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Early this morning, Apple filed a lawsuit against the Taiwanese phone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) Corporation, alleging the company in infringing on more than 20 Apple owned patents in its mobile phones.
The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in Delaware and with the U.S. International Trade Commission today.
HTC is the maker of about 85-percent of all Windows Mobile powered devices, and also the maker of Google’s latest Android powered phone, the Nexus One.
The California-based computer maker, Apple Computers, just revealed that the 10-billionth song from its popular music download service, iTunes, has been reached.
Apple, the maker of the iPhone and iPod, firstly launched iTunes seven years ago back in 2003. Today, iTunes has grown to become the world’s largest online media store, allowing consumers to purchase TV program episodes, podcasts, movies, and of course, music.
Figure 9 from U.S. PatentNo US007660749
Apple Inc. today has been awarded a new virtual store patent (Patent No. US007660749) by the U.S. Patent Office, indicating the company could roll out a virtual app store environment where users could customize their own virtual characters.
The patent application also gives hints at the environment, suggesting there would be far more outside of the actual store. The entire virtual world, including the environment outside of the store, would dynamically change according to various factors such as the time of day, weather, and possibly even to yearly seasons such as summer and winter - think Rockstar’s GTA.
U.S. Patent No. 20090325603 - Apple GPS location sharing transmission
According to a new U.S. patent application by Apple Computers Inc., the company is preparing new location-aware technologies that would make using an iPhone (and probably the iPad) more efficient and social. According to this specific patent, location sharing will become a seamless process where users could effortlessly share their location directly from the call screen.
Users can already share their current location simply by finding their location in the Maps application, then sharing it via a few more additional taps. However, the current process requires somewhat too many taps and simply wouldn’t be as efficient as choosing to share your location from a single press while concurrently talking with your friend.
After speaking with a lot of people, I find there is still much ambiguity over the features of Apple’s latest creation, the iPad, and what the device is and is not capable of doing.
The iPad is also missing a camera, multi-tasking support, Flash support in Safari, and unfortunately, it’s limitations don’t stop there.
People that have used the iPad to demo a movies (with the 4:3 viewing ratio) argue the iPad would have been better in widescreen, making watching movies more enjoyable. But Apple wants you to use the device in any orientation as you choose, so making it widescreen might have been prohibitive in that regard.
After much anticipation and speculation, Apple Inc. today finally unveiled its tablet computer, the Apple iPad (see more pictures). Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the device at an invite-only press event in San Francisco.
The iPad is only a half of an inch thick and weighs just 1.5-lbs. It is powered by a 1GHz Apple A4 processor and will come in three flavors: 16, 32, or 64GB sizes. The 16GB version will retail for $499, the 32GB for $599, and the 64GB version for $699. The 3G version will cost an additional $130 per model.
Other features include an accelerometer, WiFi, Bluetooth, among other features. It operates on the same operating system as the iPhone and does run applications from the app store.
Apple recently decided not to approve Google’s Voice application, citing the application altered the main functions of the iPhone.
Today, Google has released an enhanced mobile version of Voice at http://m.google.com/voice, which is powered by HTML5 that now brings new premium features to the iPhone.
Most people who use Google Voice want to use it to consolidate all their telephone numbers into one primary one. One of the best features is now the ability to set your outgoing calling number to your Google Voice number on your iPhone. It will now be easier for your friends to adopt your Google Voice number, as they’ll always see your Google Voice number. You can also send and receive free text messages from Google Voice.
New Apple U.S. patent applications suggest the Cupertino-based company is developing software and hardware to regulate electricity to devices around your home to help you better manage and lower your monthly hydro bill.
The Intelligent Power Monitoring patent would allow you to allocate electricity to connected devices on your computer such as printers, your iPhone, BlackBerry, and other mobile devices and peripherals that charge. According to the patent application, users would also be able to schedule power-charging times and automatically set the more energy-intensive devices to hibernate to conserve energy. The energy allocation would be handled by the Intelligent Power Communications Port (patent no. 20100007473).
Apple is expected to unveil its very highly anticipated tablet computer at a press event believed to be either on Jan 26 or Jan 27.
It is rumored that Apple will unveil the device to the world at that press event, and is expected to launch the product by the end of Q1 2010.
New reports that have emerged now suggest the launch date will be sometime in Q2.
Asian suppliers that are familiar with the product, such as AVY Precesiion Tech (who is providing the structural casing parts of the device) say they plan to start production of the parts in February to meet a second quarter launch time-line.
Google recently released its Chrome browser for Mac OS X, but until now, users could not enjoy add-ons and extensions because they were not supported.
The latest development build (caution: this release might not be stable) of Chrome for Mac now includes support for Chrome extensions. Extensions are small and free apps that are made by third-party developers that add or enhance existing browser functionality. Extensions support was already available for the Windows version of Chrome. Other Mac browsers such as both Safari and Firefox already have a large list of available extensions.
There are few more enhancements in the latest build such as the ability to display your opened tabs only with their respective favicons only.
According to the latest data, Google Chrome is now the third most popular web browser, edging out Apple’s Safari browser. From CBC, the data indicates Microsoft’s Internet Explorer holds 63-percent market share, with Firefox second with only about 25-percent, followed by Google’s Chrome browser with a small yet significant 4.5-percent.
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