"In a court filing on Monday, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in a class action suit seeking damages from Apple's e-book price fixing scheme informed federal Judge Denise Cote that the company has agreed to settle."

This was going to be a separate proceeding from the ongoing anti-trust trial — with Judge Cote having declared Apple guilty of anti-trust violations, she was going to determine whether Apple should pay almost $1 billion in punitive damages. Having settled, Apple will avoid the maximum penalty in the event that its appeal of the original verdict fails. We don't know yet how much the company would pay out in that event, but you can bet it will be a lot less than $840 million.

This isn't an admission of guilt. I don't think there was any question Apple would settle the class action suit. Companies settle such cases more often than not if they think there's any chance they'll have to pay the judgment—and, seriously, did anyone think Apple had a prayer of Judge Cote not hitting them with an almost-$1 billion dollar judgement?