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Psystar's quixotic quest to "open" Mac OS X from the clutches of Apple has been stifled by a permanent injunction from a federal judge. The order bars the company from distributing computers with modified copies of Mac OS X, or in any way aiding or abetting anyone else to do so. Despite Psystar's attempt to have Snow Leopard and its Rebel EFI software left out of any injunction, Judge Alsup included all future versions of Mac OS X as covered by the injunction, and warned Psystar that if it continues to sell Rebel EFI, it does so at its "own peril."

After Apple made the switch to x86-based architecture, Psystar made waves by becoming the first company to purport to offer Mac OS X-compatible clones. After a surprisingly long four-month wait, Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar for copyright, DCMA, trademark, and other violations. Though Psystar attempted a number of stall tactics and brazenly suggested that it was the champion of "choice" in "Mac OS X-capable hardware," summary judgment was awarded in Apple's favor on the copyright and DCMA issues. Psystar and Apple agreed to settle for $2.7 million and call it quits on the remaining issues, while Apple moved for a permanent injunction against Psystar on the question of copyright infringement.

Intel has to be glad to see 2009 drawing to a close, given the news of the past few months: the costly EU antitrust settlement, the New York antitrust suit, the costly AMD antitrust settlement, and the Larrabee failure. And now, to cap off a lousy 2009, the FTC has announced a major antitrust investigation into the same alleged anticompetitive practices that the company has been denying in all of these other cases.

Microsoft has announced tweaks to Bing's history features, emphasizing that its stance on trust and respect for privacy has not changed, while also taking a few jabs at Google. The company has slowly rolled out a "History" link for the Bing homepage over on the left-hand side Explore pane. This functionality has been available on the left-hand column of the search results page since Bing launched in May 2009, but now you can access it without searching first.

If you mouse over this link, you will see a list of recent searches, frequent searches, as well as three links: Clear all, See all, and Turn off. The first link takes you to a page which asks you to confirm you want to clear all your history (as opposed to removing items individually, which is also offered). The second link has the same functionality as simply clicking the History link straight from the Explore tab: it lets you see all the queries you made and the corresponding sites you click on. The last option lets you turn the history function off with a single click (useful for those searches you don't want to be stored).

Microsoft also noted that search history is being saved for four weeks now (upon launch, Bing only saved it for 48 hours), stored in a cookie in your browser. The company also acknowledged that "removing your history removes it from the Search History service and prevents that history from being displayed on the site, but it does not delete information from our standard search logs." Microsoft uses those logs to operate and improve Bing, but the company emphasized that it keeps them anonymous.

Finally, Microsoft used the opportunity to take a shot at Google: "...we've tried to build privacy and respect for your search history into the overall experience and not as an afterthought." The company also said, "Too many systems provide us with choice, but little control." Less than two weeks ago, Google extended its Personalized Search feature, which changes the order of search results and makes suggestions based on your previous queries, to signed-out users worldwide, regardless of whether they previously opted-in to the personalization feature. Google makes these decisions based on a 180-day search history it stores in a cookie in your browser.