Apple, Google and five other technology companies must face an antitrust lawsuit for illegally agreeing to not poach each other’s employees . District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, rejected the companies’ bid to dismiss claims brought under the Sherman Act and California state law, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Following yesterday's release of fresh Java updates to remove the Flashback malware system from Macs running OS X Lion and Snow Leopard, Apple today released a standalone Flashback malware removal tool to clean infections from OS X Lion systems without Java installed. About Flashback malware removal tool This Flashback malware removal tool that will remove the most common variants of the Flashback malware

Apple has seeded OS X Lion 10.7.4 Build 11E46 to developers this evening. The latest build reportedly has no known issues and focus issues include the App Store, Mail, QuickTime, Screen Sharing, and Time Machine.

MacRumors has learned that Apple has bought out two performances of Cirque du Soleil's traveling show Totem , currently playing in San Jose, California. According to our source, Apple purchased the entire block of 2,500 tickets for each of two shows yesterday and today for employees and their guests, with Apple also picking up the tab for food and drink. Scanning Twitter and other social networks, we see that a number of people associated with Apple did mention being at Cirque du Soleil yesterday, supporting our source's claim of an Apple-sponsored event

Research firm Gartner today released its preliminary personal computer shipment data for the first quarter of 2012, offering up a picture of market performance during the quarter. While Apple experienced only small year-over-year unit growth of over 3.8% and was beaten among top 5 vendors by HP's 6.6% growth, the company did once again outperform the overall industry and its 3.5% decline. Gartner's Preliminary U.S

Yesterday, Apple disclosed for the first time that it is working to develop a software tool to detect and remove the Flashback malware from infected machines. We also previously profiled Flashback Checker , a simple app designed to allow users to easily see if their Macs are infected but which provides no assistance with disinfection

We typically avoid posting a story each time the Apple Store goes offline for updates. While the Apple online store famously goes offline to introduce new products, it also goes down for routine maintenance. Tonight's downtime is likely related to maintenance or other non-product tweaks, but notably the "We'll be back soon" graphic that should be quite familiar to long time Apple followers has been changed

Apple has released its second update in two days to the OS X implementation of Java.

Apple today updated its investor relations page to note that it will announce its earnings for the second fiscal quarter (first calendar quarter) of 2012 on Tuesday, April 24. The earnings release typically occurs just after 4:30 PM Eastern Time following the close of regular stock trading, and the conference call is scheduled to follow at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific

In Anandtech's lengthy iPad review , they reveal knowledge of an internal Apple project for a game controller for iOS: I know of an internal Apple project to bring a physical controller to market, but whether or not it will ever see the light of day remains to be seen.