Unofficial iDevice chargers have taken the form of everything from the hand crank to to the camp stove, and now it seems that Apple is getting in on the act too by taking out a patent for portable solar panel chargers. The patent application — filed with the US Patents & Trademark Office — details a power management system incorporating a solar panel accessory, compatible with both Macs and iDevices, and potentially attached by way of a USB connection. By turning solar energy into electricity, this could then be used to charge future iPhones or MacBooks without the need for a mains power charger.

Samsung looks to be preparing its own extended warranty plans that will provide additional coverage for its smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics, according to a new trademark registered with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

Called “Protection Plus,” the service is expected to offer the same kind of protection that is available to iPhone, iPad, and iPod users with AppleCare+.

Apple and Samsung are headed back to San Jose on November 12 to clash again over the retrial of their billion-dollar patent lawsuit that Apple won in 2012, and it looks like Scott Forstall might be coming back to testify as a witness for Apple.

The jury originally rewarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, but after finding some errors in the awards, Judge Lucy Koh has cut $450 million from Apple’s award. Samsung and Apple filed a joint pretrail statement that listed the potential witnesses that might be called and both Scott Forstall and Apple’s marketing chief, Phil Schiller appeared on the list after both were witnesses at the orignal trial, before Forstall was fired. 

I love Google Glass, and wear mine almost every day. But Glass could never succeed as a consumer product as is. It’s funky and clunky, fragile and — worst of all — socially unacceptable.

Here are my suggestions the Google Glass team for how to fix all these problems and make Google Glass the killer consumer product of the decade.

Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th, 2011, but his influence is sure to be felt for decades to come. As such, many artists across the globe have created mural, statues, paintings and other tributes to Steve Jobs and his amazing contributions to the tech world.

More statues and works of art are in the works for the man who revolutionized the personal computers, music, animation, smartphones and tablets, but here are some of the best coolest Steve Jobs memorials we’ve found.

Inventions of Steve Jobs – Exhibit at WIPO

The United States Patent Office Museum in Alexandria, Virginia created a monument of 30 gigantic iPhones to celebrate the 300 patents held by Steve Jobs. Each iPhone displayed 12 of Jobs’ patents certificates. The exhibit aimed to display the far-reaching impact of Steve Jobs’ entrepreneurship and innovation on our daily lives, while also serving as an example of the role intellectual property plays in the global marketplace.

Wax Model of Steve Jobs at Madame Tussauds

Madame Tussauds Wax Mueseums are renowned for their life-like representations of famous celebrities, so to mark the first anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death, the Hong Kong branch unveiled a wax statue of his Steveness himself. The  wax figure was modeled after the photos taken for his iconic Fortune Magazine cover in 2006.

To create this wax figure of a cutting-edge technologist, sculptors used methods that have been around for over 200 years, rather than embracing modern methods that remove a sculptor’s ability to manipulate each aspect of the design personally. The estimated cost of the figure is just under $200,000.

Steve Jobs Statue in Budapest

Hungarian sculptor Erno Toth unveiled his 6 1/2 feet tall bronze statue of Steve Jobs a few months after he passed away in 2011. The statue was commissioned by Gabor Bojar, founder of Hungarian software company Graphisoft. Steve Jobs and Bojar actually had a history of working together that stretched back to 1984, when Jobs came across Bojar’s software and was impressed enough to help the fledgling company out with cash and computers.

Interactive Jobs Memorial in St. Petersburg, Russia

If you happen to wander into the courtyard of St. Petersburg’s National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (quite the mouthful), you will now find a giant iPhone. The monument stands about as tall as a fully grown man and a huge screen displays photos, videos and text about the late Apple co-founder.

The monument was unveiled to the public after the Progress IT Fund held a competition last year to see who would design the tribute. The winner was designed by Gleb Tarasov and named “Sunny QR Code.” The name refers to a QR code on the monument itself that links to a memorial website for Jobs. Not sure what the “Sunny” stands for.

Steve Jobs Monument in Odessa, Ukraine

Crafted by Ukranian artist, Cryil Maksimenko, the monument was installed in Odessa, Ukraine on the one year anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death.  The hand features an Apple logo in the middle and is comprised of numerous gears, screws, bearings and other pieces from bicycles, motorcycles and cars, which took over a year to fashion together.  Pretty fascinating when you look at it up close.

A Post-It Note Memorial Portrait of Steve Jobs at the Munich Apple Store

In the wake of his death, thousands of admirers flocked to Apple Stores across the globe and wrote their thanks to Steve on Post-It notes. A team of Apple fans took their tribute a bit further by creating this Steve Jobs portrait comprised of 4,001 stickies on the glass facade of an Apple Store in Munich, Germany.

The Steve Jobs Building at Pixar

Steve Jobs is mostly associated with Apple, but before he made his triumphant return to Apple and introduced the iPod, Jobs poured millions of his own money into Pixar. By keeping the company financially shored, John Lasseter and his team of animators were able to change movies forever with hit after animated hit. Now, Jobs has a permanent home on Pixar’s campus now that the studio’s main building has been renamed in his honor.

Graffiti Mural of Jobs in Buenos Aries

Mario Calvo created this Steve Jobs graffiti portrait in tribute to Steve Jobs’ legacy. The mural is located on the front of an advertising agency in Palermo district of Buenos Aries Argentina and took more then five days to paint.

Steve’s star at the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame at MIT

Modeled after the Hollywood Walk of Fame in California, the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame at Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA, opened for the first time in 2011. Included among the seven inaugural inductees were Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Bob Swanson, Bill Gates and Mitch Kapor.

Steve Jobs Avenue in Jundiai, Brazil

The small city of Jundiai is located near São Paulo, honored Steve Jobs by renaming one of its streets ‘Steve Jobs Ave.’ The street’s name isn’t the town’s only tie to Apple though. The avenue is the route that connects the small city to Brazil’s largest city — Sao Paulo, where Apple supplier Foxconn opened a iPhone assembly plant and is home to Foxconn’s new iPad plant, too.

Recreation of Steve Jobs Time cover made of apples

Artist Olivier Lefebvre created this Steve Jobs tribute by using over 3,500 apples to recreate one of Steve Jobs’ portraits from Time magazine.  The enormous portrait is 22 feet tall by 15 feet wide. Olivier brought in crates of deer apples and used a 2’x2′ grid system to guide his creation. The project took about 50 hours to complete and was left intact after completion but the orchard’s three resident deer eventually ate the remains.

“Bad Apples Spoil The Bunch” in Cincinnati

At some point between the time Steve passed away on October 5th and the morning of October 6th, a mural celebrating his life was created in a local neighborhood.  The original art on the wall originally read ‘Bad Apples Spoil the Bunch’ but it was changed to read ‘Good Apples Better The Bunch’ with a picture of the 80s Apple Icon.

Pixar’s Steve Jobs Tree

Not only did Pixar decide to name its main building after Steve Jobs, but if you wander the campus grounds you’ll come across this tree in front of the Steve Jobs Building which was also dedicated to Steve Jobs by John Lasseter and the rest of the employees at Pixar.

Apple has today restored push email services on iOS devices in Germany almost two years after it had to be shut down following a legal battle with Motorola. The Cupertino company announced the change in a new support document, which explains how users can restore push services on their iOS devices.

Over the last couple of years Samsung has earned itself a reputation for using Apple products as “inspiration” and then copying them in the most blatant ways possible.

The fury of Apple fans was ignited again last week as Samsung was caught shamelessly copying the Apple’s new golden iPhone  creation – the golden iPhone 5s – when the South Korean smartphone maker announced it would be selling a gold variant of the Galaxy S4.  Apple fans were quick to dismiss the smartphone as another copycat move,but Samsung took to its corporate blog to explain that it’s totally not copying the gold iPhone because they’ve made tons of gold phones in the past (kind of).

Apple has moved to trademark the “Advertising Re-Imagined” slogan used to promote its iAd mobile advertising platform. The Cupertino company filed for the trademark on Wednesday, September 25, more than three years after it launched the iAd business.

When the iPhone was originally launched in 2007, experts across the globe claimed it would never be able to compete against the #1 smartphone maker at the time – BlackBerry. Fast-forward six years and the iPhone 5s and 5c just had the best smartphone launch weekend ever, while BlackBerry just entered a letter of intent to sell itself for $4.7 billion.

There’s no question that the iPhone 5S and iOS 7 together make for the best phone ever made.

The din of offhand, dismissive criticism from the Android fan base that Apple never innovates should be silenced, at least for awhile, given that Apple now sells the only dual-tone LED flash; the only 64-bit mobile CPU; the only 64-bit OS; the fastest touch-screen performance phones by far; the only wide-scale deployment of Multipath TCP; and the only useful, usable and widely used fingerprint scanner ever placed on any consumer electronics device.

Yes, there’s plenty of petty grousing. And who knows what competitors will ship tomorrow?

But today, it’s clear that Apple rules the smartphone market.

The Android fan critics now also have to contend with a razor sharp, concise rebuttal to the cacophony of general criticism of Apple by Apple VP Craig Federighi: “New is easy. Right is hard.” He said that after referring to Samsung by saying that Apple “didn’t start opportunistically with 10 bits of technology that we could try to find a use for to add to our features list.” Ouch!

Unfortunately, iOS 7 is going to cause some huge problems that nobody is talking about yet, but will do when the unwanted bricking epidemic starts.