Two Macworld|iWorld exhibitors offer cases that keep your iDevices dry and usable in the Great Outdoors. And if you’re at the show, you can get discounts that keep your budget from getting all wet too.

Apple notebooks often pull desktop duty, including being plugged into a variety of peripherals. It can be a chore to disconnect all the cables and cords to free the device for the roaming life it was made for. Docks are the solution to this problem, and Henge Docks solves this by including connections to ports as part of the dock, allowing you to take your notebook without unplugging anything.

John F. Braun takes a look at Western Digital’s first offering in the Thunderbolt arena, and sees some impressive results.

This week, the heat was turned up on Apple. Not many people cared for the iBooks Author app’s EULA, and not many people were happy to hear about the conditions of Chinese workers who make Apple products. However, as usual, there is a lot to know behind the scenes, and this week’s P.D. digs into the nuancesas as we go behind the headlines. And just for some fun and relief, we get into some marvelous toys.

Want to get up and get out, but not really? Vern Seward point you to 3 iOS apps that might help in theis week’s Free on iTunes. Temple Run, Canyon Country National Parks, and Theodolite Free.

For some, the virtual keyboard on the iPad has been a bit frustrating when trying to do touch-typing. A slight shift in hand placement and you suddenly find a language no one recognizes on your screen. The iKeyboard, shown at Macworld|iWorld aims to provide a tactile touchpoint by using an overlay that allows for quick and accurate keyboarding.

The Federal copyright exemptions in the DMCA for jailbreaking are set to expire, and the government has asked for public comment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is marshaling resources and public feedback to keep the exemption in place.

iKeep hooks to your iPhone or iPod touch on one end and to your belt, purse, or other strap on the other, using a large, attractive clip to secure it. A retractable cord gives you plenty of room when you need to use the phone.

Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple Senior VP of the iPod division, has left his most current post at Hewlett-Packard.

On Wednesday, the New York Times published a story about working conditions and accidents at Chinese production plants used by Apple and others. Responding to the heat, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook explained Apple’s position in a e-mail to employees on Thursday.

Mac Geek Gab listener Jedd sends us a great tip on using shareable links to provide access to specific files and folders in your Dropbox account. We walk you through the process and show you how to get rid of the links once you’re done sharing.

Apple’s ongoing legal matters continued on Friday with a pair of events: a German court struck down Samsung’s second patent complaint against Apple, and Apple has placed a “Communication to protect consumers” notice on its online Italian store in compliance with a court ruling that said the company was pushing AppleCare while neglecting to tell buyers about the two-year warranty that’s legally mandatory in Italy. Apple was fined 1.2 million euros as part of the court ruling in Italy.

Motorola Mobility said on Thursday that its 4Q11 ended in a loss of US$80 million. The company said it shipped 10.5 million mobile devices, including 5.3 million smartphones and just 200,000 tablets. In comparison, Apple this week said it shipped 15 million iPads and 37 million iPhones during 4Q11.

Nokia on Thursday said its 4Q11 earnings fell 73 percent from the prior year as its push to sell its new Lumia Windows Phone failed to help it compete in a new marketplace. According to Reuters, the Lumia phone has sold more than one million units since it launched last November.

Developer XVision on Friday released DONKEY.BAS at the iOS App Store. The retro game recreates a PC-DOS game co-created by Bill Gates in 1981 to show off what the Microsoft BASIC programming language could do. The .BAS file extension indicated that it was BASIC program, so while the game was called Donkey, it was more commonly known as DONKEY.BAS.

What to do with all that money? That’s the question facing Apple after it revealed its piggy bank was close to US$100 billion. CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the company is “actively discussing” how to use that money, which renewed the call for a dividend among many investors and analysts. Apple’s hoard exceeds the market value of all but 26 firms in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

Research firm IHS, which now owns iSuppli, on Thursday said that Apple retook the number one spot in global smartphone shipments during 4Q11, thanks to the iPhone 4S, but Samsung grabbed the pole position for all of 2011.

If you’ve never poked around in the Settings app on your iPhone (or any other device you have, for that matter), you’re missing a world of possibilities. Wanna turn off that infernal keyboard click sound? Look in Settings! Like to see which apps are asking for your location? Look in Settings! Want to…eh, you get the picture. The point is that pretty much anything you can imagine changing, preference-wise, is in there. Today Melissa Holt is going to cover her favorite iOS mail setting to do the old switcheroo on.

SAN FRANCISCO - Blue Microphones debuted it’s latest products at Macworld | iWorld on Thursday. The Spark Digital is a studio-quality iPad mic . The Mikey Digital is an external mic for your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. The Tiki is a USB mic targeted at voice applications on your laptop. All three products are scheduled to be released this Spring.

SAN FRANCISCO - It’s day one of the newly rechristened Macworld iWorld trade show, and Bryan Chaffin says thank goodness it’s no CES. He talks about the differences in the two hows and reports that Macworld|iWorld was packed.

Game maker and distributor Valve has released a new “companion app” for iOS called Steam Mobile. The app, available on the iTunes App Store, is currently available for download to all but limits use to accounts currently enrolled in the beta.

There is more and more discussion now about the working conditions in China, especially those workers that build consumer electronics. And especially Apple’s iProducts. Can any conclusions be drawn?

A new app for iOS pays you to watch television. Viggle, released Wednesday on the App Store, is one of the first “loyalty programs,” as the company calls it, for TV.

Former Apple Senior VP of Retail and current JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson took the stage yesterday in New York City to outline the future of his struggling department store chain, a future that looks a lot like Apple Retail.

Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs ranks as the number two greatest innovator of all time among young adults, trailing only Thomas Edison, according to a survey by Lemelson-MIT.

John F. Braun discovers xPrintServer, a device from Lantronix that allows your iOS devices to print to your network printers.

Karelia released a major new update to its website creation tool, Sandvox, today. Version 2.5 introduces a new slide show object and support for Lion-specific features.

Google this week announced that it will be placing 60 of its Web services under one umbrella privacy policy that will take effect March 1 and allow those services to share data between them. The change is mandatory, although Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome are excluded. Responses to the changes have been mixed so far.

AT&T on Thursday announced its earnings for 4Q11, noting that it achieved its best-ever quarter for Android and iPhone activations, with 7.6 million iPhones activated out of the 9.4 million smartphones it sold. That helped drive the company’s sales 3.6 percent higher to US$32.5 billion.

A new patent published this week titled “Apparatus and Method to Facilitate Universal Remote Control” reveals a touchscreen-based universal remote that would operate a variety of devices, including computers, and promises to reduce the clutter found on many universal remotes sold today.

Research firm Strategy Analytics said this week that tablet shipments more than doubled in 4Q11, thanks to frenzied interest in the iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire, but noted that Apple lost 10 points of market share while Android gained 10.

Mediadevil has a screen protector for iPad 2 called Easyscreen that is unlike any other screen protector you have seen and it is very effective.

A funny thing happened on the way to Macworld|iWorld. Without pending Apple announcements to speculate about, the media have come back in full force to cover what’s actually going on at the conference — and that’s a lot.

Good Technology, whose products help IT departments secure mobile devices, this week released a report in which it said that the iPhone 4 and 4S “strongly dominated activations in the enterprise for Q4 2011. The mid-October release of the iPhone 4S caused smartphone activations to skyrocket month over month, while Android’s percentage of total smartphone activations remained steady.”

Looking for something to do after your Macworld|iWorld sessions? The Hess Memorial Party List is updated for this year’s event, with a comprehensive look at where the Mac elite meet and greet.

Starting this June, Apple will offer employees new discounts on Apple products, including $500 off new Macs and $250 off iPads, according to 9to5Mac. The new discount plan, announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook at yesterday’s internal Town Hall Meeting, has some caveats: it excludes the Mac Mini, is limited to one use every three years, and is limited to employees who have been with the company for at least 90 days. Read on to see if Apple’s new plan is actually better than their current offering.

The ecodock is a strange little plastic block that purports to make your iPhone 4 or 4S speaker and microphone 10 db louder while clafifying the sound. We tested it and the darned thing works, sort of. Find out more about it in this brief review.