Apple has urged a US court not to allow the Justice Department to force it to unlock a customer's iPhone, stating that it lacks the technical ability to do this for 90% of iOS devices in any case. [ + ]

Google wants to attract businesses by offering Apps for Work for free, SanDisk reportedly wants to sell itself to Western Digital, and Amazon sues overs "false, misleading and inauthentic" reviews. [ + ]

nbn has been trialling new broadband technology, G.Fast, which delivers lightning-fast speeds over existing copper lines. [ + ]

Facebook will alert any users suspected to have been targeted by a state-sponsored cyber attacker, while Apple is removing hundreds of apps found to be using forbidden APIs to gather identifying data. [ + ]

Internet Australia has warned that consumers will be hardest hit by the true costs associated with the new mandatory metadata retention law if the government fails to adequately compensate the industry. [ + ]

This week: Cars of the future… 1976 style, robotic warehouses, the depressing failure of medical apps, and reasons why IT projects fail. [ + ]

Kogan Mobile has returned to shake up the MVNO market for Australian consumers on Vodafone's 3G network. [ + ]

nbn's new three-year rollout plan aims to have around 9.5 million premises connected to the nbn or in the process of getting hooked up by September 2018. [ + ]

Sydney's start-ups will get a masterclass from some of the tech sector's biggest national and international names at two upcoming festivals. [ + ]

Is the Internet of Things safe? ISACA's latest survey suggests a major confidence gap about the security of connected devices between the average consumer and cybersecurity professionals. [ + ]

Users angry at LogMeIn's US$110m purchase of LastPass, nbn's COO Adcock is leaving the company, and Twitter announces plans to lay off 8% of staff worldwide. [ + ]

Telstra again beat rivals Optus and Vodafone in a second annual mobile voice and data performance benchmarking, while Vodafone has revealed plans to implement voice over LTE by Christmas. [ + ]

Companies still using Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 will have less than six months to upgrade before the ageing operating system reaches its end of extended life. [ + ]

The mandatory metadata retention legislation has taken effect, but few if any ISPs are compliant, with many still not even understanding what data they are required to store. [ + ]

Dell will take on a whopping US$50bn in debt to acquire storage giant EMC for around US$67bn ($92.6bn), in turn becoming the world's third-largest IT vendor. [ + ]