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Apple

+ - 135 Dick Tracy's Watch: The Tech Meme That Won't Die->

Submitted by
harrymcc
harrymcc writes "Rumor has it that Apple is working on a smartwatch. The New York Times' Nick Bilton, who broke the news, and many other tech journalists, have brought up Dick Tracy's famous two- way wrist communicator in their coverage of it. That's not surprising--Tracy's watch always comes up in discussions of wearable communications gadgetry. And it has since 1947, shortly after the comic-strip cop first got his wrist radio. Over at TIME, I took a look at this seemingly indestrictible cultural touchstone."
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Microsoft

+ - 220 Australian Govt forces Apple, Adobe, Microsoft to explain price hikes->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Live outside the US? Tired of paying huge local price markups on technology products from vendors such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe? Well, rest easy, the Australian Government is on the case. After months of stonewalling from the vendors, today the Australian Parliament issued subpoenas compelling the three vendors to appear in public and take questions regarding their price hikes on technology products sold in Australia. Finally, we may have some answers for why Adobe, for example, charges up to $1,400 more for the full version of Creative Suite 6 when sold outside the US."
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IOS

+ - 225 iOS 6.1 Leads to Battery Life Drain, Overheating for iPhone Users

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "We have started seeing an increase in iPhone issues related to battery life and overheating. All of them seem to be related to users upgrading their devices to iOS 6.1. Furthermore, Vodafone UK today began sending out text messages to iPhone 4S owners on its network, warning them not to upgrade to iOS 6.1 due to issues with 3G performance. The text reads “If you’ve not already downloaded iOS 6.1 for your iPhone 4s, please hold off for the next version while Apple fixes 3G performance issues. Thanks”"
Apple

+ - 152 Apple Holds Firm as Publishers Settle with Justice Dept. Over E-Book Pricing->

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "The U.S. Department of Justice has just settled with book publisher Macmillan in an ongoing case over the price of e-books, bringing its number of settlements with big-name publishers up to five. Justice claims that those five publishers, along with Apple, agreed to “raise retail e-book prices and eliminate price competition, substantially increasing prices paid by consumers.” Apple competes fiercely in the digital-media space against Amazon, which often discounts the prices of Kindle e-books as a competitive gambit; although all five publishers earn significant revenues from sales of Kindle e-books, Amazon’s massive popularity among book-buyers—coupled with the slow decline of bricks-and-mortar bookstores—gives it significant leverage when it comes to lowering those e-book prices as it sees fit. But Justice and Apple seem determined to keep their court date later this year."
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Businesses

+ - 272 Woz Says iPhone Features Are 'Behind'->

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes "The iPhone may be one of the bestselling smartphones on the planet, but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes Apple's flagship smartphone has fallen behind its competitors, namely those built by Samsung, when it comes to smartphone features. Speaking at Businessweek's Best Brand Awards on Thursday evening, Wozniak said he was proud of how loyal Apple fans were to the iPhone, but also said 'this loyalty is not given,' shortly before denouncing his own company's smartphone. 'Currently we are, in my opinion, somewhat behind with features in the smartphone business,' Wozniak said. 'Others have caught up. Samsung is a big competitor. But precisely because they are currently making great products.'"
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Apple

+ - 138 Is Apple now the PC leader? Depends on your definition of PC-> 1

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes "While research companies including IDC and Gartner deemed HP the PC leader for Q4 2012, Canalys has a different perspective. The analyst firm has declared Apple the top PC vendor for the past quarter, thanks in part to the booming success of the iPad and the iPad mini. By Canalys's reckoning, Amazon, too, now beats out the likes of Acer and Asus as a leading PC vendors, having shipped 4.6 million Kindles in Q4."
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IOS

+ - 161 Hidden 'radio' buttons discovered in Apple's iOS 6.1->

Submitted by tad001
tad001 (147243) writes "C|NET is reporting 'Discovered last night within a freshly jailbroken iPad: a set of buttons and code references for "radio," a feature found in iTunes on Macs and PCs, but not on the iPad or iPhone.' ... 'The buttons hint at Apple's much-rumored radio service, a product that will let people stream music much like they do on the popular Pandora service, but with deep ties to Apple's iTunes library.' ... 'The discovery follows a high-profile jailbreak of iOS 6.1, the updated system software Apple released just last week. A team of developers came up with a tool that gives users deep system-level access to do things like install applications from third-party app stores, change the look and feel of iOS, and add new software features.'"
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Iphone

+ - 96 Silent Circle releases apps for secure file transfer->

Submitted by dreegle
dreegle (443860) writes "Phil Zimmerman's Silent Circle had previously released an app for secure phone calls. "Now, the company is pushing things even further—with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button. (For now, it’s just being released for iPhones and iPads, though Android versions should come soon.) That means photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds.""
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Iphone

+ - 122 Starfish smartwatch saga illustrates entrepreneurial stumbling blocks->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Starfish calls itself, “The next biggest thing is the next smallest thing: The world’s first ever interactive iPhone and iPad mirroring device on your wrist.” The reality is that building products is hard. Building products with amazing feature sets is harder still. And, as the old saw says, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is."
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Apple

+ - 106 Samsung Sets Up Shop on Sand Hill Road, Launches $1.1 Billion in Venture Funds->

Submitted by
quantr
quantr writes ""Samsung Electronics said on Monday that it is launching two venture funds worth a total of $1.1 billion as well as a strategy and innovation center on Menlo Park’s Sand Hill Road.

A $100 millon Samsung Catalyst Fund will focus on early-stage companies while a $1 billion Samsung Ventures America Fund will target companies of all sizes.
In addition to the Menlo Park office, the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center will have offices in Korea and Israel and be led by Samsung Electronics’ newly installed president and chief strategy officer, Young Sohn.""
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Software

+ - 116 Untethered iOS 6.1 Evasi0n Jailbreak Arrives For iPhone, iPad, And iPod Touch

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The jailbreak tool evasi0n for iOS 6.x, meaning currently iOS 6.0 and iOS 6.1, has finally been released. It can perform an untethered jailbreak of the iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, and iPod touch running either of those two mobile operating systems. You can get it now for Windows (XP and higher), OS X (10.5 and higher), as well as Linux (x86 / x86_64)."
EU

+ - 285 Apple Discontinues Mac Pro in EU->

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa (887896) writes "Apple has been forced to remove the Mac Pro from sale in European Union after an amendment to a safety regulation left the machines incompliant. The updated electronics safety standard IEC 60950-1 increases requirements around electrical port protection and the fan guards in the system. Apple does not plan to modify their machines and will simply pull them from market in the EU. Apple wishes to warn customers and partners about the change so that they would have sufficient time to order Mac Pro units and meet any needs prior to 1 March, when the amendment comes into effect."
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Iphone

+ - 249 Mars Rover Curiosity: Less Brainpower Than Apple's iPhone 5->

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "To give the Mars Rover Curiosity the brains she needs to operate took 5 million lines of code. And while the Mars Science Laboratory team froze the code a year before the roaming laboratory landed on August 5, they kept sending software updates to the spacecraft during its 253-day, 352 million-mile flight. In its belly, Curiosity has two computers, a primary and a backup. Fun fact: Apple’s iPhone 5 has more processing power than this one-eyed explorer. “You’re carrying more processing power in your pocket than Curiosity,” Ben Cichy, chief flight software engineer, told an audience at this year’s MacWorld."
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Google

+ - 192 US wants Apple, Google, and Microsoft to get a grip on mobile privacy-> 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "When it comes to relatively new technologies, few have been developing at the relentless pace of mobile. But with that development has come a serious threat to the security of personal information and privacy. The Federal Trade Commission today issued a report on mobility issues and said less than one-third of Americans feel they are in control of their personal information on their mobile devices."
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IOS

+ - 95 Passcode bypass on iPhone 5 iOS 6.1 allows full access to Phone and Contacts app

Submitted by PNutts
PNutts (199112) writes "Using a specific sequence of actions it's possible to achieve full access to the Phone and Contacts apps. You can make calls, create and delete contacts, listen to and delete voice mails, etc. Here's a link to the YouTube video showing the procedure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDkLpj3MM-c"
Apple

+ - 255 Gabe Newell: Steam Box's biggest threat isn't consoles, it's Apple->

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad (1488951) writes "The biggest danger facing the success of Steam Box or any other PC ecosystem hoping to find space in the living room is Apple, according to a lecture given by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell to a class at the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs. "The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform," Newell said. "I think that there's a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room? ... We're happy to do it if nobody else will do it, mainly because everybody else will pile on, and people will have a lot of choices, but they'll have those characteristics. They'll say, 'Well, I could buy a console, which assumes I'll re-buy all my content, have a completely different video system, and, oh, I have a completely different group of friends, apparently. Or I can just extend everything I love about the PC and the internet into the living room.' ... I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together.""
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Patents

+ - 143 Micron Lands Broad "Slide to Unlock" Patent->

Submitted by Zordak
Zordak (123132) writes "Micron has recently landed U.S. Patent 8,352,745, which claims priority back to a February 2000 application---well before Apple's 2004 slide-to-unlock application. While claim construction is a highly technical art, the claims here are (for once) almost as broad as they sound, and may cover the bulk of touch screen smart phones on the market today. Dennis Crouch's Patently-O has a discussion."
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Android

+ - 144 Judge Koh Rules: Samsung Did Not Willfully Infringe->

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy (1542989) writes "In a nutshell there won't be a new trial, as Samsung wanted, because the judge thinks that the trial was fair despite allegations that the jury foreman could have been biased. She also ruled that there won't be any more money for Apple as the iPhone maker failed to prove they were 'undercompensated' by the jury. The most important ruling was that she also found that 'Samsung did not willfully' infringe'."
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