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Apple loses second attempt to ban sales of Samsung phones

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Samsung is after more of Apple's iPhone business.
Samsung is after more of Apple's iPhone business.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Judge Lucy Koh has denied Apple’s second attempt at banning certain Samsung phones. After Apple won its second major patent infringement case against Samsung earlier this year, it requested that a permanent injunction be placed on nine Samsung devices in the U.S.

Just like when Apple was denied a sales ban after its 2011 landmark victory against Samsung, Koh has not granted the second request. This time around, the ruling signals that Apple and Samsung’s court disputes are indeed settling down.

Apple is assembling a wearables and fashion dream team

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For a company as secretive as Apple, one of the few ways you can learn anything about what it has planned next is to see who it has been hiring. High-profile hires say a lot about where Apple’s priorities are for the future.

Looking back at the hires Apple has brought on over the last year reveals something pretty obvious: it’s assembling a wearables and fashion dream team.

Flexible iPhones could have buttons embedded beneath their displays

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Apple may be on the verge of releasing its most generously-sized iPhone yet, but the company is always on the lookout for new ways of providing screen real estate to its users.

A new patent published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show how Apple is investigating “Electronic devices with flexible displays,” featuring a flexible display layer overlaid on top of buttons, switchers, speakers, microphones and other components which feature in iOS devices.

Tim Cook’s 3-year report card at Apple: B

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Tim Cook onstage at the 2014 WWDC. Photo: Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web
Tim Cook onstage at the 2014 WWDC. Photo: Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web

Tim Cook stepped up as the CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011. The soft-spoken Southerner, who has worked at the Cupertino company since 1998,  had previously acted as interim CEO when Steve Jobs stepped down to battle cancer.

Cook’s ascent to the permanent CEO position marked a sea change for Apple. Once called the stage manager to Jobs’ star, he’s now running the show. After endless speculation about whether Cook’s rule marked the end of Apple or signaled a bright new era, going by the numbers, it looks like he’s earned a solid B.

Here’s a look at his first three years as the head of Apple, a job he got paid $4.25 million to perform in 2013.

Apple wants to teach Siri how to find your car

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Find My iPhone has been invaluable at recovering lost Apple devices, but if you’re anything like me, keeping track of where you parked the car amid a sea of concrete and sedans is even harder than remembering where you dropped your selfie machine.

Apple’s latest patent filings reveal it has been working to solve those lost car disasters with an ingenious system that could be included in the future iPhones to guide you back to your vehicle, and it doesn’t even need an LTE or GPS signal.

Xiaomi takes copying Apple to the next level with blatant iOS ripoff

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By now, it’s obvious that Xiaomi is heavily inspired by Apple’s product design. The Chinese company’s founder even dresses up like Steve Jobs at events and uses the “One More Thing” presentation gimmick.

Now we’ve been given a look at MIUI 6, the software for Xiaomi’s new Mi 4 smartphone. It’s the most blatant ripoff of Apple to date.

Apple shareholders look to cash in on anti-hiring controversy with lawsuit

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Apple profits
Apple can afford to lose some marketshare because of how profitable it is.
Illustration: Cult of Mac

A group of Apple shareholders are ready to add to the company’s anti-hiring controversy woes with a new class action lawsuit of their own that alleges Apple leadership mislead investors and hurt the stock’s overall value.

The lawsuit was filed by attorneys for plaintiff R. Andre Klein with U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California this week, and accuses Apple’s senior management, including Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, of grossly mismanaging Apple’s resources when it struck an agreement not to hire employees from competing corporations.

The brains behind Siri create an even smarter AI

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Siri couldn't be more excited about the Apple Watch. Photo: Apple
Siri couldn't be more excited about the Apple Watch. Photo: Apple

In some ways Siri today is a little bit like the Macintosh circa 1984: everyone realizes the potential, but the technology is not yet as good as it could be.

With that in mind, several of the creators of Siri have set up a new startup outside of Apple called Viv Labs, aimed at creating a next gen virtual assistant capable of understanding sentences far more complex than the kind that you would normally feed to Siri.

Apple supplier enjoys revenue boost from unprecedented iPhone 6 orders

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Sporting a larger screen size, case redesign and various under-the-hood improvements, the iPhone 6 is widely expected to be the biggest refresh of Apple’s smartphone in years. That anticipation is having a major knock-on effect with Apple’s component makers, too.

We reported last month that Apple has placed an unprecedented number of orders for the iPhone 6, and that seems to be backed up by recently announced July sales for Taiwan-based Apple casing supplier Catcher Technology.

Based on growth in the Apple-driven smartphone sector, the company had its second best month in history, with monthly earnings of $154.6 million. This marks a whopping 36.8 percent increase compared to the same month in 2013.