MacRumors

Last Friday, we noted that the Jobs family's new yacht had been impounded by Dutch authorities as a result of a dispute over the design fee to be paid to famed French designer Philippe Starck. Starck had claimed that he was due to be paid €9 million for designing the yacht, while the Jobs family said that the agreed rate was 6% of the €105 million construction cost for the yacht, or roughly €3 million less than Starck claimed he was owed.

AFP now reports that the yacht has been freed after the Jobs family posted a security deposit to a bank account.

"The Venus is no longer impounded, we have found a solution," Gerard Moussault, a Hague-based lawyer for the Jobs estate, told AFP.

"A security deposit was paid into a bank account, but I cannot say for how much," Moussault said after French designer Starck last week asked Amsterdam bailiffs to seize the sleek 70-metre (230-foot) yacht.

The yacht remains in harbor in Amsterdam due to bad weather, and the report notes that the yacht is scheduled to be transported by ship to the United States to be turned over to the Jobs family at an unspecified date.

Japanese blog Mac Otakara is reporting that a redesigned fifth-generation iPad could arrive in March 2013.

However Chinese news ZOL (CBS Interactive) reported next iPad mini in AppleInsider's article, according to my inside source, iPad(5th) may be released in March, 2013.

Source told that, design of this new iPad will be like iPad mini in detail, and be thinner and lightweight.

Apple just released the fourth-generation iPad about two months ago, which could make this fifth-generation iPad, if the report is true, the second in five months. The design is said to have taken inspiration from the iPad mini and will be thinner and more lightweight. According to the site, the new iPad will 4mm, 17mm and 2mm smaller in height, width, and depth than the current models.

Previously, Digitimes also reported that a new iPad could appear in the "Middle of 2013". Except for the fourth-generation iPad and iPad mini, new iPads are have traditionally released in the first couple months of the year.

Mac Otakara has been a source of accurate information in the past, predicting the design of this year's iPod Nano and iPod Touch.

Apple has spent little focus updating its iOS app switcher since it was introduced with iOS 4, so designer @Sentry_NC decided to try his hand at a new concept for app switching.

In October, he created a mockup on The Verge forums of an iOS app switcher that takes advantage of the iPhone 5's elongated screen, providing easy access to settings and additional app management tools.

Though it was originally designed as just a concept, the Auxo iOS app switcher has now become a reality as a jailbreak tweak after Sentry teamed up with two app developers.

Auxo's design allows users to control apps with intuitive touch gestures. For example, sliding down on an app closes it, while swiping left reveals both music controls and toggle controls for adjusting brightness and turning Wi-Fi on and off. The video below, from iDownloadBlog, demonstrates how Auxo works.

The Auxo tweak may be limited to jailbroken devices, but it serves as an impressive example of the improvements that could be made to future versions of iOS if Apple takes notice. Auxo is not currently available, but it is coming soon to Cydia for jailbroken iOS 6 devices.

Microsoft has released a game tonight called Wordament for the iPhone. The game has been a popular Windows Phone game, but is now also available on iOS. Wordament was originally a side-project for two Windows Live employees that was later acquired and published by Microsoft Game Studios.

Wordament is notably the first Microsoft game to come to iOS with Xbox Achievements.

When you sign in with your free Microsoft account, you can earn up to 50 Gamerscore from our 10 achievements and you’ll have access to all of your Xbox Friends and Wordament Frenemies. If you’ve played on Windows Phone or Window 8 and jump to the iOS version, all of your player stats and friends will follow your account automatically.

Wordament is a word game that takes two minutes and allows you to compete, real-time, with everyone else playing at the same time. A 4x4 Grid of letters is presented and words can be created by dragging your finger across adjacent letters. Everyone plays on the same board at the same time.

Microsoft has been making slight movements into the iOS gaming space. They had previously released an Xbox Live App that allows you to manage your Xbox Live account, and a few iOS games including Kinectimals. Wordament is available for free on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Apple has released a new television ad showcasing the iPad and the iPad mini with a young girl singing Bing Crosby's "I'll Be Home for Christmas" to her grandfather over FaceTime.

I'll be home for Christmas. You can count on me. I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.

Last year, Apple released a holiday ad featuring Santa talking to the then-new Siri to get directions and weather.

Google, via its newly acquired Motorola Mobility unit, is developing a "stand apart" phone to compete with the iPhone, reports the Wall Street Journal. The phone, which the company aims to release next year, is designed to compete more strongly with the iPhone, and Samsung's Galaxy line, than Motorola's current lineup.

This new "X Phone" project is being led by former Google product manager Lior Ron. Possible features seemed to be ambitious with exploration of bendable screens, ceramics, image and gesture-recognition software.

The company is running into development issues, however. Google is having problems with supply-chain management, a speciality of Apple CEO Tim Cook.

But while Google is known for swift execution on the Web, its new hardware unit has run into obstacles associated with manufacturing and supply-chain management that have caused the company to rethink some initial plans for the X phone, these people added. Meanwhile, Google must manage complex relationships with smartphone makers that use its Android mobile-device software—particularly with Samsung Electronics Co., a Motorola rival that has become the No. 1 smartphone maker with Google's help.

Google does have ample amounts of cash to invest in the phone project, which the WSJ says the company will follow up with a tablet based on the same platform.

Google's acquisition of Motorola was controversial as it puts Google in direct competition with their Android licensees. Apple and Samsung, however, have captured the lion's share of smartphone profits, and Google is reportedly concerned that Samsung could "fork" Android and preventing Google's applications from being installed by default. This could have a large impact on Google's mobile reach if it doesn't develop its own handset.

Italy fined Apple $1.2 million in late 2011, after its Competition and Market Authority found that Apple was not providing customers with sufficient information about the two years of free product warranty that is required under Italian law.

Instead, Apple was pushing the sale of AppleCare, which overlaps with the inherent Italian product warranty. After being fined and losing an appeal, Apple added disclosures to its Italian online store, but authorities were not satisfied and considered additional fines and even a potential ban on Apple products in the country.

Apple today was fined another $264,000 by Italian regulators (via setteB.IT) after not fully complying with the Consumer Code set place in 2012, from March 28 to November 10.

Authorities have released a statement detailing Apple's exact violations.

From March 2012 onward, the above measures continued to trigger additional requests for intervention that reported the repetition of the unfair commercial practices. In specific, consumers complained that they were meeting with difficulties when seeking to apply the legal guarantee and were encountering incorrect procedures in the promotion of the App.

Though Italy levied another fine against Apple, regulators have since determined that after sufficient modification, Apple's website is no longer confusing for Italian customers. The changes went into full effect on November 10, and Apple also ceased selling its AppleCare products in Italian stores.

Apple may have settled its differences with Italian regulators, but it is still facing potential fines from other European countries, which also have a two-year warranty rule. In October, European Union officials called on member states to scrutinize Apple's warranty advertising practices, stating that the Cupertino-based company may not be adequately informing EU customers of the extra warranty.

Last month, research firm Kantar Worldpanel reported that Apple had retaken the lead in U.S. smartphone sales from Android over the August-October timeframe, topping Android by a 48.1%-46.7% margin on the strength of the iPhone 5 launch.

At the time, the firm suggested that Apple's share would continue to rise as the 12-week window of sales data shifted to include the iPhone 5 for its entirety, predicting that Apple would set a record high for market share within the following two periods.

Kantar Worldpanel has now released its data for the September-November period, and Apple has indeed set a record high with 53.3% of the market. Apple's share is up dramatically from 35.8% in the same period last year, although the iPhone 4S did not launch until later in the corresponding timeframe.

Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, comments: “Apple has reached a major milestone in the US by passing the 50% share mark for the first time, with further gains expected to be made during December.”

Apple continues to fare less well in Europe, where even with growth of 2.5 percentage points year-over-year to reach 25.3% of the market, Android has surged farther ahead with a 9.2 percentage point gain and now holds 61% of the market.

Among the markets tracked by Kantar Worldpanel, Apple's best performance was in the United States, while its worst performances were in Brazil, Australia, Spain, and Italy, all countries where it lost share over 2011.

DutchNews.nl reports on articles from the Dutch media noting that Steve Jobs' yacht Venus, which launched nearly two months ago, has been impounded by authorities due to a dispute with famed French designer Philippe Starck over design fees for the ship.

Baliffs boarded the brand new yacht Venus last Wednesday with an Amsterdam court order and it is now literally chained to the dock, the FD said. Port service companies have been instructed not to help it to leave.

The dispute centres on a €3m unpaid bill from Starck, known for his minimalist interiors, who worked with Jobs on designing the yacht for years. His fee had been established at 6% of the cost price, Rotterdam lawyer Roeland Klaassen told the paper.

The dispute seems to be related specifically to the cost of building the boat, with Starck claiming that the yacht was slated to cost €150 million while the Jobs family says that it only cost €105 million. The €45 million difference in prices means that Starck believes he is missing out on €2.7 million ($3.57 million) in design fees.

The original report from Dutch financial newspaper Financieele Dagblad claims that there was no formal contract between Jobs and Starck, and that an out-of-court settlement of the dispute is likely.