The United States Trade Agency has ruled that Apple has violated one of Samsung’s smartphone and tablet-related patents.
Under the modified constructions, the Commission has determined that Samsung has proven that the accused iPhone 4 (AT&T models); iPhone 3GS (AT&T models); iPhone 3 (AT&T models); iPad 3G (AT&T models); and iPad 2 3G (AT&T models) infringe the asserted claims of the ’348 patent. The Commission has further determined that the properly construed claims have not been proven by Apple to be invalid and that Samsung has proven that a domestic industry exists in the United States with respect to the ‘348 patent. The Commission has determined that Apple failed to prove an affirmative defense based on Samsung’s FRAND declarations.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has been fairly accurate regarding Apple hardware releases, claims that Apple's smart watch will not be released until the end of 2014.
Apple may not have adequate resources to develop an iWatch version of iOS because it may require big changes to iPhone and iPad iOS this year. In addition, wearable device components aren’t mature. For these reasons, we think mass production of the iWatch is more likely to begin in 2H14, not 2H13 as the market speculates.
Today Bloomberg reported that Jony Ive’s efforts to redesign iOS as part of his new software design role puts Apple at risk of delaying the release of iOS 7. While a public release is said to currently stay on schedule for "as soon as September", internal deadlines in the company has been pushed back as software teams race to finish iOS 7 and prepare a preview for Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
The “iSteve” film by Funny Or Die at this point available on the network. The film stars Justin Long as Steve Jobs, and Jorge Garcia, known for the TV series “Lost” as Steve Wozniak.
ZDNet has shared a roadmap received from a source who says it is a timetable for Microsoft’s plans for iOS and Mac versions of Office.
According to the roadmap, a new version of Microsoft Office for Mac will be released in April next year, while the long rumored Office for Android and iOS will arrive in October 2014.
After meeting with Apple's suppliers in China, one analyst believes that Apple will release a TV with a new accessory that allows a user to control a TV using finger gestures.
P0sixninja says that he has found the exploits necessary to release a new jailbreak. He does not mention it, but it looks like this jailbreak will be for the latest iOS 6.1.3. In the past the hacker contributed to various jailbreak releases in the past including: GreenPois0n, Cdev Reporter, Absinthe, etc.
Well, so far it looks like the next jailbreak might be created entirely by me.
Apple is gradually rolling out a new customer service initiative called ‘table selling’ across its retail stores. With the new strategy, employees at Apple Stores are assigned a product table at which they are responsible for serving groups of customers with the same device but different needs. Previously, employees helped each customer individually on a first-come, first-serve basis which often resulted in lengthy wait times.
According to a report from The Economic Times, Apple plans to triple the size of its reseller network to 200 stores in India by 2015. Reportedly, Apple's vice-president (sales) for India, Europe, Middle-East and Africa Hugeues Asseman discussed some of these plans with key franchisee owners and trade partners during his visit to Mumbai last month. The report notes:
Today an analyst Amit Daryanani from RBC Capital Markets has issued a new research report predicting a launch for both a lower-cost iPhone and the iPhone 5S in June-July timeframe, which is in line with other recent claims. However, Daryanani says that the cheaper iPhone appears to lack a Retina display. He said:
Check out these charts that visualize the rise and fall of key players in the smartphone market since 2005. The data is from comScore's 2013 Mobile Future in Focus whitepaper.
While Android and iOS might appear poised to lock up the smartphone market for good, it is worth looking at the history of the smartphone market to understand just how quickly fortunes can change. In 2005, the market was dominated by Palm, Symbian and BlackBerry. However, by the following year all three had ceded control to Microsoft as the new market share leader. 2008-2010 saw BlackBerry stage a comeback to assume the #1 position before eventually giving way to the upstart Android platform in 2011. The only key player in the current smartphone market never to have owned the market share lead, interestingly enough, is iOS.
In an interview in The Australian Financial Review (via AllThingsD), Thorsten Haynes, Blackberry CEO characterizes the iOS user interface as outdated, arguing that the popularity of the iPhone may be reduced due to the lack of innovation.
Apple has acknowledged the evad3rs for discovery of four of the six security issues fixed in iOS 6.1.3, notes MuscleNerd.
Apple gives hat tip to @evad3rs for 4 of the 6 security fixes in 6.1.3 http://is.gd/nfspim
dyld
Available for: iPhone 3GS and later, iPod touch (4th generation) and later, iPad 2 and later
Impact: A local user may be able to execute unsigned code
Description: A state management issue existed in the handling of Mach-O executable files with overlapping segments. This issue was addressed by refusing to load an executable with overlapping segments.
CVE-ID : CVE-2013-0977 : evad3rs
Paul Semenza, an analyst at research firm DisplaySearch, tells CNET that the iPad mini with Retina display may appear in the third or fourth quarter of this year.