Apple, Google, Intel and four other tech giants failed to convince a judge to dismiss an antitrust suit brought against them. The suit alleges that the companies conspired against hiring each other’s employees and District Judge Lucy Koh in her decision said:

“The fact that all six identical bilateral agreements were reached in secrecy among seven defendants in a span of two years suggests that these agreements resulted from collusion, and not from coincidence,”

While Apple, Google, and Intel are the three largest firms in the suit, other major companies, including Adobe, Lucasfilm, Pixar and Intuit are included.

For the price, the Sony RDP-X500iP is a hell of a lot of sound. In fact, it’s the best-sounding iPhone, iPod or iPad dock we’ve seen in its price range, and it even manages to match the audio quality of some speaker docks that cost $100-$200 more. If you’re looking to buy one, though, you should be aware of a couple of niggles before you drop your dough.

With the number of Flashback-infected Macs dwindling more each day and Apple’s release of software updates that can both clean an infected Mac and prevent infection or reinfection, it’s easy for IT departments and individual Mac users to think that the crisis has passed. That doesn’t mean that it’s time to forget about the issue of malware targeting Macs, however. In fact, the entire event has been a wakeup call to IT and security professionals as well as to the wider Mac community – Macs are not invincible.

When reflecting on the Flashback events of the past couple of weeks, there are five major themes or lessons for businesses and IT department to consider when it comes to supporting Macs going forward.

Awesome Calendar is a Google Calendar client for iOS, priced at three dollars on the iOS App Store (although a free Lite version is also available). Is it as awesome as its name implies? I wouldn’t say so.

645 Pro bills itself as an app which will turn your iPhone into a DSLR. At first glance, it seems like this has been achieved by mimicking the buttons and LCD panel of a modern SLR, and to an extent that’s true. But the real meat here is under the hood: 645 Pro shoots uncompressed JPEGs and TIFFs, and gives the closest that we’re likely to see to RAW images from the iPhone’s camera.

Way back in the dark days of the 1990s, when smartphones had styluses and mobile apps were made from Java, I yearned for a way to stream music from my Sony Ericsson P900 to my stereo via Bluetooth. At the time, it was impossible.

Fast forward to the present day (by drilling down through several hard-to-navigate menus and hitting the tiny “skip” button with the tip of the stylus) and there is an embarrassment of choice. These days I’d rather pick up my JamBox and carry it into the living room rather than fire up the proper stereo that’s already in there.

Joining this wealth of wirelessness is the Audio Cube from Satechi, an inexpensive, pocket-sized Bluetooth speaker with all of the features you’d expect.

The iPad is hands-down, one of the best platforms to play video games on. Games just seem to envelop you in a wave of child-like wonder once you start playing. One of our favorite types of iPad apps are Tower Defense games that force users to employ strategy combined with realtime action. There are hundreds of games out there, but one of the coolest and unique games we’ve played is Tesla Wars by Synaptic Wave.

Remember the Padcaster? It was a photography rig made to turn the new iPad into a shallow-focusing movie camera, and it was [teased](https://www.cultofmac.com/156157/padcaster-turns-new-ipad-into-shallow-focusing-movie-camera/) by the makers Manhattan Edit Workshop last month. Now, the Padcaster has been revealed at NAB 2012, and it is just what we thought it would be — a way to mount big lenses on the iPad 3 and turn it onto a movie camera.

A few years back Seattle Rex had gone all out on a 17” MacBook Pro – spending approximately $4,500 on the then top-of-the-line machine ($5,100 including AppleCare). The particular MacBook Pro he bought turned out to be defective. The laptop’s Nvidia graphics processor started displaying symptoms of the defect shortly after his AppleCare expired. A few days later the laptop died completely – it wouldn’t even start up. At the time Rex’s laptop broke down the defect was a known and well-documented issue. Apple had even issued a tech note and was replacing defective models as they failed.

One of the interesting tidbits to emerge from testimony during Oracle panent infringment trial against Google is that Oracle had considered producing its own smartphone and buying either RIM or Palm. The testimony came from Oracle chief Larry Ellison, who was a close personal friend of Steve Jobs. Ellison is, in fact, quoted as describing their relationship as “best friends” in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.

The news raises some interesting questions – not the least of which are whether Jobs knew of the plan and what impact Oracle jumping into the smartphone game against the iPhone might have had on their friendship. Jobs was obsessed with the idea that Google and its former CEO Eric Schmidt (also a former Apple board member) had ripped off Apple’s iOS design work in creating Android.

As you may know, Apple is being targeted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for calling the new iPad “4G-capable” when Australia not only doesn’t have any LTE networks, it will never have LTE networks compatible with the new iPad.

Apple’s already changed the wording on its website in response to the complaints to make it clear that Australian customers buying an iPad WiFi + 4G are only getting HSPA+ speeds at best, but that may not be good enough. Regulators are now targeting Apple in a lawsuit over their use of the term 4G, and Apple’s already preparing its defense.

That defense? That 4G doesn’t actually refer to any specific technology, but is just a marketing term. And honestly, at this point, that’s about right?

PicPlayPost is supposedly a way to make video diptychs of your precious moments, and then share them via the usual social networks. But if you grew up in (or otherwise managed to live through) the 1980s, you’ll know exactly what this app is for: remaking the cheesy title sequences of 1980s TV shows like Dallas.

One of the first things you’ll notice about the Sony Tablet S is its design. It’s not flat, but a wedge that fits comfortably into the hand, like a magazine with its cover folded back on a hot summer day. The Tablet S looks wholly unlike any other tablet on the market. It’s something original, something that instead of simply trying to be an iPad knock-off has its own distinct design language. And it’s without a doubt the best thing about the Sony Tablet S. It’s just a shame that this brave and wonderful sense of identity in a sea of iPad clones is only skin deep.

We’ve all been there, that moment when the bill for that great mobile plan you signed up for comes in. Monthly access charges, usage charges, surcharges, taxes, governmental surcharges & fees — the list goes on… and on… and on. The FCC and others call this “bill shock,” while I call it well… we’ll save that for another day. Regardless of how we feel about these charges and fees, they are the services we signed up for and agreed to pay. Unfortunately it’s not always easy to monitor our usage and it can be very easy to incur overage charges when it comes to services like data and text messaging.

Earlier this month, five regional U.S. carriers announced that they would begin carrying the iPhone 4 and 4S. All were offering the devices at $50 less than the standard list prices of the larger national carriers (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint). All five carriers are in more rural areas of the country that aren’t well served by the national carriers. Two are in Alaska, for example.

Abvio has updated its trio of iPhone fitness apps — Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter — with iCloud support and a bunch of new features. The biggest improvement, though, is that they are no longer annoying to use.

I can think of a ton of reasons to use a timer: boiling eggs, practicing times tables, timing a shower to conserver water, and a host of other tasks both domestic and official. Most of us have a timer, either on our iPhone or on a microwave in the kitchen. What if you wanted to time several things at once, though? Luckily, we’ve got you covered with today’s tip.

Probably the most widely anticipated gaming release on the Mac scene this year is Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo III, which is due to be released — after years of buzz and a twelve-year gap since Diablo II — on May 15th.

The Diablo games are fantastically-tuned hack-and-slashes in which you explore randomized dungeons, collect loot and gelatinize waist-deep hordes of monsters, and if you’ve never played one, you either hate gaming or have been woefully deprived.

Luckily, we can right that problem easily enough. Although there’s a month left before Diablo III is available to purchase, you can play the game’s beta up to level 13 for free all weekend long.

Your iPhone’s touchscreen might look just like a single pane of living glass, but there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye. Every iPhone is comprised of multiple layers: an LCD that actually blasts the pixels out of the Retina Display, a glass substrate laye separating the LCD from the touch layer that translates your finger swipes and prods into input the system can read, and a layer of protective Gorilla Glass on top.

Obviously, Apple’s existing touchscreen tech works well, but having so many different layers has its drawbacks. A big one is that it adds to the iPhone’s thickness. But Apple may already be on the cusp of inking a deal with Sharp and Toshiba to adopt in-cell touch panel displays, which should lead to a slimmer, lighter iPhone 5.

Cydia is home to one too many lock screen tweaks. There are classic packages like LockInfo that enhance the iOS lock screen with all kinds of handy shortcuts and features, but there’s also tweaks like LockLauncher that are messy and ugly. With that said, FastLock is a refreshingly simple take on lock screen shortcuts for jailbroken iPhones.

Popular music recognition app Shazam released a standalone music player for the iPhone back in January. The app lets you scan your iPhone’s library and play back tracks with Shazam’s lyric service, LyricPlay. You can also queue tracks and create playlists specifically for the Shazam Player.

As of today Shazam has updated its music player app for the iPad. The latest update packs LyricPlay and Retina graphics.

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell recently addressed the rumor that Apple CEO Tim Cook visited his company last week in an interview with Seven Day Cooldown. Newell flat out denied the rumor, originally published by AppleInsider, that Tim Cook visited Valve HQ.

Cult of Mac originally added to the rumor by saying that Apple could have been meeting with Valve because Apple is working on its own type of gaming console for the living room, and was potentially looking for partnering with Valve.

While it’s been revealed that Cook did not in fact visit Valve, our sources have again reiterated that Apple is absolutely continuing with its plans for a living room gaming presence regardless of Valve involvement.

Many have speculated that Apple’s next iPhone will have lightning fast LTE ‘4G’ networking speeds. Chipset maker Qualcomm has been experiencing incredible demand for its next generation  28-nanometer LTE chips, and industry watchers are saying that device markers are having to adjust their LTE product roadmaps accordingly for 2012.

This news could be a factor in why Apple’s sixth-gen iPhone probably won’t hit the shelves this summer if it does indeed come with LTE. Instead, analysts are predicting an October rollout, mimicking the iPhone 4S launch just last year.

Puerto Rico based iGenApps showed off its signature service at the DEMO Spring event in silicon valley this week. iGenApps offers the ability to create iOS and other mobile apps with no programming knowledge and just a basic working knowledge of HTML. The service is centered around web app development, but the company claims a premium service will turn web apps into native apps for a price.

We’ve already told you about JailbreakCon, the world’s first jailbreak convention. The event will be held in the United States this September in sunny San Francisco, California. Tickets are on sale now, and we hope to see many Cult of Mac readers there this fall.