Apple

Samsung, together with its lawyers, will have to fork out a little more cash following its loss in its second patent battle with Apple. A court has fined lawyers Quinn Emanuel and Samsung a total of $2M for misusing confidential details of a patent deal struck between Apple and Nokia.

The documents were supplied by Apple to Samsung’s lawyers purely so that it could see that Apple was telling the truth about its patent deals with other companies. The documents were marked “for attorney’s eyes only” and were not to be revealed to Samsung executives … 
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Jony Ive presenting Bono with Cannes LionHeart Award

Apple’s SVP of Design Jony Ive joined U2 pop star and activist Bono in a joint interview over the weekend at the Cannes Lions Festival to discuss Product Red and Apple’s partnership as we previously mentioned. Product Red, of course, partners with brands to raise money to fund AID/HIV programs in Africa, and Apple has long supported the effort with a number of Red-branded products including iPhone and iPad cases as well as iPods and iPod touches.

As part of the festival, Jony Ive presented Bono with the first Cannes LionHeart Award to honor his work with Product Red as you can see above. During the discussion segment of their appearance, Bono shared his account of working with Steve Jobs when establishing the Product Red partnership with Apple and Jobs’ desire to control the Product Red branding right down to the parentheses in the Product Red logo…
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Microsoft is making notable improvements to its storage offerings for its OneDrive cloud-based service. The company is announcing today that OneDrive storage at the free tier will be more than doubled, Office 365 storage will see a major increase, and that there will be storage price drops across the board. Here are the three main announcements in more detail:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ0UiebO1OY

A few days ago, 9to5Mac published some details about the elusive City Tours feature of iOS 8 found hidden in secret debug menus. It was thought that this was the only way to see the feature. However, reader Stefan Kuijt has now discovered that the feature is actually exposed publicly in the iOS 8 UI, albeit extremely hidden. This means anyone with the iOS 8 beta can try City Tours without any modification. The video above shows the current public user-interface in action, touring a selection of France’s famous landmarks.

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Apple is gearing up to launch two larger iPhone sizes this fall: a 4.7-inch version and a 5.5-inch model. While the 4.7-inch version has been leaked extensively with a thinner body design, the 5.5-inch model only saw its first significant leak in the form of a dummy model last week. Today, Sonny Dickson has exclusively shared with us a pair of photos claimed to be showing the LCD display component for that larger iPhone with 5.5-inch screen. The photos show the display attached to a ruler that indicates a screen with a diagonal measurement of approximately 14cm:

That 14cm converts to the 5.5-inches heavily rumored for the next-generation Apple smartphone. While these photos do not provide us with any breakthrough information about the new iPhone, the photos, at best, do show that Apple is already producing components for the larger sized phone and this means that production is likely nearing. Several reports have indicated that the 5.5-inch model will be in short supply upon launch and that the phone may even be released multiple weeks following the 4.7-inch version…

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Apple has teamed up with some of the sports world’s most notable professional athletes in order to test the upcoming “iWatch’s” fitness capabilities in intense training environments, according to a source with knowledge of the testing. This source says that Apple has invited athletes from the MLB, NHL, and NBA to its Cupertino-based campus on multiple occasions over the past several weeks to brief the players on the upcoming wearable device and provide an opportunity for testing to be conducted in professional conditioning environments.

Apple is said to be working with Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Kings right winger Dustin Brown, and a few other star athletes, including a player from the Boston Red Sox, on the testing project. The athletes are said to have signed non-disclosure-agreements regarding the existence of the upcoming Apple wearable device. Nonetheless, Bryant was spotted at Apple’s campus last month meeting with Apple design chief Jony Ive. Indeed, the meeting between the pair is said to have been in regards to “iWatch” testing…

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When Apple unveiled iOS 8 earlier this month, it didn’t take long for beta testers to notice it had replaced Yahoo with The Weather Channel as the source of data in the stock iOS Weather app. While recent reports suggested Yahoo was trying to get Apple to put even more of its services on the iPhone including search, we now have a bit more of the story behind why exactly Yahoo got the boot for weather in iOS 8. Re/code reports that the deal was made by Weather Channel CEO David Kenny who also happened to be a former Yahoo board member:

The situation Yahoo finds itself in is due to a very crafty deal engineered by former Yahoo board member and Weather Channel CEO David Kenny, who has essentially shoved Yahoo off the key smartphone to be replaced by a new offering that he has been developing since he took over the weather news and information service last year. With it, he has unseated Yahoo from its important perch.

It’s worth pointing out that Yahoo has always powered its weather services with data from The Weather Channel. With that in mind, it’s unclear if Apple possibly had plans to drop Yahoo and go straight to the source before Kenny started developing the new and improved weather service referenced above. More from Re/code on why Apple made the switch:
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Some Mac users, specifically those with Macs that don’t support Bluetooth LE, weren’t too happy to find out that meant they would likely not get to use Apple’s new Handoff feature to seamlessly switch between apps across Macs and iOS devices.  To be clear, Apple has not yet confirmed details of device compatibility for most Yosemite features, but some users have reported that only Mid 2011 MacBook Airs, Mid 2012 MacBook Pros, late 2012 iMacs, and 2013 Mac Pro or newer models– the Macs that include Bluetooth LE– appear to support the feature. We’ve learned from people with knowledge of the matter that Apple is still testing the feature and yet to finalize which Macs will be capable of supporting it.
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iWatch concept: Espen Oxholm

The Wall Street Journal has published a new report claiming that Apple’s upcoming entry to the smartwatch market will sport ten or more sensors for collecting health data. The report also claims that the company is working on multiple versions for the wearable device, which is expected to be released later this year.

The iWatch is expected to be a health-focused device and will likely work with Apple’s new Health application, which it debuted earlier this month at its Worldwide Developer Conference. The application and its associated framework, called HealthKit, already have built-in support for certain types of devices without the need for a third-party application.

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Apple’s vice president of AppleCare and technical support initiatives, Tara Bunch, held a Town Hall meeting for for AppleCare employees earlier this week, according to several employees in attendance who asked to remain anonymous. During the meeting, Bunch, along with a few other Apple executives, spoke about Apple’s progress in customer service and support over the past few years, improvements from 2013 to 2014, and future plans.

Throughout the meeting, Bunch noted that customer satisfaction numbers from AppleCare and Apple product users are at the top of the industry. Going into the 15th year of AppleCare, Bunch asked employees to celebrate and be proud of their accomplishments, but she also noted that Apple still has room to improve its support practices. Employees in attendance during the meeting have shared some details regarding Apple’s future plans for its support initiatives…

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Reuters is out with a report today that claims the iWatch is going into production this month for a launch in October. The device is reportedly expecting to hit 50 million units produced in its first year.

The source said Apple expects to ship 50 million units within the first year of the product’s release, although these types of initial estimates can be subject to change. The watch is currently in trial production at Quanta, which will be the main manufacturer, accounting for at least 70 percent of final assembly, the source said.

Seeing that Apple sold 71 million iPads in the entirety of 2013, 50 million units sounds aggressive. The site also shares some features that it has learned about the device:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz1_FT1ykFw

Although deeper changes to Maps are in the works, Apple did announce a new City Tours feature for iOS 8 discreetly on one of the keynote slides. This feature is not normally available in the current iOS 8 betas, but developer Pierre Blazquez has managed to unlock the feature through a hidden debug screen and shines some light on exactly what ‘City Tours’ entails.

City Tours is best described as a guided-camera Flyover view. After activating the tour, the Maps app changes to satellite mode and begins zooming and panning to different landmarks in the city. For example, in the video, the tour rotates and pans between a couple of different cathedrals. More screenshots after the break …

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After several months of speculation, Amazon has just unveiled its own smartphone, dubbed the Fire Phone on stage at an event in Seattle, Washington. As expected, the device features the much rumored a 3D display. You can pre-order the Fire Phone for $199/299 with a contract on Amazon. Off-contract, the device runs $649/749 for 32GB and 64GB of storage respectively.

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Besides a larger display and redesigned metal body, details regarding which features the next-generation iPhone models will pack have been light. However, it appears that the new models could include a new sensor: a barometer.

A barometer is a sensor commonly used for measuring altitude and the sensor is already commonly found in Android devices such as the Galaxy Nexus. A barometer sensor could be used by hikers, mountain climbers, bike riders, and enthusiasts who want accurate knowledge into their current altitude. Barometers, via air pressure data, also measure temperature and weather information.

The information regarding the next-generation iPhone likely including this sensor comes via Xcode 6 and iOS 8, the latest iPhone software development kit and operating system. The software includes updated CoreMotion APIs that clearly reference the new altitude measuring capabilities:

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Despite having what some consider the best ad celebrating the World Cup this year, Beats headphones cannot be worn by players in the stadium during the games or media events according to Reuters. The rule is implemented by FIFA, the international governing body over the sport, due to a licensing agreement with Sony which obviously competes with Beats in the headphones space. Despite the apparent ban this year, Beats has still been able to leverage the World Cup as an opportunity to pick up some product endorsements…
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Alongside the introduction of the current Apple TV design in fall 2010, Apple launched AirPlay. In short, AirPlay allows a user to watch a movie, listen to a song, or view a photo on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch (or Mac in some cases) and stream that content to the Apple TV. AirPlay typically works well and we have even considered it a major innovation in the living room appliances space. Apple has continued to enhance AirPlay over the past few years, allowing the service to integrate with iTunes in the Cloud and function without a WiFi connection.

With OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, Apple has taken the AirPlay idea to new levels. This fall, as Apple previewed at WWDC earlier this month, a user can begin writing an email, viewing a webpage, or sending a text message on one Apple device, and then walk up to a different Apple product and continue that action. This feature is called Handoff and is part of a new suite of features called Continuity. Unlike AirPlay, a click to stream the content is not necessary.

Now, users running the latest iOS, OS X, and Apple TV betas are reporting that Apple could also be working on Handoff and Continuity features for the Apple TV set-top box…

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As rumored last week, Apple has today released a new model of iMac. These machines are considerably cheaper than their predecessors, priced at $1099. Previously, the cheapest iMac SKU was priced at $1299 (which is now the mid-range model).

The cheaper iMac features a 1.4 GHz dual-core i5 CPU, which represents a significant worsening in performance over the previous base model of iMac, which featured a processor clocked at 2.7 GHz.  The CPU does Turbo Boost up to 2.7 GHz however, which does make up some of the difference.

Aside from the CPU, the hard drive has also been cut to 500 GB. The new model also features a lower-end integrated graphics chip. All other iMac models continue to use either Iris Pro integrated graphics or dedicated Nvidia cards. Otherwise, the internals of the new machine are unchanged.

Apple’s Press release below…

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