Apple in Shanghai court over Siri speech recognition patent infringement claims

Jordan Kahn

Siri promo video (text message reply 001)AFP reported Apple is in court in Shanghai, China again today, but this time it’s over a lawsuit alleging the company copied components of Siri’s speech recognition software. According to the report, Shanghai-based Zhizhen Network Technology Co. claimed in pretrial proceedings that Apple infringed its patent related to voice recognition technology via Siri. While the suit notes that development of Siri began in 2007, there is no mention of Nuance. Apple currently partners Nuance with to implement the speech recognition component in Siri, and it is also a market leader that presumably has its own arsenal of speech recognition related patents.

Zhizhen says it patented its “Xiao i Robot” software in 2004, while Apple’s Siri, which made its debut with the release of the iPhone 4S in 2011, was first developed in 2007.

“The company will ask Apple to stop manufacturing and selling products using its patent rights, once Apple’s infringement is confirmed,” Si Weijiang, a lawyer representing Zhizhen, told AFP.

“We don’t exclude the possibility of demanding compensation in the future,” he added.

The company is behind Siri-like software called ‘Xiao i Robot’ that it claimed was first developed before Siri in 2004. The technology is apparently available on some smart TVs and enterprise applications, but it doesn’t appear to be available as a consumer-facing app for smartphones or tablets. The video below appeared online when the company originally filed suit against Apple last year, and it shows the Xiao i Robot software running on a Lenovo smartphone:

iCloud fails to ‘just work’ for third-party apps, complain developers

Ben Lovejoy

icloud

When your third-party iOS app fails to properly sync data between devices, the problem may lay with Apple and not the app, say developers in conversation with The Verge.

Developers complain that two years in, iCloud is still “a developer’s worst nightmare” as Apple has failed to properly integrate iCloud with Core Data (the primary way iOS apps store data). Core Data is effectively a piece of middleware that sits between an app and the database that stores the data, and many iOS apps rely on it. When Core Data and iCloud don’t properly sync, data can go missing.

“iCloud hasn’t worked out for us,” wrote Daniel Pasco, CEO of development studio Black Pixel this past week. “We spent a considerable amount of time on this effort, but iCloud and Core Data syncing had issues that we simply could not resolve.” Pocket lead developer Steve Streza piled on with a cutting tweet: “Remember that @blackpixel has many of the brightest people in Cocoa development. If they couldn’t get iCloud working, who can?” … Read more

T-Mobile iPhone launch wrap up: LTE speed and HD audio tests, the new $579 AWS A1428 iPhone 5 and the plan gamechanger

Seth Weintraub

We were on hand in New York City today to watch the unveiling of the iPhone on T-Mobile and its new LTE/plans that purport to save T-Mobile customers a lot of money over its U.S. competitors.

T-Mobile tipped us to its grand plan to become the ‘Uncarrier’ at CES in January 2013. The idea is to radically simplify the phone plan purchasing experience by cutting away most complexities of the carrier agreements. The effort was very forward thinking and Apple-like in that sense, and the results are certainly a big change for the industry.

You basically start with a $50 a month unlimited data plan and go from there. T-Mobile will throttle you after 500MB, unless you give them $10 or $20 more a month, which gives you 2GB or unlimited before un-throttling. Family plans are $30 for the first extra device and $10 for each one thereafter. I imagine most normals will pay $50 a month. That’s a lot less than the typical iPhone user pays.

Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 6.08.42 PM.

But, let’s not kid ourselves on what’s motivating T-Mobile here. It has been losing customers like crazy and that’s largely due to its failure to carry the iPhone. The iPhone represents well over half of all smartphones on every other big U.S. carrier, and it will likely dominate T-Mobile over the next few years. T-Mobile said that even though it won’t officially support the iPhone until April 12, it currently has over 2.1 million iPhones on the network. That’s about to skyrocket…

CEO John Legere comes from over a decade at Global Crossing, an IP Data backbone firm, so cutting through all the B.S. and delivering fat delicious packets of data is his specialty.

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Report: T-Mobile will talk iPhone at tomorrow’s ‘Uncarrier’ event in New York

Jordan Kahn

t-mobile-iphone

We speculated previously that we might see Apple devices at T-Mobile’s upcoming event in New York, and a report from Cnet today claimed the company would indeed talk iPhone tomorrow at its event in New York:

Yep, T-Mobile will finally get the iPhone. Apple’s flagship device, long a gap in T-Mobile’s smartphone line-up, will play a prominent role in tomorrow’s “Uncarrier” event, according to a person familiar with the launch plans.

We knew from previous comments by T-Mobile execs that the iPhone would likely land on the carrier through its new “uncarrier” contract-free plans sometime this month or next.

It’s not certain if pricing or specific release dates would be announced tomorrow, but the device would be used to highlight the carrier’s plans of offering new no-contract, no subsidy smartphone plans. The report noted that the iPhone would not be immediately available following tomorrow’s event.

T-Mobile’s new plans offer users unlimited talk and text with tiered data options and a $70 plan that includes unlimited data, and they were previously leaked and went live on the carrier’s website over the weekend.

T-Mobile USA announced in last year that it had struck an agreement with Apple to begin supporting Apple products in 2013. The carrier’s chief executive, John Legere, later told Reuters the company planned to introduce the iPhone, eliminate cellphone subsidies, and introduce new, flexible pricing plans for customers within 3 to 4 months.

Apple buys indoor smartphone locating company WiFiSLAM

Mark Gurman

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has acquired WiFiSLAM for “around” $20 million. Apple has confirmed the deal, but did not share its purpose for the company. p1030831-600x600According to a description of the firm, the company has created technology that uses ambient WiFi signals to precisely track the location of a smartphone or other mobile devices.

Allow your smartphone to pinpoint its location (and the location of your friends) in real-time to 2.5m accuracy using only ambient WiFi signals that are already present in buildings. We are building the next generation of location-based mobile apps that, for the first time, engage with users at the scale that personal interaction actually takes place. Applications range from step-by-step indoor navigation, to product-level retail customer engagement, to proximity-based social networking.

Notably, it appears that the technology can be utilized to construct in-door mapping solutions. Google Mapping software already supports indoor maps for a number of venues and buildings, so it would make sense that Apple would want to compete in some form with its own mapping app for iOS devices. The technology seems similar to Apple partner SkyHook which uses WiFi signals and cellular tower triangulation to location Apple devices without the need for a GPS chip.

Business Insider profiled WiFiSLAM in 2011 and a company executive explained some of the finer details of the technology:

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App Store apps that access UDIDs, don’t support iPhone 5/Retina to be rejected May 1

Mark Gurman

Apple has informed developers that it will begin officially rejecting newly submitted and updated applications that access the iOS device UDID. Apple says that this new policy will begin on May 1st. With iOS 6, Apple began offering developers a new Advertising Identifier system that replicates the use of UDIDs for developers. Apple recommends that developers move over to this new system.

Starting May 1, the App Store will no longer accept new apps or app updates that access UDIDs. Please update your apps and servers to associate users with the Vendor or Advertising identifiers introduced in iOS 6. You can find more details in the UIDevice Class Reference.

Interestingly, beginning last year, Apple began rejecting apps that access the UDID. Apple hinted that it would begin doing so, but today’s announcement from Apple to developers seems to be the final word on the matter. As pictured above, the iOS Advertising Identifier is a non-personal identifier for iOS devices that developers can access. It does not attach personal information to your device like the UDID system.

Additionally, Apple has announced that, also on May 1, it will no longer accept applications that do not support the iPhone 5′s taller, four-inch display and other iOS device Retina displays:

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