MacRumors

Apple has filed a new motion for sanctions against Samsung in a California court, accusing the Korean electronics manufacturer of unlawfully obtaining sensitive information about the terms and conditions of its 2011 patent license agreement with Nokia, reports FOSS Patents.

The motion states that Dr. Seungho Ahn, a Samsung executive, informed Nokia that the terms of the Apple-Nokia patent settlement were “known to him”, and used that information to negotiate other potential patent settlements in Samsung’s favor. According to the complaint, the Apple-Nokia license terms were turned over to Samsung's outside lawyers during the Apple v. Samsung case and were marked "Highly Confidential -- Attorneys' Eyes Only", but were improperly shared with Ahn and dozens of other Samsung employees.

Licensing executives from Samsung and Nokia held a meeting on June 4, 2013 to discuss a patent license deal between these parties. In that meeting, a Samsung exec, Dr. Seungho Ahn, "informed Nokia that the terms of the Apple-Nokia license were known to him" and according to a declaration from Nokia's Chief Intellectual Property Officer, Paul Melin, "stated that Apple had produced the Apple-Nokia license in its litigation with Samsung, and that Samsung's outside counsel had provided his team with the terms of the Apple-Nokia license". The Melin declaration furthermore says that "to prove to Nokia that he knew the confidential terms of the Apple-Nokia license, Dr. Ahn recited the terms of the license, and even went so far as to tell Nokia that 'all information leaks.'"

The motion itself details how files containing the sensitive information were transferred between Samsung’s outside counsel and Samsung executives, with the unredacted documents having been posted on an FTP server accessible to Samsung employees and then transmitted via email.

“Samsung’s outside counsel posted the report on an FTP site that was accessible by Samsung personnel. An email providing instructions to access the FTP site was addressed the regular client distribution list used by counsel to provide Samsung personnel updates regarding the case.

The information was then sent, over several different occasions, to over fifty Samsung employees, including high-ranking licensing executives. Specifically, on at least four occasions between March 24, 2012 and December 21, 2012, Samsung's outside counsel emailed a copy of some version of the report to Samsung employees, as well as various counsel representing Samsung in courts and jurisdictions outside the United States.

Since 2011, Samsung and Apple have been in a long, ongoing legal battle over patent and design issues, with the first U.S. trial awarding $1 billion to Apple in 2012. However, a judge voided nearly half of that amount in March, and a new trial between the two companies is set for November of this year.

The Planning Commission of Apple's hometown of Cupertino, California approved Apple’s plans for the company's new "Spaceship" campus Wednesday night, a day after the company made a presentation to the community at a public discussion, reports CNET. The next steps in the process will be a vote by the Cupertino city council on October 15 along with a final vote on November 19, and the company remains on track for a 2016 opening of the new campus.

Just like any other Apple presentation, this one came with a slickly-produced video. Dan Whisenhunt, the company's director of real estate and facilities, introduced a video featuring lead architect Norman Foster and others in charge of the site's development. One gem from the film is that the site's now infamous O-shaped structure was not the original vision. "It really grew into that born out of an intensive process," said Foster in the video. The plans were also inspired by Stanford's campus.

Steve Jobs originally pitched the idea of a new Apple campus to the city of Cupertino in June 2011, his final public appearance four months before his death. The company submitted revised plans campus in December 2011, but by April of this year was said to be one year behind schedule on construction and roughly $2 billion over budget. Among the unique details contributing to the project costs were characteristics such as 6 square kilometers of curved glass, strict requirements on gaps between surfaces, and polished concrete ceilings cast in molds as opposed to being cast in place.

Apple again submitted revised plans for the campus with a new phased construction plan in late April 2013, and released an economic impact report on the future campus this past June detailing both main construction phases, which included guidelines for employees capacity, estimates of tax revenue for the city, and public improvements.

A new video that explores the possibility of a Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the fifth-generation iPad has been released on YouTube channel Unbox Therapy.

In the video, the purported front panel of the fifth-generation iPad is compared to a home button with a fingerprint sensor removed from the iPhone 5s and a home button removed from a standard iPhone.

The standard home button does not appear to fit inside the casing of the iPad 5, while the smaller home button equipped with a fingerprint sensor does indeed fit. While this is not concrete evidence by any means, it does suggest that the fifth-generation iPad is potentially able to support the Touch ID hardware.

A major caveat, however, is that Apple’s fifth-generation iPad is expected to take design cues from the iPad mini. The current iPad mini has a home button that is smaller than the home button found in the iPhone 5, which could also explain the home button sizing differences found in the fourth-generation iPad and the shell of the iPad 5. Apple has implemented home button changes in the past, slightly shrinking the home button size of the iPhone 5 compared to the iPhone 4s.

Apple is expected to unveil the fifth-generation iPad alongside the second-generation iPad mini at an upcoming media event that could take place in late October. The second-generation iPad mini, which could be in short supply, will come equipped with a Retina screen while the fifth-generation iPad will take on a slimmer iPad mini-style design.

Following Tuesday's report that Samsung artificially inflates its benchmarking scores, well-respected hardware review site AnandTech has published evidence suggesting nearly all mobile manufacturers, with the exception of Apple and Motorola, use CPU/GPU optimizations to game benchmark tests.

Samsung and other OEMs use a variety of methods to enhance device performance when a benchmark is detected. For example, with its Galaxy S 4 Samsung raised its thermal limits (and max GPU frequency) to get an edge on certain benchmarks and also raised its CPU voltage/frequency to its highest state when a benchmark was sensed, a tactic engaged by multiple manufacturers like LG, HTC, and ASUS as well.

In the table below, Anandtech highlights devices that detect benchmarks and immediately respond with max CPU frequency.

With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. It’s possible that older Motorola devices might’ve done the same thing, but none of the newer devices we have on hand exhibited the behavior. It’s a systemic problem that seems to have surfaced over the last two years, and one that extends far beyond Samsung.

AnandTech notes that it’s a continual "cat and mouse" game discovering which devices have optimized for which benchmarks, because targeted benchmarks must be avoided.

The only realistic solution is to continue to evolve the suite ahead of those optimizing for it. The more attention you draw to certain benchmarks, the more likely they are to be gamed. We constantly play this game of cat and mouse on the PC side, it's just more frustrating in mobile since there aren’t many good benchmarks to begin with. […]

There's no single solution here, but rather a multi-faceted approach to make sure we’re ahead of the curve. We need to continue to rev our test suite to stay ahead of any aggressive OEM optimizations, we need to petition the OEMs to stop this madness, we need to work with the benchmark vendors to detect and disable optimizations as they happen and avoid benchmarks that are easily gamed.

Despite all of the effort that OEMs put into benchmark optimizations, the gains are negligible. The impact on CPU tests revealed a 0 to 5 percent performance increase, and a less than 10 percent increase on GPU benchmarks.

Apple's fifth-generation iPad and second-generation iPad mini may receive a significantly improved camera, according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

The current iPad and iPad mini both come equipped with a 5-megapixel rear camera with an f/2.4 aperture, which could be upgraded to an 8-megapixel camera with a larger aperture, similar to the camera included in the iPhone 5s.

Though Apple has historically placed less emphasis on its tablet cameras compared to its iPhone cameras, the iPad camera is due for an upgrade. The fourth-generation iPad and the iPad mini both use the same 5-megapixel camera that was introduced with the third-generation iPad back in March of 2012.

We predict Apple (US) will launch new iPad 5 and iPad mini 2 (so called retina iPad mini) in 4Q13. As the tablet market becomes increasingly competitive, Apple could upgrade the camera as a selling point for the new iPad in a bid to increase competitiveness. We expect the upgrade will include 8MP rear camera, up from 5MP, and larger aperture. Lens module ASP will rise 10-20% on this optics spec upgrade.

If the new iPads receive a camera that is similar to the camera in the iPhone 5s, it will allow the tablets to capture higher quality low-light pictures. It is likely that Apple will include some of the same camera features as well, introducing Slo-Mo video, for example, which allows the capture of 120fps slow motion video.

A notable exception will be the True Tone flash that was included with the iPhone 5s, as the iPad and the iPad mini do not come equipped with flash capabilities, and it is not clear whether the improved iPad cameras will also utilize the larger sensor that debuted in the iPhone 5s.

Both the fifth-generation iPad and the second-generation iPad mini are expected to be released before the end of the year, though recent reports have suggested that supplies of the iPad mini 2 will be severely constrained. The iPad mini will ship with a Retina display, while the fifth-generation iPad will take on a slimmer mini-style design.

Qualcomm chief marketing officer Anand Chandrasekher said Apple's 64-bit A7 processor, first introduced in the iPhone 5s, is a "marketing gimmick" and there is "zero benefit" to the consumer from the chip, according to an interview with Techworld.

64-bit ARMv8 processors were first introduced back in 2011, though Apple's A7 is the first 64-bit ARM chip to be released commercially.

Last week, Algoriddim claimed the A7 chip in the iPhone 5s allowed for 2-4 times faster processing for some tasks related to real-time audio and video production.

"I know there's a lot of noise because Apple did [64-bit] on their A7," said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm, in an interview. "I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There's zero benefit a consumer gets from that."

A benefit of 64-bit is more memory addressability, but that is not relevant in today's smartphones or tablets, Chandrasekher said. The iPhone 5s has only 1GB of DRAM.

"Predominantly... you need it for memory addressability beyond 4GB. That's it. You don't really need it for performance, and the kinds of applications that 64-bit get used in mostly are large, server-class applications," said Chandrasekher, who previously ran Intel's mobile platforms group.

Chandrasekher goes on to say that Qualcomm is developing a 64-bit chip for use in mobile applications, but that the chip will be more beneficial from engineering efficiency and chip design standpoints, rather than as a consumer-driven feature.

Countering Chandrasekher's claims, other examinations have shown significant improvements for a variety of tasks on the A7 in 64-bit versus 32-bit mode. Mike Ash performed a fairly technical dive (via Daring Fireball) into the A7, concluding that the addition of 64-bit is a "welcome addition" and that it came sooner than expected.

The "64-bit" A7 is not just a marketing gimmick, but neither is it an amazing breakthrough that enables a new class of applications. The truth, as happens often, lies in between.

The simple fact of moving to 64-bit does little. It makes for slightly faster computations in some cases, somewhat higher memory usage for most programs, and makes certain programming techniques more viable. Overall, it's not hugely significant.

[…]

ARM64 is a welcome addition to Apple's hardware. We all knew it would happen eventually, but few expected it this soon. It's here now, and it's great.

Apple has seeded bug fix releases of iTunes 11.1.1 and an OS X 10.8.5 Supplementary Update to Apple employees ahead of a likely public release, reports 9to5Mac.

The Supplemental Update was previously seeded to employees in late September with a build number of 12F42; the new seed has a build number of 12F45.

The OS X 10.8.5 update fixes issues related to the FaceTime camera on some mid-2013 MacBook Air models, as well as problems with external drives, HDMI audio, and USB Bluetooth adapters. OS X 10.8.5 was originally released in mid-September.

The OS X v10.8.5 Supplemental Update is recommended for all users running OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.5. This update:

- Resolves an issue that may prevent certain applications from using the FaceTime HD camera on mid-2013 MacBook Air systems
- Fixes an issue that may cause external drives to be ejected after the computer goes to sleep
- Addresses an issue that may prevent HDMI audio from working after waking from sleep
- Fixes an issue that may prevent certain USB Bluetooth adapters from working

The FaceTime camera issue in particular has been the subject of a number of complaints, with Skype issuing a notice acknowledging the problem.

The 10.8.5 update updated a CoreMediaIO plugin that accesses the MBA camera, but didn't bundle the 32-bits version of it.

Other (older and newer) versions of the OS do include a universal version (32 and 64 bits), but not 10.8.5.

This means 32-bits apps such as Skype or iMovie cannot load the plugin, making the built-in facetime camera invisible to these them.

The update for iTunes, version 11.1.1, fixes issues with deleted podcasts and iTunes Extras. iTunes 11.1 was released last month alongside iOS 7

Internal releases of Apple software updates to employees typically signal an imminent public release.