May 28 - 11:15am EDT   A federal District of Washington court yesterday rejected (PDF) objections to a class action lawsuit that accuses the carrier of abusive behavior in transition customers to its service. The plaintiffs can now bring their complaints, which center on what they claim are unfair practices in moving customers to its network in 2004 when it was still called Cingular; those from the then-smaller, separate AT&T were allegedly not only pulled off a network that was "dismantled" in favor of a poorer Cingular network but were forced to move to more expensive cellphone plans, replace phones and to pay early termination fees if they didn't want to remain on the network. [full story]

January 9 - 9:30pm EST   The iPhone is one of the most widely craved devices to grace the consumer market; after millions of dollars invested in its development, and secrecy so intricate that even Apple’s own engineers were kept in the dark about the complete product. In 2002, shortly after releasing the iPod, Wired writes that CEO Steve Jobs began to notice the variety of devices that people would carry with them in day-to-day activities – such as a cell phone, BlackBerry, and MP3 player. Jobs realized that the products would inevitably come together and could potentially dethrone the iPod, so he decided that Apple would have to out-innovate the competition with its own device. [full story]