Now with the verdict of the Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit fallen clearly on Apple's side, the next step will be a hearing on preliminary injunctions to stop sales of the infringing Samsung devices. The Verge reports that the hearing will take place on September 20th after Apple submits its requests by August 29th, giving Samsung two weeks to respond.
Meanwhile, The Verge's Nilay Patel, a former lawyer, speculates on the overall consequences of the verdict. Patel, of course, expects Apple to file preliminary injunctions to bar the sale of infringing devices. In the long term, he expects that other Android manufacturers will start making changes to both UI and physical appearance in response to the verdict.
In the long term, we're sure to see lots of UI behaviors change across Android — most companies have already moved away from the bounceback scrolling behavior protected by the Apple patent in this case, and we're sure to see tap-to-zoom and multitouch scrolling behavior affected on new devices as well. We're also sure to see new handsets adopt highly differentiated designs, as Apple has proven both its design patent and trade dress claims are strong enough to persuade a jury.
Meanwhile, All Things D points out that Samsung will certainly pursue the appeal process to attempt to overturn the outcome.
NYTimes reports on the responses from Apple and Samsung about today's patent verdict which found largely in favor of Apple and resulted in an over $1 billion verdict against Samsung.
Apple's spokesperson Katie Cotton:
We are grateful to the jury for their service and for investing the time to listen to our story and we were thrilled to be able to finally tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trail showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than even we knew. The lawsuits between Apple and Samsung were about much more than patents or money. They were about values. At Apple, we value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. We make these products to delight our customers, not for our competitors to flagrantly copy. We applaud the court for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.
Samsung issued this statement:
Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies. Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer.
The jury found that Samsung owes Apple $1.05 billion in damages for willfully infringing on Apple's intellectual property.
After three days of deliberations, the jury reached a unanimous verdict in the Apple vs. Samsung trial. The jury found largely for Apple, ruling that Samsung had willfully infringed on both Apple patents and trade dress for the iPhone -- though notably the jury found in favor of Samsung on questions regarding its tablets. The jury found that Samsung owes Apple $1.05 billion in damages for willfully infringing on Apple's intellectual property.
Apple's stock price rose to an all-time high, more than $675 per share, in after-hours trading following the verdict.
The three-week trial has resulted in interesting testimony and evidence from both sides, including looks at early iPhone and iPad prototypes, Apple and Samsung mobile device sales numbers in the U.S., and an internal Samsung memo that examined what the company needed to change in its Galaxy line of smartphones to compete with the iPhone.
The 9-person jury was asked to fill out a 20-page jury form with more than 700 questions across 33 groups. They were required to come to a unanimous decision on each question and court-watchers didn't expect a verdict until at least next week.
The following is our liveblog as the verdict was written:
On the first claim, regarding the '381 "bounce back" patent, the jury finds Samsung guilty on all counts. Samsung infringed on Apple's patent on a wide variety of products.
On Apple's "pinch and zoom" '915 patent, the jury found that Samsung infringed on all but three products.
For the "double-tap to zoom" '163 patent, the jury found that Samsung infringed on a wide number of products, but not all.
The jury found that Samsung took actions that it knew or should have known were infringing across the '381, '915, and '163 patents on most, though not on all, counts.
For the '677 patent, covering Apple's trade dress registration of the look of the front of the iPhone, the jury found that Samsung did infringe on most devices, but again, not all.
For the D'087 patent, covering Apple's trade dress registration of the look of the back of the iPhone, the jury found that Samsung did infringe on some devices, but not all.
For the '305 patent, covering the trade dress registration of the iPhone's home screen, the jury found that Samsung infringed across most devices.
For the D'889 patent, covering the trade dress registration of the iPad's appearance, the jury found that Samsung's tablets do not infringe -- one of the first victories for Samsung.
On the question of whether Samsung Korea knew or should have known it was inducing US subsidiaries to infringe on the D'677, D'087, D'305 and/or D'889 patents, the jury found in favor of Apple across a wide number of phones and patents, though not on the '889 patent regarding the iPad. These two questions are significant for Apple to receive damages.
On the question of whether Samsung's infringement was willful, the jury again found for Apple on a number of patents and devices.
Finally, the jury ruled that all of Apple's patents are valid.
Regarding trade dress, Apple has proven that its unregistered iPhone 3G trade dress was protectable, and the jury found that a number of Samsung phone models violated Apple's trade dress, though not all of them.
Overall, the jury is finding for Apple on most counts.
Regarding damages, the jury finds that Apple should be awarded $1,051,855,000 in damages for willfully violating Apple's patents and trade dress.
Next up are Samsung's claims against Apple.
The jury has found for Apple regarding its alleged infringement of Samsung's utility patents on every claim, however Apple did not prove they were invalid. The jury did not award Samsung any damages.
Finally, Apple did not prove that Samsung violated antitrust obligations regarding its FRAND patents.
Apple did prove that Samsung is barred from enforcing its '516 and '941 patents.
Update: CNet provides a nice breakdown of patents and the devices found to infringe.
Facebook employee Jonathan Dann has written a blog post detailing how the company's iOS engineering team designed earlier Facebook for iPhone apps and the extensive coding that was required to rewrite the new Facebook 5.0 app.
The post is a bit technical in parts, but is worth a read for developers and others interested in how one of the most popular iPhone apps gets made.
An excerpt:
One of the biggest advantages we've gained from building on native iOS has been the ability to make the app fast. Now, when you scroll through your news feed on the new Facebook for iOS, you'll notice that it feels much faster than before. One way we have achieved this is by re-balancing where we perform certain tasks. For example, in iOS, the main thread drives the UI and handles touch events, so the more work we do on the main thread, the slower the app feels. Instead, we take care to perform computationally expensive tasks in the background. This means all our networking activity, JSON parsing, NSManagedObject creation, and saving to disk never touches the main thread.
To give another example, we use Core Text to lay out many of our strings, but layout calculations can quickly become a bottleneck. With our new iOS app, when we download new content, we asynchronously calculate the sizes for all these strings, cache our CTFramesetters (which can be expensive to create), and then use all these calculations later when we present the story into our UITableView.
Finally, when you start Facebook for iOS, you want to see your news feed, not a loading spinner. To provide the best experience possible, we now show previously-cached content immediately. But this introduces a new problem: If you have a lot of stories in your news feed, UITableView throws a small spanner in the works by calling the delegate method -tableView:heightForRowAtIndexPath: for each story in your news feed in order to work out how tall to make its scrollbar. This would result in the app loading all the story data from disk and calculating the entire story layout solely to return the height of the story, meaning startup would get progressively slower as you accumulate more stories.
The solution to this particular problem has two main parts. Firstly, when we do our initial asynchronous layout calculations, we also store the height of the story in Core Data. In doing so, we completely avoid layout calculation in -tableView:heightForRowAtIndexPath:. Secondly, we've split up our "story" model object. We only fetch the story heights (and a few other things) from disk on startup. Later, we fetch the rest of the story data, and any more layout calculations we have to do are all performed asynchronously.
The new Evernote Smart Notebook bridges the divide between digital and analog by giving Evernote users the option to take physical notes in a special Moleskine notebook and then easily importing those notes into the Evernote app.
The notebook is $24.95 and allows a new Page Camera feature in Evernote to take photos of a page and have it immediately available and searchable in Evernote.
The Smart Notebook also comes with stickers that you can use to specify a certain tag or notebook, so that when you take a picture of a page the app will automatically sort it properly. We're not exactly sure how the scanning is better than Evernote's standard character recognition, but the Smart Notebook sounds like a great tool for Evernote die-hards.
The Evernote Smart Notebook is available for preorder for $24.95 and $29.95 in small and large sizes.
This isn't the first time Evernote has done something unique to combine online and offline. Last year it released the Evernote Peek, the first iPad Smart Cover app. The app uses the iPad Smart Cover to create virtual flash cards for studying.
One year ago today, Steve Jobs stepped down from the CEO post he held for more than a decade, making Tim Cook the head of what is now the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world. After the announcement, Apple's stock dropped more than 5% in after hours to $351.
One year later, Apple is the most valuable publicly-traded company ever (not accounting for inflation) with a current share price of $668, gaining more than 75% year-over-year. With Cook in charge, Apple has recorded its three best quarters ever; released the iPhone 4S, the new iPad, the Retina MacBook Pro, Mountain Lion; and previewed the next version of iOS.
"Tim knows he's not Steve Jobs and doesn't try to be," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management. "He's comfortable in his own skin, and he's done a remarkable job of under-promising and over-delivering. When Jobs walked out the door last year, a lot of people figured much of Apple's magic would disappear. It hasn't."
Cook, whom Apple did not make available for this story, inherited much of that Jobs-induced magic, from Apple's wildly successful iPhone and iPad to its burgeoning network of stores stuffed to the gills with the gadget-hungry masses. Yet many analysts say it is Cook's trademark mastery of supply-chain efficiency, first tapped when Jobs hired him 14 years ago to run the manufacturing side of the business, that leaves the 51-year-old workaholic and fitness buff poised to take Apple to ever greater heights.
The company has also been more responsive to criticism, reinstating support for the EPEAT environmental registry with a very public letter from Senior Vice President Bob Mansfield. More recently, Apple reversed changes in scheduling at Apple Retail Stores after coverage in the press and from within Apple Retail's own ranks.
The upcoming holiday quarter should again be Apple's strongest ever, with rumored upcoming announcements of the next-generation iPhone, a smaller iPad, a 13" Retina MacBook Pro, as well as continued rumors about an Apple television or set-top box.
The developer of the iPhone game Ninja Fish has released a video showing what the game would look like on a next-generation iPhone with a taller screen. The developer doesn't have any special information about the next iPhone, but is sharing the video as an intellectual exercise to show how games could look on the larger screen.
Ninja Fish for iPhone is available in both a free, ad-supported version and a $0.99 paid version from the App Store.
Fortune reports on a new analyst report published by Pacific Crest's Andy Hargreaves. The report was written after a meeting on Wednesday with Apple's Peter Oppenheimer and Eddy Cue, Apple Senior Vice President for Internet services and software.
Hargreaves' interpretation of that meeting was that an Apple television would be "extremely unlikely" in the near term. Hargreaves writes:
Relative to the television market, Eddy Cue, Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services, reiterated the company's mantra that it will enter markets where it feels it can create great customer experiences and address key problems. The key problems in the television market are the poor quality of the user interface and the forced bundling of pay TV content, in our view. While Apple could almost certainly create a better user interface, Mr. Cue's commentary suggested that this would be an incomplete solution from Apple's perspective unless it could deliver content in a way that is different from the current multichannel pay TV model.
As pointed out by Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt, SEC rules prohibit sharing insider information that might have material affect on the company's stock, so Hargreaves' interpretation is just that - his interpretation of Apple's comments about delivering a "great customer experience and addressing key problems."
Apple has been rumored to be entering the television market for some time. The most recent rumors, however, have suggested that Apple is still deep in negotiations for content for their television services.
Earlier this month, Arstechnica had reported that many users had found a significant decrease in battery life after upgrading to OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion).
Ars writer Chris Foresman, after extended testing, discovered that the battery life of his Retina MacBook Pro review unit dropped 38% from its previous 8-hours.
The same findings were reported by many others in Apple's own support forums, and there were some reports that the development versions of OS X 10.8.1 may have addressed this issue.
MacObserver has conducted battery life tests on the final release build of OS X 10.8.1 to see if there had indeed been any improvement. Their testing process included using an Automator script that launched several apps and navigated to websites. The script would cycle this process continuously. The tests were run on a 2011 Macbook Pro. Here are their findings:
First, they were able to confirm the drop in battery life when going from OS X 10.7.4 to OS X 10.8. The drop they measured was 33% (2 hours and 10 minutes) just from upgrading OS X to 10.8. The "No WiFi Icon" was a "fix" of suggested by one of their readers, but showed no appreciable effect. They did find that OS X 10.8.1 (beta and release) builds did improve the battery life stats, adding as much as 52 minutes in their testing. The overall numbers, however, are still well under their battery life measurements in OS X 10.7.4 (Lion).
Apple is currently testing OS X 10.8.2, but there's been no word if that build helps further improve battery times back towards OS X Lion levels.
The Wall Street Journalreports that a panel of three judges in a South Korean court rendered a split decision against Apple and Samsung, stating that the companies violated each other's patents. The court assessed fines and damages against both technology manufacturers, requiring Apple to pay approximately $17,650 to Samsung for each of two violated patents and cease sales of the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 in South Korea, while Samsung must pay approximately $22,000 to Apple and stop selling its older Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy SII, and Galaxy Nexus smartphones as well as the 7-inch and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab tablet devices.
The lawsuit filed by Samsung and the countersuit filed by Apple in South Korea focus on the same patents at issue in the high-profile case currently in process in a U.S. District Court in which Apple claims that Samsung infringed upon Apple's patents and trade dress while Samsung claims that Apple owes licensing fees for using 3G technology covered by its patents.
Interestingly, the South Korean court stated that Apple and Samsung smartphones were dissimilar enough that there would be "no possibility" for consumers to confuse the products of the two companies.
In the U.S., both Apple and Samsung have completed their presentations to the jury and the most recent update on the case earlier this week indicated that Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, and Samsung's CEO, Kwon Oh Hyun, would meet and discuss the issues in a last-ditch effort for resolution for the jury began its deliberations.
GizChina points to several case designs for the upcoming 7.85" iPad Mini. The new smaller iPad has been rumored to be launched later this year. The most recent rumors have suggested the new device will look closer to a large iPod touch, than a smaller iPad. Specifically, the side bezels are expected to be narrower as shown in the previous rendering.
Some case manufacturers seem to be taking similar dimensions into account with new case designs intended for the 7.85" iPad. As shown here, the side-bezels are much narrower than the top and bottom. The case designs also show off the Facetime Camera and a hole for the rear camera.
The iPad depicted within the case shows the new smaller dock connector, but those device images tend to be rendered mockups based on circulating expectations. In the past, the case designs themselves have been sourced from leaked/stolen specifications of the upcoming Apple device.
Other images show the usual microphone opening at the top of the device, though there is also an extra upper-back opening, the purpose of which isn't clear.
The message was written in response to a theory postulated by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, saying that he is a "smart fellow" for this post:
I’m thinking it makes more sense for Apple to hold two events. First, an iPhone event, focused solely on the new iPhone and iOS 6. Then, the iPhone ships nine days later, and there’s another wave of iPhone-focused attention as the reviews come out. Then, in the first or second week of October, Apple holds its traditional “music event”, exactly along the lines of the events at which they’ve been debuting new iPods for the last decade.
It has previously been all but confirmed that Apple will hold a media event on September 12th to announce a new product, initially presumed to be the next-generation iPhone and an iPad Mini. With Dalrymple's track record, however, it seems possible that the new iPhone will come first and a smaller iPad will be announced later in the fall at a separate event.
Angry Birds Space has received a new update adding a new episode with content tied to NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover. NASA and Rovio have partnered extensively on marketing for Angry Birds Space, using the game to promote NASA's educational and scientific discoveries.
The new update sees the piggies hijacking the Curiosity Mars Rover and serving 20 new levels on Mars for the angry birds.
NASA is helping pigs and birds explore the Martian terrain and shed light on the agency's missions to the Red Planet in the latest update to the game Angry Birds Space. Rovio Entertainment, creator of Angry Birds, announced the update Thursday, complete with a cast of agency rovers and landers.
Earlier this year, millions of gamers were introduced to concepts of microgravity in Angry Birds Space, which was supported through a partnership with NASA and includes links to a variety of education information.
"Rovio is teaching huge new audiences about NASA's missions to Mars thanks to this collaboration," said David Weaver, associate administrator for communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It's a great way to introduce both kids and adults to the wonders of the planet in a fun and entertaining way."
Angry Birds Space is available on the iPhone, iPad and the Mac.
Facebook has released a completely rewritten iOS app that is significantly faster than the prior version. With more and more Facebook users accessing the social network via mobile, the company views having a fast mobile app as increasingly essential. News that the update was forthcoming was first reported back in June.
With the updated version, Facebook's engineers have dumped the HTML5-based app and rebuilt it using Objective-C programming to make it perform more like a native iOS app. From All Things D:
“People have different expectations when it comes to using Facebook for iOS,” Mick Johnson, Facebook iOS mobile product manager, told me in an interview this morning. “They expect a level of performance and speed that just wasn’t there.”
Johnson says that the largest pain points — scrolling through the feed, photos and loading the app — will all be much faster, by a factor of three. Also, Facebook mobile developers working on the three separate iOS apps — Facebook, Camera and Messenger — all all now sharing a code base with each other, so Messenger and Camera are actually running inside of the proper Facebook app, bringing many of those features to Facebook for iOS. (As a bonus, a shared code base means faster development cycles, so we’ll probably see improvements sooner.)
The first developer build of OS X 10.8.2 arrives as Build 12C31a in the form of a 641.83 MB combo update, and Apple is asking testers to focus on Messages, Facebook, Game Center, Safari, and Reminders. Apple also notes no known issues with the build, and we'll provide additional information on the update as it surfaces.
Apple today released OS X 10.8.1, the first maintenance update to OS X Mountain Lion. The update is available directly from Apple's site or via the Software Update mechanism that directs users to the Mac App Store for updates.
The update is Build 12B19, up two build numbers from last Friday's developer seed.
This update includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability and compatibility of your Mac, including fixes that:
- Resolve an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit - Improve compatibility when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server in Mail - Address an issue playing audio through a Thunderbolt display - Resolve an issue that could prevent iMessages from being sent - Address an issue that could cause the system to become unresponsive when using Pinyin input - Resolve an issue when connecting to SMB servers with long names - Address a issue that may prevent Safari from launching when using a Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) file - Improve 802.1X authentication with Active Directory credentials.
OS X 10.8.1 is a relatively small update at just 24.2 MB, with Apple pushing out a handful of high-priority fixes for issues discovered in the initial public release of OS X Mountain Lion.
VMware today announced the immediate availability of VMware Fusion 5, the latest version of the company's virtualization software that allows users to run Windows and other operating systems virtualized alongside their native OS X operating systems. Optimized for both OS X Mountain Lion and Windows 8, Fusion 5 contains over 70 new features.
- Designed for Mountain Lion – Run Windows on Mountain Lion and search Windows programs in Launchpad, use “AirPlay Mirroring” to stream Mac and Windows applications on an HDTV and get VMware Fusion notifications in Mountain Lion’s notification center.
- Windows 8 Optimization – VMware Fusion 5 supports Windows 8 standard, pro and enterprise editions so consumers can optimize the new Windows 8 “Metro” environment directly on a Mac.
- Enhanced Mac Support – Support for the latest Mac technologies include compatibility with Mountain Lion, retina display optimization, USB 3 connectivity, and improved support for large memory Macs.
- Next Generation Performance – Performance enhancements include up to 40% faster general performance speeds compared to the previous version of the product, improved power management for longer battery life and faster 3D graphics.
- Additional Functionalities – New, powerful ways to experience Windows on a Mac are available through an updated virtual machine library that enables seamless transitions between multiple operating systems, one click snapshots with improved graphical appearance, a brand new graphics driver for Linux 3D desktops, and a new embedded learning center for immediate support.
Fusion 5 is priced at $49.99 for the standard version, with an enhanced Professional version available for $99.99. Users who purchased Fusion 4 on or after July 25 can receive a free upgrade to the new version.
VMware's major competitor in the virtualization market is Parallels, which is also preparing to launch an updated version of its own software. Parallels has yet to share full details on its forthcoming Parallels 8, but does note that it will debut on September 4 and customers who purchase now will receive a free upgrade to the new version when it launches.
Repair firm SmartPhone Medic has just posted a new video comparing several parts from the next-generation iPhone to their counterparts from the iPhone 4S.
The parts shown include the front panel and flex cables for the external controls and dock connector/headphone jack, and while all of these parts have been seen previously, the video offers another good look at what changes can be expected for the next-generation iPhone.
A number of parts for the next-generation iPhone have leaked in recent weeks and months, although observers are still waiting for a good look at the most crucial part of the device: the logic board. After photos showing the part with shielding in place surfaced last week, fresh photos showing the shielding removed appeared earlier today. Unfortunately, the blurry nature of the photos and the incomplete state of assembly on the part still leave questions about the core components powering the device.
Now with the verdict of the Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit fallen clearly on Apple's side, the next step will be a hearing on preliminary injunctions to stop sales of the infringing Samsung devices. The Verge reports that the hearing will take place on September 20th after Apple submits its requests by August 29th, giving Samsung two weeks to respond.
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