Bloomberg reports that a federal jury has found Apple guilty of infringing on six patents related to outdated pager technology from the 1990s. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has ordered Apple to pay a $23.6 million settlement for violating six patents owned by plaintiff Mobile Telecommunications Technologies LLC in the case.
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Although Apple continues to offer the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect despite Google’s acquisition of the smart device company, the iPhone maker has added a competing Wi-Fi-connected smart thermostat to the lineup. Apple has recently added the Ecobee3 smart Wi-Fi thermostat to the Connected Home section of its online store. The smart thermostat, which can be controlled with an iPhone or iPad, is available for $249.95.
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AT&T recently ran a promo that offered double data on a select number of its Mobile Share Value plans. As a follow up, the carrier will soon start extending an extra 5GB of data to customers with 10GB plans at no additional charge. The offer starts tomorrow and runs for a “limited time.”
Sony announced a new imaging sensor today that the company says will improve smartphones cameras. The Exmor RS IMX230 is a stacked CMOS sensor that packs 21-megapixels into a small 1/2.4-inch design. One of the key talking points of Sony’s new chip is its 192 point phase detection autofocus, which makes it easier to shoot photos or video of a fast moving subject with your smartphone.
A new Apple-focused meetup for consultants is kicking off its inaugural conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, this coming up May. The event is called the ACEs Conference and it’s put on by two members of the Apple community, Justin Esgar and Luis Giraldo, both of whom run Apple consultant businesses in Manhattan and Canada, respectively. The two describe the event as being for Apple consultants by Apple consultants:
The Aces Conference is the first of its kind. Apple consultants teaching Apple consultants not only tips and tricks of tech, but of business too. Learn how to be a better consultant, a better technician, a better everything at Aces Conf.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5_CrXh227Q&feature=youtu.be]
Same old story, but with a Christmas theme this time around in the latest Apple-bashing Surface ad from Microsoft. Touchscreen, kickstand, USB, etc, Microsoft has given up on comparing its tablets with the iPad and instead wants you to believe Surface Pro 3 is an acceptable substitute for a MacBook Air.
It certainly isn’t the first time Microsoft has put the Surface Pro 3 head to head with MacBooks in its advertisements. The company has been aggressively running the comparison ads poking fun at the MacBook’s lack of tablet-like features since it first compared the devices side-by-side live on stage at the introduction of its 12-inch Surface Pro 3 back in May.
Perhaps Microsoft will get back to comparing apples to apples when we get a 12-inch iPad Pro next year?
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Verizon Wireless has updated its customer agreement with new conditions related to early termination fees. Effective today, new customers that purchase a device on contract will be required to pay a full $350 early termination fee during the first seven months of the contract if it is broken. The fee is reduced by $10 per month between months 8-18, $20 per month between months 19-23 and $60 in the final month of the contract term…
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The Wall Street Journal reported today that the United States Department of Justice has been using planes equipped with devices that pose as cellular towers (called “dirtboxes”) to collect data from suspected criminals’ cell phones—and capturing data from innocent bystanders in the process.
The devices are capable of capturing data from “tens of thousands” of phones over the course of a single flight. Because most cell phones are designed to automatically connect to the tower with the strongest signal, these dirtboxes can easily fool phones into latching onto its signal.
Fortune has somehow named Google CEO Larry Page its 2014 Business person of the Year beating out rival Apple CEO Tim Cook who earns the number 2 spot (despite stock prices) on Fortune’s list of 50 executives.
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Following our exclusive report of FCC documents revealing that Beats was working on a new pair of headphones, the accessory maker this morning has announced its brand new Solo2 wireless headphones as its first new product since being acquired by Apple for $3 billion earlier this year. The headphones are set to launch in the United States this month at Apple Stores and select retailers for $299.95.
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AT&T is scrapping its plans to offer in-flight 4G LTE connectivity services to airlines and passengers in business and general aviation. The company originally planned to build an air-to-ground network across the US to take advantage of spectrum that it already owned.
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth look at The Home Depot’s recent security breach of its payment data systems, in which 56 million credit card accounts and 53 million email addresses of customers were compromised. A root cause of the security breach: a Windows vulnerability in the retailer’s main computer network.
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Apple Watch will include fitness and health tracking features
Update: Fitbit statement below the fold…
If you’re in the market for a Fitbit device and you’re shopping at the Apple Store, you’ll probably have to shop elsewhere to purchase the fitness tracker. Following report from Re/Code last month that Apple planned to drop the Fitbit line of wearable devices from its Apple Store lineup, Apple has today removed the Fitbit Flex and other Fitbit products from its online store following low inventory over the past week. While its unclear why Apple is no longer selling Fitbit products through its retail channels, on the surface the move is similar to Apple’s decision to discontinue selling Bose headphones and speakers at its retail and online stores.
If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, then the designers at Lenovo must adore the iPhone 6.
Samsung has caught a lot of flak for—and been taken to court over—some of its iPhone-like smartphone design choices, but nothing the Korean company has ever produced comes close to the shamelessly derivative Lenovo S90. Not only does the S90 seem to take more than a few design cues from Apple’s latest smartphone, but its entire advertising campaign seems to be a carbon copy of Apple’s own.
Take, for example, the image above (found on Weibo, via PhoneArena). If it looks a little familiar to you, that might be because it’s the exact same thing you’ll find on Apple’s iPhone webpage. There are about ten of these images total, and nearly all of them look like they were ripped right from Apple’s website.
GT Advanced disclosed on Thursday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information about the sapphire glass maker’s trading activity since January 2013 after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. GT Advanced’s latest Form 8-K report claims that the company is fully cooperating with the SEC during its investigation.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkOCeAtKHIc
Amazon today announced a new hardware product called Echo. It’s essentially a speaker unit dedicated to being a voice-control system. It kind of sounds like Siri but in a speaker for a single room instead of in your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.
You can set alarms, control music, ask about the weather, search the web, ask questions, and access local news. It streams content via Bluetooth and WiFi, and connects to the Fire Phone (if you have one, lol), iOS via the browser, Android, and desktop computers via the web. Instead of “Hey Siri,” you say “Alexa” to start speaking the device. You’ll need a Fire OS/Android device to take full advantage, but music should work fine via iOS.
The whole concept is very futuristic, and it’s unclear how beneficial this will be to people with voice-controlled phones. But, hey, this comes from the developers of a faux-3D phone and delivery drones, so this is not completely out of left field. The Echo is $99 for Amazon Prime users, $199 for everyone else, and (for some reason) you need an invitation to receive the honor to buy one of these untested things.
[Ed. note: Jason Stern is a Criminal Defense Attorney in private practice in New York City]
8:34 am. A college professor receives a text message threatening to blow up the history building. The professor immediately contacts law enforcement, who trace the origin of the call to a student who lives off-campus.
When FBI agents arrive at the student’s residence, they arrest the student and seize his smartphone. In an attempt to search the device to recover evidence of the crime (and perhaps stop other related crimes), they find the smartphone is protected by fingerprint security measures.
With the suspect in handcuffs, the agent swipes the student’s finger across the phone to access his call history and messages. Once the FBI swipes the suspect’s finger and bypasses the biometric security, the phone asks for the student’s passcode. The FBI agent asks for his password but the student refuses to speak. How can the FBI agent access the phone? Whereas a fictional Federal Agent like Jack Bauer would simply pull out his gun, jam it in the suspect’s mouth and scream, “WHERE IS THE BOMB?”, in our example, the FBI agent would hit the proverbial brick wall.
Yes, the phone could be brought back to the lab for analysis and hacking by forensics personnel, but the suspect in this case could not be forced to disclose the password on the phone…
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released a report examining three dozen messaging services and ranking them based on what it deemed are seven “security best practices.” While Apple scored the best among what the EFF called “mass-market options”, it didn’t do as well when compared to all 36 messaging services included in the report. Specifically, EFF noted Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime services failed to offer “complete protection against sophisticated, targeted forms of surveillance.”
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Following the introduction of Voice-over-LTE technology with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which increases call quality by routing calls through an LTE network opposed to last generation 3G networks, US carriers have experienced a big increase in VoLTE calls. That’s according to a new report from Newfield Wireless that highlights a decrease for calls over 3G by about one-fifth compared to previous generation iPhones and other LTE-capable devices:
The majority of voice calls made on other 4G-enabled devices are currently routed through legacy 2G and 3G networks, due to the fact that not all networks and devices are optimised to deliver next-generation voice services. iPhone 6 devices are VoLTE-compatible and as a result, U.S. networks have experienced a surge in VoLTE calls since the September launch.
The report also shared some other data points from its research noting a few stats for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus uptake compared to previous generations:
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We first told you about Nova, the Bluetooth flash for iPhone, over a year again when the portable wireless flash was crowdfunding on Kickstarter. After being funded in just two days and raising three times its goal in funding from backers, the wireless flash debuted earlier this year as promised.
We reviewed the Nova wireless Bluetooth flash after its launch earlier this year and found its a really clever accessory for iPhone and even iPad users snapping pictures from dark scenes to simple selfies. Now Nova is announcing that it is available through the Apple Online Store for the first time, and will be available at Apple Retail Stores across the United States and Canada later this month.
You can find the Nova Bluetooth flash for iPhone for $59 through the Apple Online Store now in addition to Amazon and Nova’s web store. Details below.
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Image via GigaOm
Jawbone announced two new additions to its family of wearable products tonight. The first new device is the Jawbone Up3, which sports a seven-day battery and a capacitive touch sensor on top, as well as a new set of sensors for tracking health data. The new sensors allow the Up3 to detect data such as skin temperature, respiration, or hydration, although it currently has no way to track a user’s heart rate. That feature is said to be coming in a future update.
The Up3 will cost $180 when it launches, though Jawbone has given no indication of when exactly that will be.
AT&T on Tuesday announced that it will be introducing a longer Next 24 monthly installment program on November 9th alongside its Next 12 and Next 18 plans for financing an iPhone or other smartphone. AT&T customers on Next 24 will pay $0 down and make 30 equal monthly payments between $10 to $50 depending on the device purchased.
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Your Nest smart thermostat should get a little smarter at some point over the next week as the company rolls out version 4.3 of the software, providing improved auto-scheduling and faster access to info at-a-glance.
A single push of the ring displays the information shown above, which includes weather, outdoor temperature and humidity. This has, says Nest, been the biggest customer request, allowing them to check what they should wear before heading out in the morning. Getting access to additional information, like yesterday’s energy usage or tomorrow’s schedule, is now available simply by turning the ring left or right …
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In an interview with the Financial Times, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page talked about an ongoing debate that he had with Apple’s Steve Jobs: whether their companies were doing too much or too little to affect the lives of their customers.
Page, as is evident in Google’s seemingly unending push into new markets and technologies outside of search and even the web, came down on the side of doing as many things as possible to make an impact in peoples’ lives, while Jobs was insistent that a focused approach on a single set of problems was better for the company and its users.