Apple

The United States Supreme Court is set to take on Samsung’s appeal over Apple’s design patent case in two months, and today Apple has submitted an amicus brief with support from 111 famed designers ahead of the trial. Prominent names featured in the amicus brief supporting Apple include Dieter Rams, Calvin Klein, and Lord Norman Foster who is the designer behind Apple’s Campus 2 project. The Supreme Court is scheduled to take on Samsung’s appeal of the ruling in favor of Apple on October 11th.

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In its latest Diversity report released today, Apple highlighted an increase in the hiring of women and underrepresented minorities and also said it’s working to improve pay equity among employees.

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Back in February an East Texas court ruled that Apple must pay more than $625 million in damages to VirnetX over patent infringement related to iMessage and FaceTime. The patent case was especially notable for being one of the highest amounts rewarded in history, but the plaintiff in the case wasn’t satisfied and asked for $190 million more in damages four months later. But for now it’s back to the step one for Apple and VirnetX in this case as a federal judge has decided the case must be revisited…

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Update: Apple confirms:

With iPhone sales reported for Apple’s fiscal Q3 yesterday, the company is now at around 988.15 million iPhones sold, meaning it’s about to pass the 1 billion units sold milestone and will likely do so any day now.

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Just minutes ago, Apple released its official Q3 2016 earnings and as usual, the earnings release will be followed by a live conference call. Typically, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri give a deeper look into the results, while questions will also be taken from analysts and investors.

In case you missed it, Apple reported $42.4 billion in revenue and $7.8 billion in operating profit. Contributing to those results were sales of  40.3 million iPhones, 9.9 million iPads, and 4.2 million Macs. As usual, Apple did not break out sales of the Apple Watch, which it says is for competitive reasons.

As usual, we’ll have live coverage of Apple’s earnings call in this post. The call will begin at 2PM ET/5PM PT. Tim Cook will likely speak first, followed by Maestri. The Q&A session will round out the call.

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In this week’s top stories: iPhone 7 leaks, Pokémon GO mania continues, Apple recruits developers for its ‘Planet of the Apps’ reality TV show, and much more.

iPhone 7 |

We kick things off with the latest iPhone 7 reports, including one alleged leak of the device on video, and yet more leaks claiming to show Lightning EarPods as Apple’s ‘AirPods’ trademark surfaces once again.

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Reports from local French newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré (via iPhone.fr) claim Apple has signed contracts to open a new R&D lab in Grenoble, France focusing on imaging technologies.

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Back in March, the Supreme Court stated that it would hear Samsung’s appeal in the company’s never-ending design patent battle with Apple. While Apple had urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case, saying that Samsung “had its day in court,” it was revealed on the court’s website today that the case will be heard on October 11th. The Supreme Court had initially announced its decision to hear the case in March, but a date was unknown until tonight.

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Following Nancy Pelosi’s “poor Tim” comment earlier this week, Apple today is again the target of yet another politician. This time, Massachusetts senator and potential Hillary Clinton running mate Elizabeth Warren has slammed Apple, Google, and Amazon for using their size to “snuff out competition.”

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With the iPhone 7 rumors in full force now following WWDC this month and the unveiling of iOS 10, the latest might be our first look at pricing for the device. An unconfirmed leak from Weibo (via PocketNow), where info from the Chinese supply chain has been known to appear in the past, shows alleged iPhone 7 pricing that has a new 256GB model will almost retain pricing of the current top of the line 128GB model.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is no stranger to elaborate security. It was reported earlier this year that Facebook has spent more than $16 million on security to protect the executive from “specific threats” from users and other sources. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has also apparently hired 16 bodyguards to protect him at home. Now, Zuckerberg has inadvertently revealed another security measure he takes – and it’s surprisingly simple.

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These products from August, Canary, Withings, Kuna, D-Link, Ring & others will be next to gain support for Apple’s HomeKit in the coming months.
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According to a report from Politico, Apple has told Republican leaders that it will not be providing support in any way, including financial, for the party’s upcoming convention. The report says that Apple’s reasoning for this decision is Donald Trump and the comments he has made regarding immigrants, minorities, and women.

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In this week’s top stories: iOS 10, macOS Sierra, watchOS 3, and new features for Apple TV with the upcoming tvOS 10 release, our coverage of Apple’s WWDC 2016 announcements make up the majority of this week’s top stories.

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What if Apple brought the OLED display function key row that is rumored for upcoming MacBooks to its Apple keyboard too? Completely disregarding what it might require technically to integrate and drive such a display in the keyboard, this concept from Curved imagines bringing that feature to iMac, Mac Pro, Mac mini and other Mac users via a new version of Apple’s wireless keyboard.

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Prior to WWDC, a report emerged claiming that Apple would at long last unveil iMessage for Android. Seeing how Apple had made its streaming music service available on Android, many found this report to be somewhat plausible. As you’re probably aware of by now, however, iMessage for Android was nowhere to be found at WWDC this week. Now, we’ve gotten a little bit of insight into Apple’s reasoning for not bringing its messaging service to Google’s smartphone platform…

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New in iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, Apple’s AirPrint is getting some welcomed improvements including ‘AirPrint Bluetooth Beacon’, the ability to create PDFs from the print panel in iOS, and support for multi-user and password-only printing.

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Apple today started inviting its retail employees to participate in testing macOS 10.12, the latest version of Apple’s Mac operating system unveiled earlier this week during a press event at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. An excerpt from Apple’s memo to employees below:

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[UPDATE: Apple’s Back To School program has now launched in China, as well.]

Apple’s 2016 Back to School Beats kicked off in the United States at the beginning of the month and has today expanded internationally across Europe. Students in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands and more can now take advantage of the summer promotion at Apple Stores in their country as well as online.

Like the US, eligible purchases of certain Macs come with free Beats Solo2 wireless headphones worth $299 at retail. For iPad and iPhone, select iOS device purchases come with free Beats Powerbeats2 wireless headphones, worth $199 at retail.

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