Both Apple and the European Commission's consumer protection division say they are investigating possible cases of iPhones and iPods overheating and exploding.

Six months after the discovery of a security flaw in Apple's implementation of Java software in some versions of the Mac OS X operating system, the company is releasing a fix.

The software flaw could allow a hacker to install and execute malicious software (malware) on Macs running Leopard and some Tiger operating systems. Once onboard the Macs, the malware could be used to steal information from the computers.

Security researchers claim that Apple has been ignoring their warnings about this problem for months. Five months ago the Java vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed, and fixed by Sun Microsystems (the company that developed and maintains Java), according to a May blog post by Landon Fuller, founder of software maker Plausible Labs Cooperative, Inc. in San Francisco and a former Apple programmer. Fuller also published a proof-of-concept hack on his Web site demonstrating how someone could exploit the vulnerability to attack or even take control of another person's Mac, Computer Reseller News (CRN) reports.

Embattled smartphone maker Palm, Inc. has a date with destiny. On June 6, Sprint will start selling the Palm Pre smartphone, an overdue rival to Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's BlackBerry Curve, and HTC Corp.'s G1 Android.

Palm, once the leader in the now-quaint category called Personal Digital Assistants, and lately an also-ran in phones, is banking on the Pre to reclaim its former glory.

The phone will retail for $299, with a $100 mail-in rebate for buyers who ink a two-year contract with Sprint to use that company's high-speed Now Network, Palm said today on its blog. The net cost puts the Pre on par with the iPhone, which can be had for $199, after debuting two years ago at an eye-popping $599.

A message on Sikalosoft.com today reads, "Okay, so maybe the Baby Shaker iPhone app was a bad idea." The makers of this Apple iPhone software program—sold briefly through Apple's App Store Web site beginning Monday, before the company yanked it on Wednesday—have a way with understatement.

Evan as Apple lit up an otherwise sullen market yesterday by announcing record financials for its fiscal 2009 second quarter (including a $1.2 billion profit), the company was wiping egg off of its face for somehow allowing Baby Shaker to be offered via its site. The app encourages players to shake their handheld devices in order to silence the incessant crying of an infant. The game features the black-and-white line drawings of a baby as well as the following description: "See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!" the Associated Press reports.  Once the player finishes shaking the device, the on-screen baby is depicted with large red X's over its eyes.

We at 60-Second Science apologize in advance for some of the bathroom and otherwise juvenile humor that appears in this post. But do keep reading.

Last week Apple iPhone software maker InfoMedia, Inc., filed suit in a Colorado district court to get competitor Air-o-Matic, Inc., to stop threatening InfoMedia with a lawsuit. (Read the lawsuit filing.)

So far, just another day at the courts. But here's what's at stake: Loveland, Colorado-based InfoMedia's right to use the phrase "pull my finger" in an ad campaign for its iFart Mobile iPhone software. Jacksonville, Fla.–based Air-o-Matic offers an iPhone app of its own called "Pull My Finger" and has demanded that InfoMedia stop using the phrase to sell iFart and to pay them $50,000 to settle the dispute, reports CNN.com.

The Obama White House was so 1996 yesterday: the new administration’s e-mail crashed, forcing the president’s aides to rely on cell phones, text messaging and (gasp) paper to communicate.

The White House e-mail system uses Microsoft Outlook, and a server outage caused the collapse, an unidentified staffer told The Washington Post. The glitch hit the press office, first lady’s office and other departments, but by this morning was resolved, according to The Washington Times.

Hard to believe it's been 25 years since Apple's slick TV spot, which aired during the third quarter of an otherwise forgettable Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Raiders and the Washington Redskins, ushered in the era of the Macintosh. The commercial depicts a drab future for humanity (in which, for some inexplicable reason, everyone is bald) a la George Orwell's 1984, featuring rows of gray-clad people complacently listening to "Big Brother" on a telescreen until a woman dressed in bright orange shorts rushes into the room, smashing the tedium with a well-placed throw of her Olympic-style hammer. (YouTube, of course, has the clip if you care to reminisce.)

This commercial, which ran two days before Apple's Macintosh hit the market, was a harbinger of the company's larger-than-life (and highly successful, for the most part) approach to selling technology. The first Macintosh was the original all-in-one personal computer, featuring a nine-inch (22.9-centimeter) monitor, floppy disk drive and eight-megahertz Motorola 68000 microprocessor sitting in a beige plastic tower. Its price tag: $2,500.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today told staffers in an email that his failing health has forced him to temporarily step down and hand over his daily duties to a surrogate. The memo comes in the wake of published reports last week—after Jobs was a no-show at the MacWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco—that he was in ill health.

The computer exec, 53, last week revealed that he was suffering from an unspecified "hormonal imbalance" that had caused severe weight loss and kept him out of the public eye. Jobs was reportedly successfully treated for  pancreatic cancer in 2004.

It wasn't exactly the day the Earth stood still, but for some Microsoft Zune users, it might as well have been when their mp3 players (specifically, the 30 gigabyte models) all crashed at the same time earlier today, rendering them useless. You see, once the Zune freezes, it can't be reset.

"It seems the issue started to happen as devices passed midnight locally across the world, though times don't seem to be exactly synchronized," according to Huliq.com, a blog owned by Hareyan Publishing LLC, in Hickory, N.C.

Conspiracy theories explaining why this happened hit the Web early Wednesday. A Huliq.com blogger known only as "Iria" mused that the "Z2K9" problem began as the Zune devices prepared to flip over to the new year, the first leap year since the 30GB Zune was introduced. (By the way, Iria suggests waiting for Microsoft to weigh in on the problem before turning your Zune into an expensive paperweight.)

Although Apple's iPhone and iPod are primarily designed to deliver music, movies and other entertainment, they're also being used to bring religion to Web 2.0. A prime example: iBreviary, a Vatican-approved digital daily prayer book that can be downloaded via iTunes to the iPhone or iPod Touch.

iBreviary is a digital version of the Catholic Breviary, a book of daily prayer containing biblical psalms and other readings, created by the Rev. Paolo Padrini, a priest in Italy's Diocese of Tortona, with the help of Italian Web developer Dimitri Giani.