Ben Lovejoy

Forbes reports that Apple and Brazilian company IGB have agreed to end their lawsuit over the iPhone trademark in Brazil, and are close to reaching a settlement agreement.According to Brazil’s largest daily, Folha de São Paulo, both companies have agreed to end the lawsuit over iPhone and come to some sort of “pacific agreement,” the paper reported on Saturday. Apple has paid millions for ...

Social networking apps have climbed nine places year-on-year in the App Annie rankings of monthly revenues (via The Next Web), moving from 12th place last January to third place in January 2013.As of January 2013, the Social Networking category ranked third in monthly revenues, behind only Games and Productivity in the iOS App Store. And that’s up 87% compared to January 2012 monthly revenues,...

Infographics released by in-flight Wi-Fi service Gogo (via CNET) reveal that iOS devices continue to dominate customer use with an 84% share, although Android use has grown significantly in the last two years. As further evidence of the post-PC trend, the majority of access - though only just - is on tablets, accounting for 35% of usage compared to 33% for laptops. When it comes to iOS...

Earlier this year, analysts from Detwiler Fenton claimed that Apple's rumored lower-cost iPhone would use a Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm rather than one of Apple's own A-series chips, arguing that the ability to integrate Bluetooth and Wi-Fi directly into the main chip would allow Apple to save on costs. China Times (spotted and translated by Japanese blog Mac Otakara) now cites an unnamed...

The original iPhone and iPad versions of Rovio's hugely popular Angry Birds game are currently free for the first time on the App Store. TechCrunch says that the move is part of Apple's "App of the Week" promotion, although Apple has yet to update its App Store pages with new banners. Angry Birds launched on the iPhone in December 2009, with the "HD" version for the iPad following in April...

A set of patent applications discovered by AppleInsider today suggests that Apple may be considering allowing customers to resell or lend iTunes Store content to other users in the same way they might sell a physical book, music CD or movie DVD. Apple's system is similar to one outlined in a separate patent already granted to Amazon, although Amazon's approach requires transactions to be...

The Verge reports that the iPhone version of the popular Fantastical calendar app has been updated to version 1.1, adding a range of user-requested features. Flexibits has also put Fantastical on sale for $3.99, a savings of $1 over the usual price. Flexibits co-founder Michael Simmons says that all of the new features are ones that have been requested by users of the app.The last two...

Reuters reports that Intel's move into contract manufacturing of chips for other companies suggests that Apple could become a future customer with its A-series chips for the iPhone and iPad, potentially reducing its reliance on arch-rival Samsung as a supplier.A source close to one of the companies says Intel and Apple executives have discussed the issue in the past year but no agreement has been ...

Apple will miss the lower end of its own revenue guidance figures of $41-43 billion for the current quarter by more than half a billion dollars, claim Citigroup analysts cited by Business Insider. CNET has more on the research note, which says that reduced orders in Apple's supply chain suggest softening demand for both iPhone and iPad, and claims that there is "limited evidence" of an...

Samsung has paid $112 million for a 3% stake in LCD screen manufacturer Sharp, a key supplier of LCD screens to both Samsung and Apple, reports The Wall Street Journal. Sharp currently holds the technical lead in the manufacture of large-screen LCD panels, enabling it to produce TV screens bigger than 60 inches at a lower cost than other manufacturers. Despite this advantage, the company has ...

As reported by The Vancouver Sun, three men discharged bear repellant during a robbery of Apple's Oakridge Centre retail store in Vancouver while the store was full of customers last night. Photo: @CTVBCBRK Police say three men entered the store shortly before 7:00 PM last night while around 40 customers were in the store, discharging the spray and stealing "a small number of electronics...

As part of a program to make Walt Disney World more convenient and inviting, the Central Florida theme park has removed turnstiles and issued costumed staff members iPod touches to scan the tickets of visitors as they arrive, reports AppleInsider. The pilot scheme mirrors the decision Apple made to issue staff with iPod touches in card-reader cases in place of turnstiles. In Disney's case,...

Apple was today granted a 2009 patent application to allow users to control a device by pressing on, or squeezing, parts of the casing. An illustration in the patent shows potential touch-sensitive areas across a whole range of different devices: The patent, discovered by AppleInsider, combines two different methods of detecting and measuring the amount of pressure applied: one physical, the ...

Apple's long-awaited smartwatch could launch as early as this year, claims a Bloomberg article. The article also claims to have information on planned functionality from sources familiar with Apple's plans. Although there has been much speculation about what Apple is planning for its smart watch, there has until now been very little in the way of specific claims of functionality from sources ...

David Bowie's first new album in 10 years, The Next Day, is available for free streaming on iTunes, the artist announced on his Facebook page after an earlier teaser post where he told fans to "stay stuned for a surprise regarding iTunes." Due to be released on March 12, the streaming preview is exclusive to iTunes. Apple has occasionally offered such exclusive streaming preview in the past, ...

A five-year-old boy in the UK accidentally made £1700 ($2550) of in-app purchases in a freemium game in just 15 minutes after asking his father to type in the password for a free download, reports the BBC (via Gizmodo). The Zombies vs Ninja game was a free download, but with £70 ($105) in-app purchases for game keys and weapons packs. Neither the 5-year-old, Danny Kitchen, nor his parents ...

The very different designs for Apple's and Google's planned headquarters buildings are a reflection of their corporate personalities, argues a professor of architecture at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. In an interview with Professor Brian Schermer by digital news site Quartz (via Business Insider), the workplace design expert comments on the two companies' respective plans for their ...

Apple has won the number one slot in Fortune's annual "World's Most Admired Companies" list for the sixth year in a row. The ranking is based on a large-scale poll of corporate executives, directors, and industry analysts who were asked to rank companies by nine key attributes: Innovation, People management, Use of corporate assets, Social responsibility, Quality of management, Financial...

A UK judge who was involved in a case in which Apple was ordered to publish a notice on its website saying that Samsung's Galaxy Tab did not copy the registered design for the iPad has been hired by Samsung as a patent expert in a separate legal battle with Ericsson, reports software patent blog FOSS Patents. Sir Robin Jacob served on a panel of appeals court judges reviewing the case after...

Apple's System Status page is showing multiple iCloud services with 'issues': Services listed as being affected are Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud and Backup. The services have been having problems for nearly five hours already, and Apple has not yet provided a timeframe for a fix. (Thanks, Guillermo.) Update 8:28 AM: The issues are persisting some seven hours after Apple first...