Everyone knows there's no end to the fervour that surrounds Apple and its mystique, but even we were shocked with the news that the company's founding papers sold at auction for over £1m.

The documents eventually went for $1,594,500, which was 10 times auction house Sotheby's prediction, as five bidders drove the price skywards, each seeking to own a little piece of Apple's history.

The eventual winner, according to the BBC, was Eduardo Cisneros, chief executive of a firm called Cisneros Corporation, which owns stakes in a range of businesses covering real estate, TV production and telecoms. He'll probably frame them and hope they appreciate in value.

The documents belonged to the third (forgotten) Apple founder, Ronald Wayne, who originally took a 10 per cent stake in the company before backing out over worries that Apple would go nowhere and he'd lose his outlay. Ouch.

Even this story is a tragic one for Wayne as he sold the documents in 1994 for a few thousand dollars, according to the BBC, and had to watch as they went for over £1m. Some people appear destined never to catch a break.

As the world continues to mourn the passing of Steve Jobs, Silicon Valley is preparing to memorialise the Apple co-founder.

Invitations have reportedly been sent out for a formal memorial service for Jobs to be held at Stanford University. The invitation-only service will likely include Silicon Valley icons and many of Jobs closest friends.

While Apple fans around the world have been offering their condolences to Jobs both at his home in Palo Alto and at Apple Store locations around the world, the event will serve as a formal goodbye for those who knew the man best.

The Stanford Campus seems a fitting place for the memorial as it was at the 2005 Stanford graduation ceremony Jobs delivered his now-iconic commencement address. The speech touched on many of the milestone events in Jobs life, but most notably it addressed the bout with cancer which would eventually claim Jobs life. Speaking on life and death, the Apple founder issued the following passage:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

A rare authorised biography of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is storming up the best seller charts on Amazon despite being months away from publication.

iSteve: The Book of Jobs has already climbed to 44 on Amazon's best seller list.

Interest in an authorised biography of the Apple co-founder is not in itself surprising, but what is raising eyebrows is the book generating so much interest despite being some nine months away from its official release date.

Surely Apple fans have placed their orders, but to achieve such a high ranking so early on points to a much larger interest among the general public.

Given Jobs's penchant for twisting reality to suit his own ends, Mac Inspector is going to view the book with a degree of scepticism.

After all, how could a renowned control freak like Jobs greenlight a book about his own life that isn't always going to cast him in a favourable light?

Rumours are flying that Apple is planning some kind of surprise for the 10th anniversary of the opening of its first retail store.

According to several reports, Apple has been holding staff meetings in the stores and has been imposing non-disclosure agreements on employees.

There has been talk of blackout curtains going up in shop windows, and rumours of everything from the launch of the iPhone 5 or OS X Lion, to the return of Steve Jobs to public view for a special announcement.

We are not going to add to the speculation but, in our experience, a new product is unlikely. New hardware and software is traditionally announced by senior staff at special events. The company also isn't known for making too big a deal about birthdays, and for messing up when it does.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is proceeding on schedule for the first week of June, so expect any new products to be detailed there.

What we suspect is some kind of sale or discount in the stores, or possibly the addition of a near field communications system to allow customers to pay for Apple purchases with the company's hardware.

Apple, as ever, isn't talking to the press about this, and it's entirely possible that the company will be doing nothing special.

Apple loves to get people excited about forthcoming events, and actively encourages some rumours. Whether the kerfuffle is a genuine event, or just marketing shenanigans, we will find out by the weekend.

Apple's ongoing battle to take sole posession of the term 'app store' took another turn this week when Amazon filed its response to Apple's suit.

Amazon claims in the filing (PDF) that Apple should not get control of the term as a trademark for the online application service associated with its iOS platform because 'app store' is generic.

Microsoft has made a similar claim in its opposition to Apple's suit, but Amazon has some rather compelling evidence on its side, including several instances of Apple itself using the term 'app store' in a generic way.

Amazon quotes Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in the filing referring to the iTunes App Store as "the easiest to use, largest app store in the world".

This is important because it indicates that even Apple views its service as an app store rather than the App Store, possibly lending further support to claims that the term is too generic to be copyrighted for one specific service.

A biography of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs will be published next year. Walter Isaacson will write the book, to be called iSteve: The Book of Jobs, and it will be published by Simon & Schuster, according to a report from ABC.

Isaacson has been researching the biography since 2009, interviewing Jobs, his family and collegues, and Apple competitors.

The writer is president and chief executive of the Aspen Insitute, chairman and chief executive of CNN and managing editor of Time.  

The book will be the first about Jobs, published with his approval, for some time.  In 1984, Mike Moritz wrote The Little Kingdom: the Private Story of Apple Computer, with access to Jobs, but since then the high-profile chief executive has been less willing to co-operate with even the most earnest journalists.

Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon wrote an unauthorised biography called iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, in the 1990s, but Jobs banned all publications from publisher John Wiley & Sons in Apple retail stores.