Couple of months ago, we heard that Apple got into a minor kerfuffle with the Swiss Federal Railways for pretty much ripping off the iconic clock face that the railways uses on their platforms, designed by watchmaking company Mondaine.

Eventually, the two companies decided to settle the matter and come to an agreement. We have now learned that Apple had to pay the Swiss Federal Railways $21 million for using the clock face within iOS. The two companies have now signed a licensing agreement allowing Apple to continue using the clock face within their application. Read more »

You may have already seen the excellent iPad mini ‘Piano’ ad that was shown during the launch keynote and aired on television after the device launched in the respective countries. Now Apple has released two more ads that follow a similar format called ‘Books’ and ‘Photos’.

As you can expect from their names, the first one shows the new iPad mini going through several books with the bigger iPad and the second one shows how photos look on the iPad mini. With both these ads, Apple’s message seems to be that the iPad mini is every bit as good as doing things as the bigger iPad and other than the screen size you’re not compromising on anything. Read more »

What do you get when you combine two franchises that have been done to death? Why the Angry Birds Star Wars, of course.

Angry Birds Star Wars is, as Rovio likes to call it, Angry Birds’ biggest adventure yet. The game is based on the story of the Star Wars franchise and has birds dressed as the characters from the Rebel Alliance whereas the pigs are dressed as the Galactic Empire. After that it’s your usual bird flinging action but with some new abilities. But will that be enough to bring back gamers who have clearly flung enough birds to last a lifetime? Let’s find out. Read more »

It’s just been a couple of weeks since the Microsoft Surface went on sale and as usual for any new product we have started hearing complaints from the early adopters. The two most prominent issues for now relate to the sound and the optional Touch Cover.

According to The Verge, who experienced these issues first hand, the audio occasionally stutters or mutes when the Surface is in use or in standby. Read more »

If you bought a 16GB Nexus 7 in the US 15 days after it received a price drop, you are in luck. According to Google’s Price Protection policy, if you purchased the 16GB model 15 days after the price cut was announced, that is on October 14, then Google will refund the price difference to you ($50). Unfortunately, no such offer is available to those who purchased the 8GB model.

Meanwhile, ASUS also has its own scheme going on for buyers in Europe who purchased the tablet before October 29. Read more »

The Humble Bundle is back on Android and brings with it some great new games never before seen on the platform. If you don’t know what Humble Bundle is, it’s a collection of games where you get to decide what the final price should be. Once you pay, one part of the money goes to the developers, one part to charity and the remaining to the people at Humble Bundle. Along with being able to choose the price, you can also select who gets how much share of the money.

In the latest Humble Bundle 4 for Android, you get a collection of five great games, including Splice, Eufloria, Waking Mars, Crayon Physics Deluxe and Superbrothers: Swords and Sworcery EP. Moreover, if you pay over the average amount of $5.96, you also get Machinarium. Read more »

After teasing it for over a month, Rovio has finally released Angry Birds Star Wars. The game is available for download on iOS, Android and OS X and although a Windows Phone and Windows 8 versions are promised neither are currently available for download. [Update: Now available for Windows Phone 8]

The game is priced at $0.99 on iOS for the iPhone version and $2.99 for the iPad version. Meanwhile, Android has two versions, one that is free but comes with ads and another ‘HD’ version, which despite the name looks identical to the standard version but costs $2.99 and does not include ads. The OS X version costs $4.99. Read more »

Apple has lost a patent related case to VirnetX, a patent holding firm in the US, for infringing on four of the latter’s patents related to FaceTime. The four patents in the case deal with establishing VPSs and domain names.

Apple argued that it did not infringe upon any patents, that FaceTime was a free service with no revenue and that VirnetX does not have any products that use those patents but apparently it was not enough to please the judge and now Apple has been ordered to pay $368 million. Read more »

Apple has updated their Apple Store app for the iOS devices that let you check out prices, buy products and track your purchases on the go. The update brings support for Apple Store gift cards with Passbook support and Siri integration.

Now you can purchase Apple Store gift cards for your friends and family through the Apple Store app. When you send a gift card, it arrives as a mail to your recipient. They can then choose to send it to their iPhone and it appears in Passbook through iCloud integration. They can then just walk into an Apple Store and purchase items by showing the pass in the Passbook app. Read more »

Back in May we reported the sighting of what looked like Microsoft Office running on an iPad. Back then Microsoft denied working on such an application but turns out that wasn’t true at all.

According to The Verge, Microsoft has been working on a version of Office for iOS as well as Android and plans to release early next year. The iOS version will be released around late February or early March and the Android version will arrive in May. Read more »

We have reported in the past on Valve’s plans for releasing the Steam client for the Linux platform. Keeping true to that promise, the company has released the first beta that can be installed on systems running Ubuntu 12.04 and above.

To start off, you will be able to play Valve’s highly popular, online multiplayer, free-to-play game Team Fortress 2. If that’s not enough, there are a whole bunch of other games as well, including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, World of Goo, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Serious Sam 3: BFE and many more. Read more »

Google has done some minor modifications to their SERP (search engine results page). The new design mostly involves rearranging the navigation controls around.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the navigation controls, which previously could be found on the side, have now been moved up top. This works fine for usual web search but poses new problems for image search. Read more »

Continuing their tradition of blending newly released gadgets inside one of their absurdly strong and powerful blender by none other than the CEO Tom Dickson himself, Blendtec has released a new video where they blend the iPad mini.

But it’s not just the iPad mini that will be facing the blades of chaos inside the blender. Giving it company are the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. It really doesn’t matter how many contestants there are, though. In the end, the only winner is the Blendtec blender. Read more »

After announcing the 10-inch Surface tablets based on Windows 8 and Windows RT, Microsoft is now reportedly working on a 7-inch model. Except, this one is more purpose-built, with the purpose being gaming.

According to The Verge, Microsoft is said to be working on a 7-inch Xbox Surface tablet designed for gaming. The device is said to include an ARM processor with high-bandwidth RAM but the specifications could be altered for an unannounced Intel SoC. This device will neither be running on Windows 8 nor Windows RT, but rather a custom Windows kernel, similar to the current Xbox console. Read more »

We have already talked about Angry Birds Star Wars before. The game is based on the same gameplay mechanics as previous Angry Birds game but the birds have been replaced by Star Wars characters with some new abilities.

The game will be releasing this Thursday on November 8 and you can be sure we will have a review of the game for you to read. Until then, check out this new gameplay video, along with some of the other videos of the game released in the past. Read more »