The verdict is in: Samsung must pay Apple $1.5 billion for smartphone patent infringement. The lawsuit, filed by Apple Inc. last year, accused Samsung of copying the design of iPhones and iPads. Jurors on Friday produced a 20-page verdict, agreeing with Apple’s assertion that Samsung’s smartphones copied the design of the Apple iPhone, in both design and features. Apple lawyers produced pictures of the Samsung smartphones both before and after the introduction of the iPhone.

While we love Apple and Apple products, they surprised many iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users by pulling popular app, Clueful, from the app store. In a move that seems suspiciously shrouded in mystery, Apple pulled the app under the same set of rules that the app was approved, prompting Clueful development company, Bitfender, to immediately begin working on redeveloping the app so that it could be re-approved.

Lots of people love Apple, but not Sahar Sabet and Zack Jafarzadeh, two potential customers at different Apple stores in Georgia who were prevented from buying an iPad and iPhone, respectively, for fear that they (the Apple products) will end up in Iran. Iran and the United States are not close, which is why the U.S. holds a complete embargo against Iran, placing it in the company of Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. This means that U.S. goods, like iPads and other Apple products, cannot be exported or sold from the United States to these countries, and a U.S. person is prohibited from doing the same no matter where they are in the world.

A Federal court in San Jose has rejected Apple’s request for a dismissal of the class action lawsuit against Apple initiated by an angry parent whose child was able to purchase $200 worth of in-app purchases through a free app. Garen Meguerian, the lead plaintiff in the case, says that his daughter was able to purchase the $200 worth of “zombie toxin” and “gems” without his knowledge or permission.

Much of the technology world was stunned to learn that an antitrust lawsuit against technology giant, Apple Inc, and several book publishers, was filed by the US. Government Wednesday morning. The lawsuit charges that Apple and the named publishers conspired to raise the retail prices of electronic-books in order to shun the competition, namely Amazon.com, who many say has monopolized the e-book industry.

Up until now Mac owners have been relatively safe (and smug) when it came to the infectability of their computers. Worms, trojans, viruses, and other malware were considered to be primarily the domain of Windows. That may have changed last week, however, when the Russian security company, Dr. Web, reported that as many as a half a million Macs are already infected with what is being called the “Flashback Trojan”. Here’s how to know if you have Flashback Trojan, and how to get rid of Flashback Trojan.

Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Firefox’s Mozilla, have at last formally agreed to include a “Do Not Track” button (DNT button) in every browser. {Let’s take this opportunity to explain that the way this works is that using the “Do Not Track” option inserts a special “Do Not Track” header into your browser. In fact, as we shall see, there may not even be a DNT button involved – you may need to be a super-user type to even find the “Do Not Track” option.} Their capitulation comes just before the Obama administration’s appeal to Congress to pass a “privacy bill of rights”, but don’t expect it to mean that they won’t still be mining your data. (P.S. See below for how to enable Do Not Track in Safari.)

With the launch of textbooks for the iPad, Apple Inc. has set in motion the potential for students to say “so long” to the days of lugging around heavy book bags. The textbook initiative was announced last Thursday, January 19th, and begins with a small selection of standard high school books.

In the past few days the charge has been levelled that Apple’s voice-command entity, Siri, is anti-abortion. This after it was noted that when people ask Siri for guidance to abortion services, ‘she’ is “unable” to find such services, or in some instances instead directs them to pro-life organizations.

Steve Jobs has resigned today as the CEO of Apple. In Jobs’ letter of resignation, addressed both to the Board of Directors of Apple, and the “Apple Community”, Jobs mentions an already-existing succession plan, which includes naming Tim Cook as his successor as CEO of Apple, and requests to remain on as Chairman of the Board of Apple, a director, and an Apple employee.

The netosphere is a’buzz with the announcement of Apple’s new cloud-based streaming music service. The Apple music service is actually part of a cloudy storage service called iCloud (what else?). iCloud is an online storage and “syncing” service which allows you to “sync” calendars, contacts, email, photos, documents, ebooks, and yes, your music, across multiple devices. The music part of it basically allows you to store your iTunes library in ‘the cloud’ and access it from any capable device. (We put “sync” in quotes because technically it’s not really syncing, it’s having your data “pushed” and downloaded to each of your devices, on demand, but many users still think of it as syncing.)

Have you ever been reading a PDF file, or a website, on your Mac, and been frustrated at the lack of a “Page down” or “Page up” key? In fact, it’s very easy to page up or page down on a Mac, but it’s not obvious how to do it. Here is how to page down on a Mac (or page up on a Mac).

The “Security Alert” trojan, sometimes known as a ‘rogue antivirus’ attack, is making the rounds again. First spotted a few years ago, until recently the “web security” antivirus alert trojan targeted mainly PCs, tricking Windows users into downloading the evil ‘BestAntivirus2011.exe’ file by telling them that “To help protect your computer Windows web security have detected trojans and ready to remove them.” (Note the poor language usage.) Now this same tactic is being used to attack Mac users – all that has changed is the “Windows” to “Apple” and the file name (‘MacProtector.mpkg for Macs’) – even the poor language remains the same! “To help protect your computer Apple web security have detected trojans and ready to remove them.” says the pop-up. Don’t fall for it, and whatever you do, don’t click on “Remove all”, which will cause the malware to be downloaded to your computer.

In response to the howls of outrage over the news that iOS4 is tracking and storing every location you visit with an iPhone or iPad, Apple has finally, more than week later, issued a statement on the matter,. In essence, they say that a bug made them do it, and they are going to fix it. Sort of.

Believe it or not, nearly two weeks after the iPad 2 launch (release date was March 11), many Apple stores are still out of the iPad 2! Or, more correctly, they are getting them in in dribs and drabs, with long lines queueing starting at 6:00 a.m. (!), and any new supply of iPad 2s selling out within minutes of the Apple store opening 3 hours later. Here is our experience being in the Apple line, and getting our iPad 2, and our first thoughts and observations on the iPad 2, the “Smart Cover” (hate it!), and the iPad 2 case that we love.