As St. Patrick's Day draws near, Apple fans are counting themselves among the lucky. After all, Steam is finally coming to the Mac, the iPad finally has a ship date, and the iPad developer program now has a much lower barrier to entry. Read on for the top Apple news from the last week:

HTC lawsuit came after warning by Apple to handset makers: Apple supposedly contacted executives at "tier-1" handset makers in January saying it was ready to go to the mat over its iPhone-related IP. Those warnings, coupled with Apple's complaints against HTC, may have a chilling effect on smartphone makers for the indefinite future.

Valve: full "Steam" ahead on Mac OS X with free syncing: Valve is bringing its online service to the Mac in April and plans to make its Source engine cross-platform. Along with the new cross-platform strategy, Portal 2 will be the first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows.

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