At a press event held at Milk Studios, Los Angeles, on Monday, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer announced the software company had ventured into the tablet arena with its own tablet device - dubbed `Surface' - which will take on the Apple iPad.

With Ballmer terming the `Surface' tablet as a part of a "whole new family of devices" which are being developed by Microsoft, it is quite evident that the unveiling of the tablet underscores the company's new strategy, aimed at helping it gain some lost ground in the mobile market.

Apple recently announced that the forthcoming version of its operating system - the iOS 6 - will include the company's own new Maps app, which has been developed from the ground up; and that its upcoming handsets, to be released in fall, will no longer carry Google Maps.

Despite the fact that the strategic move by Apple to come up with its own Maps app appears to be quite a good one on paper, as it will allow the company to have a direct control over its own mapping future, experts are of the opinion that Apple's iOS Maps app is woefully behind the times.

The Apple-Motorola patent lawsuit witnessed an unexpected turn on Thursday, when Judge Richard A. Posner of the Northern District of Illinois coming up with a rather surprising decision of granting a next week - June 20 - hearing, which will give both the companies a chance to put forth their arguments for an injunction order.

At the hearing, the judge will ascertain whether Apple is entitled to injunctive relief for patent infringement by Google's Motorola division; and also if it would be possible for Motorola to seek similar relief for one single instance of patent violation by Apple.

A demonstration of the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro systems was one of the key components of the company's WWDC keynote address on Monday; with the highlights being the streamlined I/O offerings of the two devices as well as their discontinuation of optical drives.

In order to ensure that some space is saved in the systems, Apple has introduced a combination of USB 2.0 and 3.0 connections; and has also brought on the I/O connectivity from older Mac systems, largely by depending on its Thunderbolt connections.

In an evident attempt to foil Samsung's plans to sell its Galaxy S III smartphone in the US, Apple Thursday requested U. S. District Judge Lucy Koh to block the South Korean company's June 21-scheduled unveiling of its new handset in the country.

With Apple attorney Josh Krevitt informing Judge Koh that the US unveiling of Galaxy S III smartphone - which comes before Apple announces it much-rumored next-generation iPhone - would "irreparably harm" Apple, the latest move by the Cupertino-based company further escalates its ongoing smartphone scuffle with rival Samsung.

In its settlement of a "new iPad's 4G misbranding" complaint, which was filed in March by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Apple has agreed to a penalty of over 2 million Australian dollars (US$1.9 million). The case chiefly pivoted around the Australian sales of the new iPad which Apple initially sold as a "Wi-Fi + 4G" model.

At its tenth annual `D: All Things Digital Conference' (D10), All Things Digital released the biggest-thus-far trove of video of Apple's legendary founder Steve Jobs --- with the collection comprising all of Jobs' appearances at the annual D conferences from 2003 to 2010.

Released as free video and audio podcasts on iTunes, the collection - titled "Steve Jobs at the D: All Things Digital Conference" - shows Jobs involved in onstage conversations, giving candid answers to unscripted questions and voicing his opinions about developments in the technology and business arena.

With Facebook apparently set to sell its stock to the public - in what seemingly will be the biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO) for an Internet-centric company - on Friday, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has disclosed his intentions of buying shares in the popular social network.

A new Network World report has revealed that Apple has, in an earlier-this-month accusation, alleged that its rival Samsung has destroyed evidence which could have been important to the companies' ongoing patent-infringement lawsuit.

The report - supposedly based on the information obtained from a "heavily redacted" motion which Apple filed with Northern District Court of California on May 1 - claimed that Apple is charging Samsung with the "spoilation of evidence."

Announcing its first quarter results during an earnings call with Wall Street analysts and reporters on Tuesday, Apple said that a boom in the iPhone sales, supported by the iPad, had helped the company touch record-high quarterly revenue figures.

Noting that the first-quarter sales of the iPhone were much higher than the earlier projections, Apple revealed that the 35.1 million iPhones which the company sold during the mentioned quarter marked a whopping 88 percent increase over the iPhone sales in the same quarter last year.

In its response to the anti-trust charges leveled against it – as well as five leading book publishers - by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), Apple said in a Thursday statement that it has not conspired to fix the prices on e-books.

Denying the allegations that Apple has colluded with five major book publishers - Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Macmillan - to inflate the prices of e-books, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said in a statement to The Times that DoJ’s accusation against the company "is simply not true."

Two days after Apple said that it was working on a mechanism that would give Mac users an automated way to remove Flashback infection, Apple has released an integrated tool for the removal of Flashback malware from infected Mac systems.

In what represents Apple CEO Tim Cook’s markedly different approach from his predecessor – the legendary Steve Jobs – with regard to the labor issues at Apple’s Chinese supplier Foxconn, Cook visited one of the Foxconn factories during his recent visit to China and acknowledged the fact that there were some problems which need to be sorted out.

According to a number of published reports, Australian customers who apparently felt that Apple had misled them about the 4G capabilities of the new iPad in the country will be offered refunds by the company.

The `refunds' move by Apple comes in the wake of a legal complaint by Australia's consumer watchdog - the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) - which said that the company's advertisements about the
4G/LTE capability of the new iPad were misleading, as the tablet is not capable of running the country's 4G network.

In what apparently is an upshot of the high-profile privacy-invading issue linked to the Path social networking app last month, US lawmakers have recently initiated investigations into the privacy policies of developers of third-party apps for the Apple iOS platform.