It's a no win situation for them. Hand the info over and you're on msnbc for giving it up, don't hand it over and you're on fox news for helping the terrorists...

Plus for certain kinds of investigations, it would go against the court order to go public. I don't want to defend apple here but this is an American law enforcement problem, I'm certain ms, google and others have provided info to the government that would anger many and there are probably a lot of companies that do it without a court order... Trying to be good citizens.

Why the hell was that info on a laptop?

That would depend on which court the order came from. If it was from the FISA court, for example, then publicizing it would send people to jail.

But again, if that were the case then it would be related to anti-terrorism efforts. Well I hope it would be. The FISA court exists for that reason (mostly).

I guess my paranoia depends on how much I trust the government :)