Shazam has been a favorite iOS app of mine for years. Have you ever been out and about, heard a song, and wondered what it was? That’s what Shazam is for. It’s always felt like magic to me, and the app’s developers have even added the ability to identify TV shows.

The most recent update to Shazam adds a feature I’m not sure I like, the ability to listen and identify music/TV without the user asking. In the past, you’ve always had to tap the button in the center of the screen, but now an auto switch makes it possible for the app to be listening in the background even when it’s not open or the iPhone is locked.

Apple’s new tear-jerking Christmas commercial Misunderstood has quickly been lauded as one of the company’s best iPhone commercials in years. The syrupy-sweet ad pays homage to the holiday season with a medley of cliché family Christmas scenes while a sullen teenage boy sits in the background nose deep into his iPhone, only to find that the sad teen was really filming a beautiful family movie the entire time.

The ad is heartwarming, maybe even horrible, but also completely unrealistic as the teen shot vertical videos that magically switched to portrait orientation.

Business Insider and others have already pointed out the huge flaw in Apple’s commercial, but Youtuber Andy Nyugen has taken it a step further by making a parody of what Apple’s commercial would look like if it were real-life.

Take a look:

As part of the ongoing legal saga with Apple, Samsung’s lawyers have filed a request with Judge Lucy Koh requesting a retrial of November’s case, which Samsung says Apple only won because it totally race baited the jury to get sympathy.

Two juries have already slammed Samsung with astronomical fines during its patent trials with Apple in the U.S., but the South Korean handset maker says it’s not ready to stop the fight yet and is asking for Judge Koh to award them with a judgment as matter of law in its favor, or a massive adjustment of the damages Apple was rewarded.

Here’s Samsungs’ explanation why the court should let them off the hook for the $379 million in fees Apple was just awarded :

Why do you confuse us like this, Apple?

Renaming the 12 Days of Christmas app “12 Days of Gifts” one moment (just to underline that this is, after all, the holiday of shopping), and then producing what is genuinely one of this winter’s most heartfelt and touching Christmas ads the next — Apple has now further befuddled (and angered) a large group of people by banishing the giant Christmas tree in shopping area De Passage of Netherlands city The Hague.

Apple seeded the second beta of iOS 7.1 to developers nearly a month after 7.1 beta 1 was released. Once again, Apple’s beta doesn’t contain any major new features but there are a couple useful tweaks that you’ll enjoy hidden among all the bug fixes, performance improvements and speedier animations.

Here are the five biggest changes Apple made to iOS 7.1 today: 

Apple has just seeded the second beta for iOS 7.1 after it released the 7.1 beta 1 nearly a month ago. Registered developers can grab the update by logging into the Developer Center.

Apple TV is also getting a new beta build for developers today as Apple has made the Apple TV Software beta 2 available to devs today, alongside the newly released Xcode 5.1 Developer Preview 2.

We’re still waiting for more info on the new goodies, but we’ll update you on new features once we’ve got them installed.

In the meantime, here are the direct download links:

With not a word of warning, at a time of year known for its poverty of new releases, hipshaking R&B super-princess Beyoncé released her fifth studio albuma as a “Mastered for iTunes” joint. And even though no one knew it was coming, it still managed to crash iTunes for a spell. Thanks, Beyoncé.

Apple has been doing its “12 Days of Christmas” promotion for a few years now — offering iOS users a bit of Yuletide cheer in the form of free videos, songs, games, books and apps.

Strangely, while this promotion has spread Cupertino Christmas wishes to those as far away as those in Europe, Canada and Japan, it has never before been available to U.S. customers.

A brand-new subscription news site called The Information published a story this week saying Google would launch a product within the next seven months called Nexus TV.

I believe and hope the story is true. Because I’m rooting for Google in the TV space. Here’s why.

Apple flipped a switch this week and enabled customers at 254 U.S. Apple Stores to get spammed with micro-location based promotional nagging.

The new system, called iBeacon, is a  low cost, low-energy way to achieve actionable “indoor GPS” in which “beacons” use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals to figure out exactly where you are and send messages relevant to that specific location.

I’ve written before that Apple’s larger iBeacon plan is brilliant, and it is.

But Apple Stores are probably the least-compelling iBeacon scenario I can think of.

Your typical Apple store is a glass box, a single room with a door in the front, a Genius Bar in the back and tables and shelves in the middle. It’s impossible to get lost in a regular Apple Store and trivially easy for customers to find any of the tiny number of products for sale. Also: Apple doesn’t do in-store promotional discounts except for one day a year (Black Friday).

Right now, you participate in the Apple Store iBeacon system by launching the Apple Store app (which I imagine most iPhone owners don’t know exists) and changing your iPhone’s settings to use iBeacon (which most iPhone owners don’t know how to do) and granting permission to get in-store promotions (which most iPhone owners probably have no interest in).

Once all that happens, iBeacon interrupts you to nag you about trading in your old iPhone, and offers help like Microsoft’s Clippy when you’re looking at a specific section of the store: “I see you are looking at iPads? Would you like to know more about the iPad?” (I made up the wording, but the intent of some iBeacon messages is identical to that.)

As a result, iBeacon in Apple Stores mostly annoys. I can think of a hundred scenarios where iBeacon could be incredibly great. But the greatest of these: My house.