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Psystar has turned up the heat in its legal battle with Apple. The small computer vendor first burst on the scene several months ago by audaciously offering for sale a line of Mac computer clones called “OpenComputer.” After a few weeks of silence, Apple unleashed its legal hounds on the startup, seeking to shut it down for good. Since then, Psystar has shown little sign of backing down from Apple — a company that’s seldom shy about using the legal system to protect its intellectual property.

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Xen.org, the developer of the open source Xen project, on Wednesday announced the release of the Xen 3.3 hypervisor engine. The product is the result of a distributed development effort by senior engineers from more than 50 leading hardware, software and security vendors. Xen 3.3 includes enhancements that further advance its position as a fast, scalable and secure virtualization engine for a broad range of server and PC chipsets from supercomputers to PDAs.

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Less than a week after a representative for Orange in Poland revealed that actors were paid to stand in line the night the iPhone launched there, another kerfuffle has arisen over Apple-related marketing, this time in the UK. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has pulled an iPhone commercial after it received complaints from two viewers that the ad was misleading. “[Apple is] having two issues — one probably more important than the other,” said Mary Beth Kemp, a Forrester Research analyst.

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Greenpeace certainly ranks as the highest-profile environmental group to take on Apple, the hip kid on the computer block. The organization is not Apple’s only environmental adversary, though, and certainly not it’s only worry in a marketplace rife with green claims and green concerns. In fact, the company has moved its “Environment” page up to the top-level navigation of its Web site, right alongside its “Hot News” and “Job Opportunities” pages.

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A Chapel Hill, N.C., middle school could become the first in the country to give an iPod to every teacher and student, an experiment that would challenge teachers and administrators to ensure the hand-held devices are used as learning tools, not toys. It’s still not clear how the iPod touches would be used at Culbreth Middle School. And school officials know that students may use the iPod touches more to download the new Jonas Brothers single than to tap the riches of human knowledge.

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Last week was kind of amazing — I knew a number of things that were going to be happening at IDF but was blindsided by an announcement Intel made that could change the world as we know it. Nikola Tesla turned over in his grave, and we are one step closer to his Tower of Power. Intel also fleshed out its Atom platform, which I think forms the basis of a new class of cloud computing-based client devices. Apple, on the other hand, appears rudderless all of a sudden. The new iPhone — recall I suggested you avoid this product — is having a massive number of problems.

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Cell phones can’t actually get hot enough to pop popcorn, regardless of what you may have seen on YouTube. But some do have other unexpected abilities that just might help improve your quality of life. Dozens of new health and fitness Web applications are now available for use with the Apple iPhone. The apps, which likely will eventually be available on other phones that will run on a Google-based operating system, enable third-party software developers to create a new breed of health services.

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In order to realistically examine what Apple might do with its $20 billion, one has to look at Steve Jobs’ stated goals from the past plus the biggest threats to Apple in the future. Those two elements are good candidates for assessing how Apple might spend some of that money in the grandest sense. First, there are other small potatoes things that Apple could do. For example, the idea that Apple should buy back some of its stock has been proposed by analysts. That would improve Apple’s Earnings Per Share.

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As I wrote in my July 15 review of the iPhone 3G, the latest version of Apple’s handheld computer, the best way to judge a device like this is to use it for a while. It’s been more than a month since I bought my iPhone 3G, switching from my trusty Samsung BlackJack. After more than 30 days of relying on it as a phone, e-mail reader, Web-surfing platform, information retriever and time-killer, I’ve found it to be both remarkable and maddening. It really is a breakthrough product.

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China has apparently blocked access to Apple iTunes, perhaps in response to the publicity surrounding a pro-Tibet album that was released about a month ago and just recently made its way onto the much-trafficked Web site. Produced by the Art of Peace Foundation, the album features songs from such artists as Moby, John Mayer and Alanis Morrisette, as well as a 15-minute talk by the Dalai Lama. Reports that 40 Olympic athletes had downloaded the album apparently galled the Chinese government; early this week the site went dark.

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