Are you sitting down? Because this news may shock you.

With the iWatch reportedly set to arrive later this year, noted original thinkers Microsoft recently published a patent related to its own dive into the Wonderful World of Wearables™.

Amazingly enough, Microsoft’s plans suggest the company is planning to take on the previously uncharted waters of fitness tracking — with a somewhat familiar-sounding device capable of keeping tabs on the wearer’s pulse, displaying the number of calories burns during a workout, and measuring distance traveled.

For the second time in a row Samsung has been found guilty by a U.S. court of ripping off Apple’s patents, but according to the jury foreman in the latest Apple vs Samsung case, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence or testimony that sealed Samsung’s fate.

Jury members met with the media after being dismissed Monday morning, including ex-IBM executive and jury foreman Thomas Dunham, who said the revelation that Google agreed to protect Samsung from damages on a couple of patents in the trial was the biggest shocker of all.

AAPL shares have been extremely undervalued for years, according to CEO Tim Cook, but it looks like Wall Street is starting to warm on Apple as the share price crested above $600 this afternoon for the first time since 2012.

After hitting an all-time high of $702.10 in September 2012, Apple’s stock has failed to regain its old luster despite record iPhone sales and earnings. Tim Cook announced last month that the stock would be split 7-to-1 in June, sending shares prices on a steady climb since hitting $524 per share the day after the announcement.  

A story was widely circulated throughout the blogosphere last week about a rumor that Apple’s next EarPods would feature biometric sensors for reading health vitals. The “leak” was originally posted on Secret, an anonymous sharing platform, by someone claiming to be an ex-Apple employee.

The info had no way of being verified, but that didn’t stop it from appearing in everywhere from major U.S. tech blogs to news outlets in the U.K. Now the creator of the rumor has come out and admitted that he made it all up while on the toilet.

Apple came out on top of its legal battle against Samsung in U.S. federal court last week, and even though the iPhone-maker was ordered to pay a small fee to Samsung, the jury came back to the courthouse in San Jose CA this morning to award more damages to Apple.

The federal jury awarded Apple $4 million in additional damages this morning, after it was discovered last week that one Samsung product violated one patent, but the jury failed to award damages.

Want a wacky stat to start your Monday? According to a new poll by YouGov, iPhone owners are the most likely smartphone users to send “sexts.”

Apparently, more than 30% of iPhone users have sent explicit messages at some point, compared to 21% of Blackberry users, and 17% of people with a Samsung device.

The complications behind creating a small screen for something like an iWatch are immense, but Apple has bought the company it may need to make it all possible.

TechCrunch reports that Apple has acquired LuxVue Technology, a small California-based company that specializes in “microLED-based displays for consumer electronics applications.” It turns out that microLEDs could work very well with wearables.

Those hoping to get a peek at Apple’s game-changing future products at next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference reportedly need to “dial back [their] expectations or be disappointed.”

Despite Tim Cook’s promise from the WWDC stage last year that Cupertino would enter “new product categories,” no big reveals are forthcoming on the iWatch or Apple TV fronts at this year’s big conference, according to a report from Re/code.

In a blatant attempt to steal Apple’s thunder, Samsung has announced a conference to take place on May 28 — promising to kick start “a new conversation around health.”

Why is this stepping on Apple’s toes?

Because the very next week is Apple’s eagerly-anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — where Apple is expected to introduce the first stages of its new health-tracking family of innovations, beginning with the Healthbook feature for iOS 8, and likely to later expand to include the iWatch.

Back in the early 80s Apple greeted the arrival of IBM PCs with a snarky full page newspaper ad reading, “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.”

In the past few years, however, Apple’s claws haven’t come out all that often when it comes to taking rivals down a peg or two.

In fact, most of the recent sideways swipes involving Apple tend to be other companies (normally Samsung) taking shots at Apple, rather than the other way around.

Well, the tables have turned in a new print ad which appeared in the UK’s Guardian and free commuter paper Metro today.