The second edition of Apple Talk Weekly

Welcome to the second edition of Apple Talk Weekly, a look back at the week's top Apple news and rumors, along with answers to your Apple questions.

The big news this week--moreover Apple successfully nabbing a legal injunction that keeps Samsung from selling its Galaxytablet in the European Union--was Apple pushing past Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable company by market capitalization. That happened on Tuesday, with the two companies swapping places several times. Exxon in the long run closed the day back on top, only to have Apple take back the crown the very then and there day. Since at that time, the race has remained close, with Exxon finishing the week slightly ahead.

The saga of the lostiPhone 4 prototype

This week as well marked another chapter in the saga of the lostiPhone 4 prototype, with San Mateo County officials filing criminal charges against the two men involved with the alleged finding, and subsequent sale, of the device to gadget blog Gizmodo. The blog, along with its parent company Gawker Media, were not charged with any crime. The move follows last year's high-profile leak of the iPhone 4 so then ahead of its official debut.

For product news, it was a quiet, quiet week, with Apple releasing an entry-level iMac for educational buyers that comes in in accordance with $1,000, along with but another beta of iOS 5 for developers--a good sign the mobile OS is nearing a public release.

The big rumor that capped off the week

The big rumor that capped off the week was that Apple planned to hold a media event the second week of September to show off its new iPods, as the company has done on numerous other occasions. That rumor, coming from Japanese tech news site Kodawarisan yesterday, was squashed a bit later in the day.

Read on to get the full week's highlights, and the answer to a reader question on bringing his iTunes library to Apple's iCloud.

Apple becomes most valuable company by market capitalizationAs mentioned up top, Apple topped Exxon Mobil by market capitalization to become the most valuable openly traded company. Exxon finished the week back on top, even though not by much.

Apple releases iOS 5 beta 5 to developersThe release is broadly speaking bug fixes, although as TechCrunch noted, a number of Core Image filters are now included, which promise to let developers add nifty photo editing effects to their apps.

Apple releases $999 Thunderbolt-free iMacBefore getting your hopes up, this new iMac is effectively a kiosk unit, with less RAM and no Thunderbolt port. It's as well only for education buyers, so it's probably not something you're in the market for. For all that, it's a sub-$1,000 iMac that comes in $200 less than Apple currently charges for its entry-level model.

Apple updates recycling program to include iPhone, iPad buybacksAn update to Apple's reuse and recycling program that's a result of a partnership with PowerON means people with old iPhones, iPads, and Macs can get money back for their old stuff. Don't expect cash although--Apple is doling out gift cards that can be used in its retail stores or online stores.

Apple disk assistant app lets you make your own Lion recovery toolApple's new software tool lets you turn an ordinary blank drive into a recovery image of your system. Apple is offering it as a backup in case you can't start your computer with Lion's built-in recovery drive partition, or you've just popped a new hard drive in your system withoutMac OS X on it.

Apple gets injunction against Samsung's Galaxy tablet in EuropeThis preliminary injunction, which went in Apple's favor this week, means Samsung can't sell its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in all of Europe, except the Netherlands. A hearing scheduled for later this month will let Samsung fight the action. Apple and Samsung are embroiled in similar legal battles with each other in the U.S., both with lawsuits and with complaints to the U.S. International Trade Commission..

Patent it owns for quickly booting up an OS

Apple sued for Fast Boot patentA lawsuit from entity Operating System Solutions takes aim at Apple's Mac OS X for violating a patent it owns for quickly booting up an OS. What's interesting about that patent is that it was originally owned by LG, which supplies Apple with elements it uses in its electronics. The patent changed hands in 2008 as part of a reissuing.

Apple, others sued over e-book price fixingApple was named along with a handful of major book publishers like the Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster in a lawsuit saying those companies "colluded to increase prices" on popular books by using an "agency model" versus the traditional wholesale model.

Investigation

22 more fake Apple stores found in ChinaFollowing an investigation, 22 additional local Chinese retailers were found to be selling goods pursuant to this agreement Apple's banner without permission to do so. The finding comes afterwards international attention on counterfeit Apple stores made waves last month. The key thing here is that this was just one city within the country. A similar crackdown in another part of the country found an additional crop of stores.

A report by Japanese tech news site Kodawarisan made waves this week, claiming Apple planned to announce a new lineup of iPods at an event on September 7. That date's not all that hard to believe, considering it's around the same time the company takes the wraps off that line of devices. The report was later rebuffed by Apple tracker Jim Dalrymple, who, citing anonymous sources, said there's no event or phone launch planned for that date. AllThingsD's Kara Swisher later weighed in as then, once again reiterating the outlet's claims that Apple plans to debut the new device in October.

The day previously all this

The day previously all this, a separate report by Apple news site Apple 'N' Apps claimed Apple would be taking the wraps off a new phone that would drop some of the storage, instead making use of iCloud's storage features to stash away and access data.

Between the two, the so-called "iCloud iPhone" is the far more interesting rumor. iPods now play second fiddle to the iPhone both in terms of sales and buzz. The prospect that Apple is somehow working on a second tier of iPhone has been kicking around for years, although it's of special interest now that Google's Android platform has made considerable gains--partly because it's available in different form factors.

In this case, the paid storage aspect of iCloud, mixed with a device with little on-board memory could provide an additional way for Apple to make money afterwards a user buys the hardware. The big blocker? Short of what Apple's recently done with its TV show streaming, iCloud is not a streaming service for things like movies and music--the items that can actually take up space on these devices. And how would this work with apps, some of which can take up room? Those are all things that would need to be answered with such a device.

An Apple patent application that surfaced this week offered the tantalizing prospect of not only putting projectors in gadgets like phones, tablets, and notebooks to display content on nearby walls or presentation surfaces, however also giving those devices a way to talk with each other to make a big, shared workspace.

The patent this is depicted with images of phones

In the patent this is depicted with images of phones and computers blasting out images of scatter plots and pie charts, nevertheless the same research could as well theoretically be used to let you stitch at the same time those projections into a nice big wide screen, perfect for watching movies, or, say, putting nine iPhones at the same time to see photos in their native resolution.

Hi Josh, I enjoy reading your work on CNET. In regards to cloud computing, I have been busy digitizing my CD collection, and on my iPod Touch I'm at about 24GB of music in my iTunes library. In doing so, going on what you wrote, it's going to cost me a chunk of change to put that on the cloud, right?

As you can probably tell I'm no Apple--or in this regard PC--black belt, however as I understood the promo launch Steve Jobs did, I upload my music, they convert it to 256(Kbps) quality, and it's goodbye CDs. Now I understand it to mean deep down it's going to cost me $100 a year. Am I missing something?

A: OK, here's the thing about storage on iCloud: if you've purchased anything from Apple, it doesn't get counted. And anytime you want to go redownload that music on another device attached to your account, you can do it free of charge.

Considering your library is made up of non-iTunes purchases, what you're going to need is the upcoming iTunes Match service. For $24.99 a year, Apple will scan your library, at the time cross-reference that music with what's in its iTunes Store library. If it finds a match, you effectively own a cloud license of that track for as long as you're paying Apple for the Match service, meaning you can download and use the high-quality version of it on other devices such as if you had bought it through Apple. Anything else that's not included in that match goes against your regular iCloud storage. So if you plan on storing a copy for safe keeping and it ends up being more than 5GB, you'll need to upgrade to one of Apple's paid storage plans.

Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Earlier that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house.

Household full of innovation

Josh Lowensohn grew up in a household full of innovation. From a young age he was taking apart computers, snaking Cat 5 cable through walls, and reprogramming video games. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news and wrote game reviews. Since at the time he's spent his time covering everything from Web apps to all of Microsoft's latest moves. For this blog, Josh is keeping a close eye on everything Apple.

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