took the appropriate steps to get ahead of the message. If there’s any good that’ll come of this episode, maybe it will encourage more of you to use secure login techniques, from strong passwords to two-factor authentication.

It’s also important to understand what the cloud means and whether you really want to entrust your confidential information to any third-party. As talk show host Thom Hartmann was saying on his syndicated radio show as I wrote this column, don’t forget that the cloud is merely a network of computers run by a faceless corporation. Sure, they all have terms and conditions that are designed to help you protect yourself, but those terms may also get a company off the hook if something goes wrong.

At the end of the day, you should be doubly careful about what information you allow to leave the comfort of your home or office. And if you choose to use a cloud-based system, do what’s necessary to shore up your login scheme. With Apple gear and recent OS releases, there’s iCloud Keychain, where the system can select a secure password for you. That’s a good start, and for those who aren’t using Apple products or services, there are third party password management solutions to help you protect yourself.

The best advice is to use them. And if you are a public figure, realize you need to be doubly careful about what you do, where you do it, and how you protect yourself from people who want to learn your secrets. In short, if you don’t want your racy photos seen by outsiders, keep them to yourself.

As if there weren’t important stories to cover, the media is making a huge deal of the fact that purported revealing photos of a number of  movie stars and other notables somehow found their way online. So such names as Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton were bandied about as victims of this offense. It was even suggested that the racy photos were somehow acquired by hacking their iCloud accounts, and Apple even investigated to see what was going on.

Now before we get into the obvious common sense implications of such incidents, some members of the media are pretending it’s just a problem with the iPhone and iCloud, and that’s not so. According to an AppleInsider report, some of these celebrities have been revealed taking selfies with other handsets, including Android, and that platform has a less-than-stellar reputation for security.

Unfortunately, Apple’s close ties with the entertainment industry have made them a target, but is any of it really Apple’s fault?

Let’s look at the logic of the situation. Famous people are always targets. People want to know more about them and their lives. Personal information, particularly personal foibles, are actively sought by some less-savory members of the media. That random revealing photo someone may have taken early in their career suddenly shows up and becomes fodder for media reports and speculation.

Now it’s true that people often do foolish things, and certainly someone seeking fame and fortune as a performer ought to think twice about what the paparazzi might find. Even photos taken in the privacy of one’s home may be stolen by hackers or others with access to their personal belongings. So this is nothing new.

Despite the slim possibility that any of this had something to do with an iCloud security problem, Apple investigated anyway and reported that it didn’t. From their official statement on the matter: “After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.”

Understand I am not saying that celebrities are necessarily stupid people. Most of just regular folks who happened to find a way to earn a living from their special talents in a public arena. But I cannot believe someone didn’t sit them down and explain to them how things work when you’re in show business. Don’t they have agents or other personal representatives who might warn them of the consequences of their actions? Well, probably not when it comes to getting arrested for drunk or impaired driving, or engaging in bar fights, or going out on the town with someone other than their significant others.

So I guess it comes with the territory that the racy photos taken in the privacy of their homes would somehow be discovered and posted.

The best advice, other than to display a modicum of common sense of course about what photos they take, would be to do what’s necessary not to make their online accounts easy prey. Choose long, secure passwords, or use two-factor authentication where possible, as it is with Apple. In such a setup, you provide a traditional password and enter a code that iCloud sends to your iPhone. Of course if someone steals your iPhone, and you haven’t engaged Find My iPhone, there’s yet another way for someone to get ahold of your account info and login to compromised accounts.

Of course, someone could take the conspiratorial approach and suggest that some of these celebrities enjoy the attention, even if it involves photos of them in compromising poses. They are exhibitionists, and when they parade themselves in public to get attention, that may be par for the course. Certainly I do not dispute one’s right to photograph oneself or someone else wearing little or nothing, but someone in a sensitive business should have thought better of such behavior — I’ve already gone there.

Considering all the publicity this episode has received, it’s clear that more attention than ever will be drawn to these photos even if they’ve been taken down. And, no, I won’t provide any links. I haven’t even bothered to look since I have other priorities.

So if you want to find them, enjoy. If the celebrity intended for those photos to be there, all well and good. If not, they are still entitled to some measure of privacy, and I’d hope they are learning a lesson to be less cavalier about using tech gear that requires logins.

As you know, simple passwords can be easily hacked. Even online services that promise security don’t always deliver, although Apple does a better job than most. But since Apple has been portrayed as a possible culprit here, please don’t forget that anyone who wants the maximum level of security should check a platform’s history first and see what ones offer a better chance at keeping your data — even your racy photos — safe. In that respect, Android is probably the worst choice, particularly if you have an older handset or tablet that doesn’t have the latest OS.

Or just be careful. And this is harsh, but if you’re careless about protecting your online life, don’t be surprised if there are unsavory consequences.