Apple on Wednesday agreed to a $450 million settlement to settle claims that the tech giant conspired with five book publishers in an effort to fix eBook prices. Reuters reports that the settlement would provide $400 million to consumers, but is conditioned on the outcome of an ongoing trial in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. “A ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversing the liability finding could under the settlement either reduce the amount Apple pays to $70 million, with $50 million for consumers, or eliminate payments altogether,” Reuters’ Nate Raymond, Alison Frankel and Jonathan Stempel reported.

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When Gmail was first launched, it was the best thing to happen to email in just about forever. Over the years, though, Google started tinkering with it to the point where it became less and less like the clean, distraction-free interface that we all fell in love with a decade ago. Thankfully for us, the team at Old Compose have just completely rebuilt their Chrome and Firefox extensions to give you the best way yet to make Gmail just as awesome as you remember it by bringing back the big compose window that Google unceremoniously dumped last year.

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Back in 2012, 24/7 Wall St.’s Douglass McIntyre wrote that in the following year, BlackBerry would fold. The prediction that BlackBerry was on its way out wasn’t terribly bold — BGR had already been reporting on the various signs that trouble was brewing in Waterloo for several years — but the time frame seemed a bit overzealous.

As expected, that prediction didn’t end up panning out.

Now, BlackBerry is considered by several industry watchers to be back on the right path. Even after a rough morning session following news of Apple’s IBM tie up, BlackBerry shares are up about 40% so far in 2014. But despite the positive sentiment and upward trend, McIntyre is back again with a new prediction: BlackBerry will fold in 2015.

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Following a ruling recently made by the European Court of Justice, Google was forced to create a system whereby European citizens can instruct Google to remove specific web pages from its search index. This means that when people search certain terms that would have previously returned a particular web page among the results, that page is no longer served by Google. The new “right to be forgotten” rule has been somewhat controversial, with many people calling it censorship.

Now, one developer has taken matters into his own hands and created a website with the sole purpose of exposing search terms and web pages that have been hidden from Google.

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A remastered version of one of the most esteemed games of the last generation, The Last of Us, is coming to the PS4 in two weeks. I haven’t done any extensive research on the matter, but I think this might be the shortest turnaround on a upscaled, triple-A rerelease in the history of console gaming, which immediately had me concerned as to the quality of the final product. After seeing the game in action on Tuesday, I’m happy to report that Naughty Dog is giving fans of the game and newcomers alike a whole lot to look forward to.

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As Samsung’s recent second-quarter earnings pre-announcement made clear, the company’s smartphone business is facing some trouble right now. At the low end, Samsung is getting squeezed by several aggressive budget vendors selling dirt cheap phones in emerging markets. At the top, Samsung is still facing intense competition from Apple and its insanely popular iPhone lineup. In fact, demand for Apple’s flagship iPhone 5s is still so huge that sales of Samsung’s latest hero phone, the Galaxy S5, couldn’t even top iPhone 5s sales in the Galaxy phone’s first full month on store shelves.

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At the conclusion of this year’s WWDC, I remarked that the Apple of 2014 was starkly different from the Apple which had showed itself at events in prior years. For the first time, Apple had let its guard down with iOS, inviting developers to build third-party keyboards, invade the Notification Center drop-down screen, and talk openly about the changes in iOS 8. Refreshing doesn’t even begin to describe it.

But, as they say, actions speak a lot louder than words on a Keynote slide. This week’s blockbuster deal between one of the most influential outfits in consumer electronics (Apple) and an absolute behemoth in the enterprise space (IBM) speaks volumes about the former’s willingness to look beyond Cupertino for solutions. Pundits have been wondering where Apple’s next revenue hike would come from, and as it turns out, it may arrive from solutions created in conjunction with companies it used to call rivals.

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Tuesday brought news of six paid iPhone and iPad apps worth a total of $24 that were available for free for a limited time (in fact, some of them can still be downloaded for free if you move quickly). Now, we’re back with another five paid iOS apps for Wednesday that are free right now, and they’re worth a combined $26.

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Apple’s next-generation iPhone 6 is going to be quite different from the company’s current iPhone models. For one thing, it will finally feature a larger display. For another, it will sport a huge redesign that is thinner than any iPhone before it, and the edges will be smooth and round instead of flat, like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5. Some things won’t change on the iPhone 6, of course, and one of its most important parts that was called up from Apple’s previous flagship iPhone model has seemingly just leaked for the first time.

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One of our Apple sources has let us know that the company is currently planning on making iOS 8 beta 4 available to developers and testing partners on Monday, July 21st. This would be a two-week gap between iOS 8 beta 3 and beta 4, differing from the three-week gap from beta 2 to beta 3. We have also been able to get a glimpse at the iOS 8 beta release calendar and we will continue to share iOS 8 beta release dates with you as we get closer to them. While Apple’s iOS betas are only meant for developers to use on test devices, many people run the software on their personal iPhones and iPads, and with each new beta comes improvements and also potential new bugs.

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