A new Apple patent that details battery and solid state drive configurations for the company’s MacBook Air suggests that future models will boast battery life that significantly exceeds the 7 hours offered by today’s ultraportable.
In a twist that’s left many scratching their heads, Apple’s rival Samsung dropped plans to block iPhone 4S sales on its home turf of South Korea… the one place they could really hope for a reasonable chance at a court win. After a long-running debate, the Android-maker reportedly decided not to battle Apple in its home country because they do not need to “gain more market share in Korea,” a blustery position if there ever was one.
Introducing your friends to the hottest new bands on your iPod isn’t much fun when you have to share one set of headphones. According to a newly-surfaced Apple patent, however, this may be a thing of the past, because future iPods could feature integrated speakers so that everyone can enjoy your music on the subway.
Remember when Samsung requested that Apple hand over its carrier agreements in the Australian court? Bloomberg is now reporting that the judge has sided with Samsung in the case and is demanding that Apple hand over the juicy details on its iPhone contracts.
Apple is opposing the disclosure, calling Samsung’s request “a fishing expedition.”
Although the iPhone 4S might be dismissed as nothing but a spec bump phone, it does have one distinctive advantage over every other smartphone out there: Siri. Anyone who wants to compete with the iPhone 4S (and, presumably, the future iPad 3) will have to come up with their own answer to Siri, or be lost.
Well, what do you know. The hunt by Apple’s competition to find small voice recognition startups and absorb them has already begun with the revelation that Amazon has already picked up a company in the hopes of launching their own would-be Siri-like speech recognition service.
An Australian retailer is playing a bit of ‘cat-and-mouse’ with Apple and a recent court ruling blocking sales of Samasung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1. Any hope of staying off Apple’s radar, however, vanished with a taunting online note and offshore servers melting under the crush of demand.
Hysterical. In a recent response to HTC’s ITC complaint against Apple, Cupertino didn’t just deny all of HTC’s charges… it even went as far as to correct the Taiwanese device maker’s punctuation, snarkily writing:
Apple denies that its correct name is Apple, Inc. The correct name of Respondent is Apple Inc.
Priceless.
Despite a preliminary injunction granted Motorola Mobility on Friday, Apple continues to sell products in Germany. The tech giant has a two-week window until it must argue why a court’s default judgement should be reversed, averting the possible stop of retail and online sales in the nation.
A few years ago, everything was peaceful in the Valley of Silicon. The relationship between Apple and Google was cozy and friendly. The two rising and dominant superpowers pursued compatible, non-overlapping businesses, for the most part, and helped each other fight mutual competitors like Microsoft, Amazon and others. Google’s founders worshiped Steve Jobs. Eric Schmidt was on the Apple board.
But then Google recklessly chose to attack Apple head-on with Android.
The future of Apple’s most profitable businesses will run iOS, including iPods, iPhones, iPads and probably laptop and desktop systems of the future — not to mention TV. Google’s decision to compete head-on with Apple for multi-touch platforms ended the alliance.
Steve Jobs took it personally, and told biographer Walter Isaacson that he was “willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
But what did he mean by that?
As the legal battles between Apple and Samsung continue, the Korean electronics giant is seeking depositions from a number of Apple designers behind the company’s revolutionary iPhone, including its Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jony Ive.