Apple just suffered another setback in its court war against Samsung in the UK. After the Cupertino-based company was ordered to issue a statement saying Samsung did not infringe the design patents, the company is now forced to pay Samsung’s legal fees on an indemnity basis.
As you might remember, Apple wrote what the court ordered them to say, but added that other courts around the world did not agree with the UK court’s decision. As expected, Apple was ordered to retract this statement and issue a new one. Read more »
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 »
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 »
Remember Karateka? The great 8-bit classic game is returning this year. A remake of the popular title for iOS, PC and PlayStation 3 is coming to bring a warm nostalgic feeling in the hearts of its fans.
Karateka creator Jordan Mechner, who is also known for the Prince of Persia titles, has uploaded an extended director’s cut trailer of the upcoming game. 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 »
With the announcement of the iPad mini, Apple will give the already handsomely growing 7-inch tablet market an extra boost. Now that the 7.85-inch slate in our hands, it’s time to take it for a quick spin and see what its deal is.
Some might say out that due to the price there isn’t any deal to be had here. Yet the really beautiful aluminum body of the iPad mini quickly makes you forget about that. Read more »
Android’s app store has a reputation of having more free apps and games than the iOS store, which is good for consumers, but the iOS store is better known for bringing in more revenue, which is good for developers. According to App Annie that is still true, but the gap is closing.
The analysts at App Annie have taken the two types of paid apps into account – premium apps (you pay for the app) and freemium apps (the app is free, but you can pay for in-game purchases). Freemium apps are the primary revenue generators on both platforms, showing incredible growth. Read more »
When Apple launched the new Lighting connector with the iPhone 5, they immediately made all the existing accessories for iOS devices obsolete (unless you plan on using one of the optional adapters). However, it looks like it’s not going to take take long for accessory makers respond to the change and come out with new accessories designed for the new interface.
Belkin is the first out of the gate with a couple of accessories for your car that are compatible with the Lightning connector. Read more »
It looks like there might be a divorce between Apple and Intel in the making. Report has emerged that the Cupertino giant is considering a replacement of Intel silicon in future Mac offerings for its own chips.
Such a move should hardly be a surprise as Apple has amassed quite a lot of expertise already in developing the chips for its iOS devices. Read more »
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