News - page 1687

For decades, Apple had a long-running dispute going with the Beatles over their eponymous fruitarian trademark. Namely, Apple Corps. congolomerate — a mult-armed multimedia corporation founded by the Beatles in 1968 — had a problem with Apple Computers stepping all over their ^TM. In 1981, Apple settled the dispute for the first time by paying Apple Corps. $80,000 and promising to never enter the music business, but then in 2001, Apple launched both the iPod and iTunes, starting the hostilities anew.

Everything came to a resolution in 2007, when Apple took ownership of all trademarks related to “Apple”, including Apple Corps’s granny smith apple logo, and agreed to license them back to Apple Corps. for their continued use.

Today, we’re seeing the last apple fall from that treet, as the Canadian IP Office has just disclosed that the Beatles’ iconic recording label is now Apple, Inc. registered trademark. Isn’t that nice?

Source: PatentlyApple

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfiJOP2uGk4

Apple revealed its sweet new 13-inch Macbook Pro onstage yesterday, and today placed a new advertisement for it on its official YouTube channel. It’s probably going to be all over your TV screens soon, if you watch commercial TV, that is, and haven’t cut the cord with an Apple TV or something.

Here’s the gently-voiced, calming soothe of the new Macbook Pro ad from Apple. On YouTube. “For the pro…in all of us.” So nice, right?

Source: Apple YouTube

Earlier today, Cult of Mac reported a Dutch ruling that found Samsung didn’t infringe on an Apple patent for multi-touch tech.

Later today, then, a judge with the US International Trade Commission, or ITC, filed an initial determination that said that Samsung is actually in violation of one of Apple’s iPhone design patents, as well as three other software patents. Two other claims were found not to be infringement.

While several iPad case manufacturers have already announced iPad mini and iPad 4th generation cases since the product reveals yesterday in San Francisco, Apple has today posted several high-resolution technical drawings of each of the new tablet computers to its developer website, on a page titled, “Designing Cases for iPod, iPhone, and iPad.”

Apple announced two new iPads this week: the iPad mini and the updated fourth-gen Retina iPad. Both are going on sale November 2nd, and that means the value of your current iPad is dropping rapidly. Based on a new report, used iPad resales have increased over 700% since Apple’s event yesterday.

Every time Apple announces a new product, the value of the previous generation starts to deplete. If you plan on selling your current iPad to help cover the cost of a new purchase, you should be selling sooner rather than later.

Skype released a major update to both its Mac and Windows clients today. On the Mac, Skype 6.0 brings a number of enhancements, including the ability to open chats in multiple windows, Retina display support, and the ability to login with Facebook or a Microsoft account. In case you didn’t know, Microsoft owns Skype, so many of the new additions to the app tie Microsoft into the Skype experience.

At the 2012 National Association of Broadcasters show back in April, Apple promised a huge update to Final Cut Pro X before the end of the year. While Apple unveiled the iPad mini and a host of new products in San Jose yesterday, employees in Cupertino pushed out that update for Final Cut Pro X users in the Mac App Store.

Yesterday’s update is the biggest update to Final Cut Pro X ever, and it proves that Apple still cares about professionals.

That’s pretty darn fast: Keyboard-maker Zagg has unveiled two new keyboard cases for the iPad Mini, just a day after Apple pulled the sheet off its new pint-sized iPad. There’s the Zaggkeys Mini 7, a pared-down seven-inch model that spans the width of the Mini, and the Zaggkeys Mini 9, a 9-inch version with a slightly more comprehensive suite of keys.

Mondo’s latest is Steve Jobs: Back of the Line, an awesome rap sung by the ghost of Steve Jobs who, in the matter of a mere three-and-a-half minutes manages to school Jeff Bezos, teabag Bill Gates and one-up his successor, the awkward, stuttering M.C. Cook.

If you don’t have an Apple TV but want to look at all your pretty iPhone 5 pictures on your HDTV, then Apple just came out with some new Lightning adapters to help solve all your problems. For $49 you can get a Lightning to HDMI adapter, or Lightning to VGA adapter from the online Apple Store.

The new adapters ship in 2-3 weeks and would probably be pretty useful for people who are always tech their tech gear with them on business trips, but seems how the Apple TV only costs 50 bucks more to beam your content to your TV, we think it’s a better investment.

When Tim Cook jumped on stage yesterday and ran through all the little statistics about how extremely successful Apple’s been over the last few months, he put some added emphasis on the fact that Apple just sold their 100 millionth iPad.

100 million iPads in just over two years is absolutely nuts. 100 million of any product sold in two years is insane. But it turns out that analysts weren’t thrilled that Apple just sold their 100 millionth iPad two weeks ago, because it means iPad sales are starting to decline when analysts were expecting them to sell more.

You may know Loren Brichter for the app that made him a rockstar in the iOS development community, Tweetie. Brichter was so successful with Tweetie that Twitter ended up hiring him to make Tweetie the official Twitter client for iOS and the Mac. Twitter for Mac has since fallen by the wayside, but Twitter for iPhone and iPad both live on as a testament to Brichter’s legacy.

After spearheading the initial development of Twitter’s official clients for iOS and OS X, Brichter left the social network to do his own thing again. For the past several months he’s been working on Letterpress, a new iPhone and iPad game that’s now available in the App Store.

I’m posting this cute little gadget mostly for the benefit of Cult of Mac’s esteemed deputy editor John “olde-worlde” Brownlee, a man so reverent of natural materials that he once swapped out the ugly, modern sheet of borosilicate glass atop his induction hob for a shiny sheet of vintage, tanned pigskin.

With hilarious (and bacon-scented) results.

So this cable wrangler should be right up his street, especially as it is called the “Cable Fondler,” a name which will appear to Mr. Brownlee’s other weakness: he’s a colossal perv.

The iPad mini is a great looking device and all that, but people seemed to be pretty disappointed in the price point. While other 7-inch tablets usually start out in the $200-$250 price range, the iPad mini costs $329 for the base model.

After the keynote yesterday, journalists were given an opportunity to play with the newly announced Apple products, while Tim Cook and Phil Schiller mingled with the crowd. When asked about the higher-than-expected price tag of the iPad mini, and Schiller’s response was that people will pay more for a high quality product.

Even though their main trial in the U.S. is over, the legal battle between Apple and Samsung is still raging on in at least 10 other countries across the globe, and who knows if it will ever end.

The latest verdict in the legal war comes from the Netherlands, where the court ruled that Samsung’s technology does not infringe on an Apple patent by using certain multi-touch technologies on some Samsung Galaxy smartphones.

Nikon’s new 1 V2 is a super-serious enthusiast camera built around a joke of a toy sensor. The $900 camera ships with a 10-30mm kit lens, the crop factor of which should tell you all you need to know about this camera range: 2.7x turns the 10-30 into a 27-81mm equivalent.

Just a short drive away from Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, Apple has been working on a new store in Palo Alto that is said to be a “prototype” Apple Store. The new Apple Store will have its grand opening on October 27th at 10AM.

Last year it was reported that the Palo Alto store will feature some unique open architecture elements. The store is supposed to be about 5,030 sq. ft and feature both a glass roof and glass walls that will allow natural light to fill the open retail space.

Joby’s latest attempt at building stands for smartphones seems to finally be a winner. Instead of cases or stick-on adapters, the GripTight range simply clamps the target phone with a pair of spring-loaded jaws, and joins it to various supports.

While some companies churn out new smartphones and tablets every month, Apple has traditionally given us at least 12 months with our iOS devices before replacing them with newer models. So it was a big surprise to us all when it announced a new and improved fourth-generation iPad on Tuesday, just seven months after the third-generation iPad went on sale.

If you bought a “new” iPad within the last 30 days, however, don’t be too miffed your device is already obsolete — because you could be one of the lucky ones. If you take your device into an Apple Store, there’s a chance you’ll be able to swap it for a brand new, fourth-generation model free of charge.

As is often the case with Apple products, feelings towards the new iPad mini were mixed following the Cupertino company’s special event in San Jose on Tuesday. Many were wowed by its good looks and tiny form factor, which still manages to run regular iPad apps just fine. While others were confused over its $329 price tag.

We had expected Apple to price the iPad mini along the same lines as cheap Android tablets, such as the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire, which sell for $200. We didn’t quite expect Apple to go quite that low, but we felt around $250 would be just about right.

Instead, Apple chose to ignore what its competitors were doing. You might say that this is a big mistake, and that the iPad mini doesn’t stand a chance against its 7-inch rivals. But many analysts feel the iPad mini will do just fine at $329.

Step 1: Apple announces new product.

Step 2: Accessory makers photoshop their entire product lineup to fit that new product.

Step 3: The press is deluged with PR emails.

And so it goes. The first in my inbox was iLuv, and its product picture people really have been busy shrinking everything down for the iPad Mini. If you’re planning on buying Apple’s shrunken-iPad-2-with-a-better-camera, then you’re not going to want for cases, chargers or any other crap.

There were a couple of big surprises yesterday at Apple’s iPad mini event. The first was the pricing of the iPad mini itself: while everyone anticipated a $249 or $299 starting price, the iPad mini actually starts at $329… a good $70 higher than devices like the Google Nexus 7.

But there was another surprise. No one heard a peep in the last few months about Apple’s new Fusion Drive, a combination solid state and platter based hard drive that “fuses” the best aspects of flash and traditional hard drive storage.

Those aspects? Solid state drives (or SSDs) over much faster reading and write speed, as well as “instant-on” boot up from sleep or power down. This leads to huge performance boosts all across the Mac. Traditional hard drives, however, have a couple key advantages: they are both cheaper and have more capacity, allowing you to easily store massive media libraries.

So what’s the point of the Fusion Drive? Simple. It’s the best of both worlds: the speed and instant-on of an SSD, with all of the storage space of an HDD. But how does it work?

AT&T has announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2012 this morning, and once again, Apple’s iPhone has been its biggest-selling smartphone. The carrier sold 6.1 million smartphones in total during the three-month period, a whopping 77% of which were iPhones.

On Monday, we learned Gearbox Software was finally gearing up to bring its Borderlands franchise to iOS. An advert in a digital game guide for Borderlands 2 revealed the title’s name, Borderlands Legends, and promised that the title would arrive this month.

Gearbox has now confirmed that Borderlands Legends will be hitting the App Store on October 31, but it might not be what you were expecting.

As a brand, China’s GooPhone has made a name for itself not only because of their laughably stupid branding, but by the fact that they consistently manage to rip off Apple’s next product design before Cupertino gets their product to market… then threaten to sue Apple for IP violations.

Saucy! And now GooPhone is at it again, announcing a $99 iPad mini clone called the GooPad that looks exactly like an iPad mini, right down to the icons.