Apple

The endless patent battles between Apple and Samsung took an interesting turn this week when Apple claimed that the most recent court ruling violated the Seventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: the right to trial by jury.

Back in 2014, Apple was awarded $119.6M when Samsung was found to have violated three of the five patents in dispute. That award was overturned last month when an appeals court ruled that Samsung didn’t infringe one of the three patents, and declared the other two invalid.

The problem, explains Reuters, is that the appellate court didn’t just refer to the trial court record in reaching its conclusions, it also considered new evidence …

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Apple and Major League Baseball have agreed a deal to use iPads in the dugouts during games, showing performance stats, analyze pitcher-hitter matchups, compare pitching range and more, via the Wall Street Journal. The iPads will use a custom app called ‘MLB Dugout’, created by MLB’s media division with help from Apple.

In the new deal, Apple and MLB will provide 12.9 inch iPad Pros to every team in the league, fitted with rugged cases for protection. The deal was made possible because of a recent change to the rules which lifts the ban on smartphones, tablets and laptops in the dugouts. Whether Apple paid for the promotion or MLB paid for the products was not disclosed.

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Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo at KGI Securities has today issued a new note in which he says that Apple will entirely revamp its iPhone lineup come 2017. According to Kuo, Apple in 2017 will release a new iPhone with glass casing and an AMOLED display. This somewhat contradicts an earlier note from the analyst that said Apple was aiming for an AMOLED iPhone by 2018.

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Apple has long been rumored to be creating its own original TV content, and now it’s made its first plans official. Apple shared today that it will work with TV executives Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens, as well as rapper Will.i.am on its first TV project (via NY Times). Silverman is perhaps best known for his work on shows like The Biggest Loser, while Owens is one of the minds behind MasterChef Junior.

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After several hours of downtime, Apple’s Online Store is slowly coming back up and the iPhone SE and iPad Pro 9.7-inch are both now available for pre-order. The iPhone SE starts at $399 off-contract, while the iPad Pro starts at $599. Deliveries will begin in one week on March 31st.

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Apple earlier this week released the public stable version of OS X 10.11.4, but for a number of users the update process has been less than pleasant. A plethora of users are voicing issues on Apple’s support forums centered around logging in to iMessage and FaceTime following the update to OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan.

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According to a new report from Re/code, Apple is set to expand its Apple Pay mobile payments solution to the web before this coming holiday shopping season. According to the report, Apple has been telling potential partners that with this expansion, users will be able to use Apple Pay instead of entering their card information on the retailer websites.

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Walt Mossberg, “Friend of Apple” and Personal Technology Columnist at The Verge, is out today with his take on the iPhone SE announcement from Monday. His not terribly hot take?

Ouch. That’s not a great sign. Neither is the fact that Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive didn’t make the 2-building over commute to see the show.

We, however, thought the iPhone SE $399 price was a big deal. Its incredible power in small size was unprecedented and frankly lustworthy.

But Mossberg glossed over any meaningful discussion of the SE and instead ultimatum-ed a wishlist for the iPhone 7…
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This week, Zac and Benjamin discuss the recent Apple event and all of the announcements that came from it. There’s a new 4-inch iPhone SE and a 9.7-inch iPad Pro, but what’s all the hype about? The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.

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Following two reports earlier this month detailing Apple’s deal to move iCloud partly to Google’s Cloud Platform, as well as the company’s efforts at building out its own cloud infrastructure, The Information today offers new details on the projects.

Adding to a report from VentureBeat earlier this week, today’s report offers more details on what Apple is doing with“Project McQueen” that could see the company replacing third-party vendors with more of its own cloud infrastructure. The Information reports that Project McQueen is actually just one of at least six internal efforts at Apple including building its own servers, networking equipment, and “systems that could one day help developers to power their apps.”

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Apple’s new 9.7-inch iPad Pro is the same dimensions as the iPad Air 2 on paper, but the device’s new 12-megapixel camera means your old iPad case probably won’t cut it. That is unless you cut it yourself to accommodate the new larger camera and flash that will make a larger opening on cases necessary for the new device. So your iPad Air 2 case won’t be a perfect fit, but there is already a long list of notable case makers with products available to order.  The only exceptions to that maybe are sleeve style cases that don’t have any camera openings.

But if you want a case that was truly made to fit your new 9.7-inch iPad Pro without any compromises, below we’ve put together a running list of the best new cases available now and coming soon. 

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Although the new 9.7 inch iPad Pro is superior to the 2015 12 inch iteration in some regards, including better cameras and display, it appears the raw processor is not as identical as Apple implied in its presentation. Although both models have an A9X processor, the 9.7 inch version actually has half the RAM and a slightly-lower clock speed CPU (via @panzer). Whilst the big iPad Pro has 4 GB RAM, the 9.7 inch iPad Pro has just 2 GB like the iPhone 6s.

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Digitimes has a mixed track record of reliability with regard to Apple rumors, but its latest report gels with expectations. The report claims Apple is preparing new 13 inch and 15 inch MacBooks to launch in the summer, by July. Although the publication does not say this, it indicates that new MacBook Pros are on the horizon perhaps debuting at WWDC, Apple’s developer conference.

Given Intel’s CPU roadmap, Apple laptops featuring the new Skylake processors are due. Therefore, it is not that much of a stretch to believe this report. A key feature of Skylake is power efficiency, which would allow Apple to make dramatically thinner laptops.

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Update: In a statement to CNBC, Apple has confirmed it is not planning to make an offer for Imagination Technologies. It did however hold some talks with the company about undisclosed topics.

ArsTechnica is reporting that Apple is in ‘advanced talks’ to acquire Imagination Technologies, makes of the PowerVR mobile GPU designs Apple licenses for its A9 and A9X SoCs. The company declined comment about any such acquisition of course. Apple began using Imagination Technologies GPUs since the Apple A4 chip. Rumors have been bubbling in recent years that Apple will eventually start designing its own mobile GPUs, in the same way it designs custom CPU silicon today. An acquisition of Imagination Technologies would be a clear signal the company is moving in that direction.

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Apple earlier today officially took the wraps off of the iPhone SE and iPad Pro 9.7-inch. While the two devices are largely similar to devices we’ve seen in the past, there are a few tweaks here and there that people have been requesting to get a look at. Members of the press who were in attendance of the event at Apple’s campus in Cupertino had an opportunity to go hands-on with the new iPhone and iPad and videos have been rolling in…

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Apple earlier today officially took the wraps off of the oft-rumored iPhone SE. While the device is set to go up for pre-order on Thursday, March 24th and ship a week later, a handful of cases are already available for the device. While the device is largely identical to the iPhone 5/5s in terms of design, many companies are announcing new cases specifically for the latest 4-inch smartphone.

We’ve put together a roundup of some of the best choices to protect your iPhone SE below…

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