Apple and HTC will be meeting in August to discuss a possible settlement in their ongoing patent infringement lawsuits. The companies were ordered by the Federal court overseeing the cases into the negotiations, although there isn’t any guarantee they will reach an agreement that keeps from going to trial.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been hired by Sony to serve as a consultant for the movie version of the official Steve Jobs biography. Woz will offer his perspective on Steve Jobs, and his technical expertise on computers.

iCal and Address Book have a feature that’ll allow you to view events or contacts in separate windows, making it a snap to compare phone numbers or event details quickly. It’s easy to use and requires little or no setup. It does, however, require that you read this tip, so you’re not getting off THAT easy, bub.

HP is reportedly planning on laying off between 25,000 and 30,000 employees, according to dueling reports from Bloomberg and AllThingsD. Both reports come on the heels of a different source who told BusinessInsider that HP would lay off between 32,000 and 48,000 people.

Shares in Apple Inc. closed at almost a three month low on Thursday, ending the day at $530.12, down $15.955. That’s the lowest close since February 28th, 2012, when the stock closed at $525.76.

Simon & Schuster has settled antitrust suits launched against by several states attorneys general. CNet reported that Judge Denise Cote, who is overseeing the case from 29 states dismissed the publisher from those suits, leaving Apple and two other major publishers accused of colluding to raise ebook prices. [Updated: The story has been updated to show that Simon & Schuster is the third company to settle with the states. - Editor]

The Deal Brothers found us a deal on the Bluetooth Sliding Keyboard Case for iPhone for $34.99, which is 30% retail. As the name suggests, this is a case for your iPhone that includes a built-in sliding Bluetooth keyboard.

On Thursday, Comcast announced that it will be testing a tiered, allotment approach to Internet data and will eventually do away with the current, absolute 250 GB data cap.

With all the emphasis Apple puts on iOS security, one would think that it’s a backburner issue. But there are interesting new developments, and John Martellaro had a chat with Juniper Networks to find out more.

We all know we don’t need or want that refrigerator with the built-in toaster, but the Divoom iBase-1 will charge your “i” products while it plays your music, and this double duty product has merit.

Kodak has questioned the timing and validity of Apple’s efforts to block the sale of a key patent. In documents filed with a federal bankruptcy court, Kodak said that Apple is playing games intended to keep it from paying infringement damages, and that both the U.S. International Trade Commission and the courts have already rejected Apple’s ownership claims to some key Kodak patents.

Former Microsoft executive Robbie Bach was involved in the company’s failed Zune portable media player, and he thinks the project was a mistake. Instead, he’d push for a music service if he could go back in time and try again.

China’s largest cell service provider, China Mobile, has confirmed that it is negotiating with Apple to officially bring the iPhone to its network. The carrier already supports some 15 million iPhone users, and an official deal could bring even more iPhone owners to its network.

Rumors surrounding the next iPhone are heating up, and some are hinting at a summer release for the next version of Apple’s combination iPod and smartphone. Today TMO readers are talking about the next iPhone and when they think it will really hit store shelves.

A year-long legal dispute between Time Warner Cable and Viacom over streaming content to Apple’s iPad has finally been resolved with an agreement that lets the cable company’s customers legitimately watch Viacom channels such as Comedy Central And Nickelodeon on their mobile devices.

Apple’s fight to take control of the iphone5.com domain name ended successfully with the original holder handing over control to Corporation Service Company. The Mac and iPhone maker had filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization in a effort to take the domain.

Apple’s share of the handset market grew to 7.9 percent during the March quarter of 2012, according to new data from Gartner. That’s the company’s share of all mobile phones, and not just smartphones, and it makes Apple the third largest mobile phone maker on the planet behind Nokia and Samsung.

Verizon customers who currently have a $30 per month unlimited data plan will not be able to keep that plan after they migrate to 4G LTE. Verizon plans to offer a data share plan starting mid-summer and 4G LTE customers will have to move to that plan. No pricing details have yet been released regarding the new data share plan.

Apple lost tablet market share in the 4th quarter of 2011, but that was nothing more than a speed bump, according to research firm IHS. The company issued a report on Wednesday that said Apple’s domination of the tablet market in 2012 will be “no contest,” and pinned the company’s advantage on its whole widget model. 

Apple released QuickTime 7.7.2 for Windows, a security update that Apple is pushing for all QuickTime 7 users on Windows. The patch addresses 17 specific issues. [Updated with the specific security issues addressed in the update.]

Rumors are flying fast and furious about almost every major Apple product. Here’s a roundup of all the rumors and how good we think the rumors are.

Dave Hamilton takes a moment to review the Spyder PowerShadow i4 Battery Case and charging stand for iPhone 4/4S. 

The Deal Brothers noted that Apple is offering a deal on the refurbished Mac Pro 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon for $2,119—we don’t often see Mac Pro towers at this price point. This system was originally released in August of 2010, and it ships for free.

Apple has filed a lawsuit asking a California court to dismiss a group of lawsuits seeking class action status over claims that the Siri voice recognition in the iPhone 4S doesn’t perform as advertised. According to the lawsuits, Apple intentionally misstated Siri’s capabilities in its advertising — an accusation that Apple denies.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote denied a request from Apple and ebook publishers to dismiss a class action lawsuit accusing them of price fixing, and at the same time said that Apple and Steve Jobs were in the middle of the conspiracy.

Mac Geek Gab co-host John F. Braun joined the Not Another Mac Podcast to discuss Mac security, cloud services, and more.

Aaron Sorkin will pen Sony’s movie version of the biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Mr. Sorkin is known for “Social Network” and the Oscar-nominated “Moneyball.”

If you have an iPhone 4S and you don’t use Siri much, Melissa Holt is disappointed in you. So disappointed, in fact, that she’s decided to write an entire tip on her favorite uses for Apple’s friendly personal assistant. She hopes by doing so that she can convince you to start talking to your electronics in public—after all, the more people start doing that, the less insane she looks when she does. We’d call that a win-win.

Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes told clients on Tuesday that Apple releasing a 7” iPad “appears more likely.” In a research note obtained by The Mac Observer, Mr. Reitzes said that, ” recent research still leads us to believe that Apple may be planning to add another form factor to its iPad line in the 7” range for the fall.”

So you want to wear your iPod nano like it was a wristwatch, but the idea of a fat band to hold it just really turns you off. What’s a fellow to do? If you’re Dave Hurban, you make the only logical move that you can and surgically embed four magnets into your own arm to hold that nano where it belongs, on your wrist.

The Deal Brothers found a deal on a USB hub from the Dark Side. It’s powered, but it only has four ports. Who cares?It’s Darth Vader! Oh, and it’s $49.99.

Smart, technical people have known for a long time why their company, their executives, and their CEO can’t seem to fight a winning battle against the competition, namely Apple. It’s a dirty little secret that no one wants to admit to. John Martellaro explores the problem.

Looking back at Apple’s unprecedented financial success over the course of this century, Ted Landau asks: What were the key decisions that Apple made over the past 12 years that contributed most to its astounding ascent? What were the pivot points? He put together such a list, consisting of six items. Here they are…

Hon Hai Precision executives have backtracked on a report that the company is ramping up to start production on an Apple-branded television. Now company leaders are saying those reports are wrong, and that CEO Terry Gou never said Apple is building its own television sets.

Apple is scaling back iPhone 4S production ahead of a fall product refresh, according to Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu. That could lead to a 25 percent reduction in sales compared to the previous quarter, and come in under analyst expectations.

Psystar’s long running legal battle with Apple over Mac clones seems to have finally come to an end now that the U.S. Supreme Court shot down the defunct PC maker’s appeal attempt in appealing a ruling blocking it from selling PCs with OS X installed.

The team behind Perian is shutting down the project after six years of development and will be releasing the code for its video codec tool to the open source community. Perian has been a popular OS X add-on because it lets users play media content that isn’t natively supported through QuickTime.