There are few companies you can trust with your private data ever since the revelations leaked by Edward Snowden shook the tech world last year, but according to the latest report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, our iPhone-making friends in Cupertino have gone from being a privacy chump to the people’s champ in just a year.
When it comes to getting sued over U.S. patent infringements, no one gets targeted more than Apple.
A new study from legal analytics firm Lex Machina found that in 2013 Apple was the most frequent target of patent lawsuits, followed by Amazon at No. 2, as both companies came under heavy fire from a group of 10 “patent monetization entities” that were responsible for a staggering 13 percent of the 6,092 patent-infringement suits filed last year.
Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 most-sued companies:
Nokia’s incredible PureView camera technology is one of the reasons why so many Android users were desperate to see the Finnish firm ditch Windows Phone and bring Google’s platform to its flagship smartphones instead — and you could soon see the same technology in future iPhones.
Apple has used Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset business as an opportunity to poach executives who are seeking new challenges, and the Cupertino company has just hired Lumia engineer and PureView camera expert Ari Partinen.
For the second time in a row Samsung has been found guilty by a U.S. court of ripping off Apple’s patents, but according to the jury foreman in the latest Apple vs Samsung case, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence or testimony that sealed Samsung’s fate.
Jury members met with the media after being dismissed Monday morning, including ex-IBM executive and jury foreman Thomas Dunham, who said the revelation that Google agreed to protect Samsung from damages on a couple of patents in the trial was the biggest shocker of all.
The data-hungry tentacles of the NSA have managed to choke America’s top tech firms into silent submission on data requests, but after months of demanding more transparency, Apple is ready to defy authorities and let you know when the NSA wants your data.
Prosecutors warn that such a move will undermine investigations by tipping off criminals and allowing them to destroy sensitive data, but according to the Washington Post, Apple and others have already changed their policies.
Until today, you had to use the Dropbox-like Google Drive app or web interface to access Google Docs on iOS. But now Google has official apps to work on documents and spreadsheets, called Google Docs and Google Sheets. An app for presentations called Slides is coming soon.
You can view, edit, and share any documents or spreadsheets stored in your Google account through the apps. And unlike Office for iPad, everything is free.
Apple hasn’t shied from going toe-to-toe in a heavy legal battle for months or years if need be, but rather than seeing its latest class action lawsuit go to trial, Apple has relented to settle instead.
Four major tech companies including Apple and Google reached a settlement this morning with the 64,000 tech workers who filed a class action lawsuit on the grounds that the Silicon Valley firms had conspired to keep wages artificially low through no-hire agreements.
Apple is still waging a legal war with Samsung, but the company is already bracing for a new battle that threatens to entangle Apple with its foes Google, Adobe and Intel against a pack of angry tech workers who say the four companies were in cahoots on a no-hire agreement.
According to the latest court filings, the 64,000 tech workers represented in the class-action lawsuit claim that Apple and the other companies should not be allowed to limit evidence about Steve Jobs in the upcoming trial, no matter how unsavory it may be.
Apple isn’t being valued as a creative leap company so much as it is a predictable cash machine, says former CEO John Sculley.
Speaking with India’s Economic Times about the launch of his latest venture, pCell — a technology that allows huge amounts of data to travel on spectrum-crunched wireless networks, while offering faster speeds and fewer call drops to customers — Sculley gave his opinion of Apple’s current situation:
“Google and Apple are like ATMs, they just keep generating cash. Google takes more risk than Apple. Apple tends to stay the course, and this year is a very big year for Apple in terms of products. It’s not clear that they’re going to demonstrate a creative leap this year despite the products, like they did when Steve Jobs was leader. I think it’s probably unfair to expect them to have a creative leap every five years.”
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Having seen its shares jump recently, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has another plan she hopes will continue her company’s turnaround: convincing Apple to adopt Yahoo as the default search engine for Safari on iOS.
Yahoo has reportedly been working on two secret projects designed to build “a viable mobile search engine and monetization platform to convince Apple to make Yahoo the default search engine on its Safari browser on the iPhone and iPad,” according to a new report from Re/code.
Codenamed “Fast Break” and “Curveball,” the projects will be the subject of an upcoming presentation Mayer will make to Apple at some point in the near future — with the aim of getting the company to ditch Google as its search partner.
Among Jony Ive’s many changes brought to iOS 7 was the tinkering of the keyboard’s Shift key which has inexplicably gotten worse over time.
Streaks of successfully guessing whether the shift key is on or not should be award with showers of iTunes credits, but as designer Geoff Teehan points out, Apple could fix its keyboard woes with one simple change.
Check it out:
Apple is one of several tech giants to enter a voluntary agreement to add a global anti-theft “kill-switch” to their handsets from July 2015.
Other companies on board include Google, HTC, Huawei, Motorola, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung — while carriers have reportedly agreed to help “facilitate these measures.”
Apple’s support of the need for a kill-switch doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. The company added an Activation Lock with iOS 7, designed to make it tougher for thieves to use stolen iOS devices. The feature allows users to remotely locate, lock and wipe their iPhones if they are stolen.
Heartbleed sent the web reeling with the discovery that the catastrophic security hole quietly left passwords and other private data open for the taking on nearly 66% of the Internet’s servers. Luckily for Apple customers, iOS and OS X were never vulnerable to Heartbleed but some of the most popular sites and services on the Internet weren’t so lucky.
Many companies are still working to patch their hole, but Mashable has compiled a list of the biggest sites hit by Heartbleed. There’s no way to tell if your info was actually snatched by attackers, but if you have account on the following sites that were affected and subsequently patched, you should change your password ASAP:
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Apple is leading the way when it comes to U.S. companies stockpiling cash, according to a note from Moody’s Investors Service.
Holding $158.8 billion, Apple’s cash pile is close to 30x what it was in 2004, when Apple has cash reserves of “just” $5.46 billion. This means that Apple holds 9.7% of total corporate cash outside the financial sector.
If you’re a big fan of Rdio — after Spotify, the other major streaming music subscription service, which just happens to have much better iOS apps — and you also have a Google Chromecast, good news: Rdio for iOS now supports Google’s streaming HDTV dongle.
Today Google released Photowall, an iOS and Android app that beams photos through a Chromecast to be displayed on a TV. Photos can be doodled on and rearranged in a grid interface that updates as new photos are added.
Photowall works with the Chrome browser by providing a URL that anyone on the same network can access in Chrome to add their own photos and make edits. Once all photos are uploaded, a video can be made and published on YouTube.
Google put together a quick video to show how Photowall works:
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Google has released a major update to its Hangouts iOS app. Most notably, the new version includes a design makeover that’s more akin to iOS 7. Short video messages can be sent to contacts, and location data can also be shared.
Here’s the full changelog:
Although Google bought social mapping service Waze in June of last year, the iOS app is still getting impressive new updates.
The latest? Waze for iOS has just gained Calendar integration. It might not seem useful at first glance, but it’s actually a great addition.
Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson ruffled some fanboys’ feathers earlier this month when he said Google is outpacing Apple on the innovation front. Pointing to the Nest acquisition as evidence, Isaacson says the greatest innovation is coming out of Google.
During an appearance on Bloomberg TV this morning Isaacson stood by his comments but clarified that while innovation is great, the most important trait for tech companies to acquire is the ability to execute, and no one executes better than Apple.
Asked about Apple’s problems coming out with a great low-end device, Isaacson responded that Apple won’t ever be good at low-end because it makes “insanely great products” so it will have to come out with a new disruptive device.
Listen to Walter’s full comments in the video below:
Over the last couple of years, Google has been trying to turn its mobile Chrome browser into a sort of meta-operating system in its own right, by allowing Macs and PCs to run dedicated cross-compatible ‘apps’ right within Chrome. It’s actually a cool idea, but because of Apple’s closed iOS ecosystem, it’s been functionality that iPhone and iPad owners can’t take advantage of. But no longer. Google has just brought Chrome apps to iOS.
Google has beaten out Facebook to acquire London-based Artificial Intelligence company DeepMind — for an amount alleged to be in excess of $500 million.
DeepMind was founded by neuroscientist and chess prodigy Demis Hassabis, as well as Skype and Kazaa developer Jaan Tallin, and researcher Shane Legg. While it is unknown exactly what the company is working on, it describes itself as a “a cutting edge artificial intelligence company” to build general-purpose learning algorithms for simulations, e-commerce, and games.
Think Google’s 1Gbps fiber speeds are impressive? Think again. BT and Alcatel-Lucent have teamed up to achieve lightning-fast speeds of 1.4 terabits per second in the U.K. — that’s over 10,000 faster than the current fastest consumer broadband available in Britain, and it will let you download 44 full-length HD movies in a single second.
What’s more, it was achieved using existing fiber broadband cables.