Category: I-phone

Apple has sued Finland’s Nokia over claims that one of Nokia’s European patents for scrolling on a touch screen is not valid. The suit was filed in London’s High Court earlier this week, and is the latest in the legal back-and-forth between Nokia and Apple.

In December of 2010, Nokia filed claims in three European countries, alleging that Apple infringed on 13 additional patents, in addition to 24 patents already descried in the existing US and International Trade Commission filings. To date, Nokia has opened file claims on four patents in the UK High Court, seven patents in district court in Dusseldorf, five in Mannheim and two in the Hague. This latest suit from Apple challenges a filing made by Nokia against Apple in Dusseldorf in September of 2010.

Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant sounded confident in an email sent to Bloomberg. “Nokia is confident that all of the 37 patents it has asserted against Apple” [are valid], he said. “We are examining the filing and will take whatever actions are needed to protect our rights.” Meanwhile, Apple declined to comment.

We suspect this won’t be over for a long time.

Apple sues Nokia in London over touch-screen scroll patent originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Insider reports that Apple seeded the first beta of Mac OS X 10.6.7 to developers on Thursday. The beta is Build 10J842 and weighs in at 338.6MB for download.

According to those familiar with the build, Apple indicates that there are no known issues, but developers have reportedly been encouraged to specifically test AirPort, Bonjour, SMB file sharing, and graphics drivers.

It could be some time before we see the release of 10.6.7 to the general Mac public. It’s just over two weeks since Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.6 which included the release of the Mac App Store. However, with no known issues reported, it could be sooner than expected.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the next version of Mac OS X, is expected sometime this summer.

Apple seeds first Mac OS X 10.6.7 beta to developers originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you needed to pick up Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream or Ke$ha’s Cannibal to make your 2011 music collection complete, now would be the time. Apple is promoting those two albums and three more with a $6.99 sale through January 24.

These and more are featured in iTunes’ Albums Under $8 section — and, as the mailer points out, they’re a great way to chew through those iTunes gift cards that showed up under the tree.

iTunes offers five hit albums for $6.99 this weekend originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Camino, the open source web browser for Mac OS X, has released Camino 2.1 Alpha 1 — the first preview release of the forthcoming Camino 2.1 update.

It’s been just over a year since version 2.0 was released, and we can expect to see some great new features and improvements in the upcoming update. Most notably, version 2.1 comes with an enhanced location bar with auto-complete and an offline mode, too.

Other new features to expect are as follows:

• Improved Plug-in Control: Camino now disables Java by default, and a new hidden preference allows disabling arbitrary plug-ins.
• Status Bar: The status bar can now be hidden by choosing “Hide Status Bar” in “View” menu.
• Certificate Errors: The certificate error page in Camino 2.1 Alpha 1 is both friendlier and more informative than the one in Camino 2.
• Gecko 1.9.2: Camino now uses version 1.9.2 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine, which has enhanced support for web standards and improved JavaScript performance.

However, not all of these new features are fully implemented in the Camino 2.1 Alpha 1 preview release.

Remember, this is a preview release for testing and feedback. This release may be unstable and unsuitable for daily use, but if you’re feeling adventurous — and want to check out the new features — visit the download page here. If you’re looking for a light-weight and snappy alternative to the more common Mac OS X web browsers, visit the Camino 2.0 download page here.

[Via Download Squad]

Camino 2.1 alpha preview released, new features in tow originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you have an old first-generation Apple TV lying around collecting dust? Would you like to turn it into something useful and attractive?

TUAW reader Antonio Worrall had purchased a second-generation Apple TV, and his old unit had gone to “join the choir invisible,” so he decided to put the deceased box to good use. It was his first mod, and we think it looks pretty good. And of course, it makes up for the lack of a native clock app on the iPad…

You can view some other snaps of the Apple TV clock on Antonio’s iDisk here. I’m just glad that I finally have a use for my old Apple TV, too.

Apple TV clock mod makes up for the lack of an iPad clock originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tick, tock. “To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come… Thank you.”

Oh, Verizon, you wry cad. Your iPhone 4 commercial is a gentle jibe at the anticipation and endless patience of those who would be among the first to own a new VZW iPhone. Ha! So witty. And not at all insanely annoying.

Video is embedded in the second half of the post.

[via Daring Fireball]

Continue reading Verizon’s iPhone commercial hits YouTube

Verizon’s iPhone commercial hits YouTube originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll be manning booth 1012 at Macworld Expo next week (and we’ll post our streaming schedule in advance this year), but the Conference kicks off on the 26th with a plethora of awesome events for attendees to check out. With a special discount ($15 Expo pass or 10% off conference registration) available here, we’re dying to know: Are you going? Let us know in the comments if you do plan to attend, and/or what you’re interested in seeing us cover if you won’t be there.

This year we’ll be paying special attention to anything we can get our grubby little hands on. So look for a lot of breakage as we rampage the show floor, testing equipment and posting videos or text and galleries. Of course, this is a trade show as well, so there will be panels, special events and more, but the real focus for us is a chance to try out all the stuff we’ve heard about leading up to the Expo itself.

Look for some announcements next week detailing where you can catch our coverage, meet the team and win some prizes! Oh, and expect some awesome surprises to be announced during our daily livestreaming coverage.

Next week is Macworld! Are you coming? originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In advance of the Verizon iPhone, it seems Apple realizes the old bumper won’t fit. So they quietly stocked Apple Stores with a new, universal bumper where the hole for the mute switch has been enlarged just enough to accommodate both versions of the iPhone 4. Nice! We were wondering when this would happen, and it’s a bit in advance of the Verizon iPhone actually being available. Let us know if you spot them in your neck of the woods.

Thanks for the video and tip, Alex!

Universal iPhone bumper from Apple sneaks into Apple Store originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re finishing up our week of minimal game experiences with an app that’s probably the “most game” of the lot. Shibuya is actually a puzzle game, but it’s also pretty trippy.

The idea is that you must organize colors into stripes as they drop down the screen, and whenever two stripes of the same color touch, they get cleared off the board. The difficulty is that you aren’t given the colors in the same order, so as the spikes drop, it’s up to you to lay them all out correctly so that two like colors actually touch. It’s a little tough to explain, but just playing it will allow you to figure it out. You basically have to think ahead about how you lay the colors out before they drop down to match themselves up.

It’s really fun, and the music is a nice bonus — it’s very well done. There are two gameplay modes to play around with, and there are tons of achievements to earn with Game Center integration, as well as leaderboards to compete on. The game is US$1.99 on the App Store, and those two bucks will give you plenty to do as you try to master this fun and eclectic title.

TUAW’s Daily App: Shibuya originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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XBMC has had a presence on the iTunes App Store since 2008, when a remote for the open-source media center program became available. Despite being originally designed for the Microsoft Xbox console, versions of the app have become a popular media interface for Mac OS X and Apple TV among other platforms. Erica Sadun recently wrote about how an XBMC install on a Ubuntu Linux box is utilizing AirPlay.

Now the developers of XBMC are going a step further — they’re developing a full-fledged XBMC client for iOS and the second-generation Apple TV. It’s not a stripped-down client streamer or transcoder; rather, it has the same sort of programs and features that you can find for XBMC for Mac, Windows or Linux — and both it and XBMC for ATV2 are available today for jailbroken devices.

XBMC for iOS is now available through a Cydia-compatible repo. XBMC for ATV2 is available through an apt-get install.

I had the chance to talk with Scott Davilla, who has a lengthy history of working with XBMC and Apple TV. He is the author of atv-bootloader and atv-usbcreator. He also developed a kernel extension to enable HD playback on the first-generation Apple TV and is the lead developer for XBMC for Mac OS X.

In the second half of this post, read about what XBMC for iOS will entail, and see exclusive footage of XBMC running on an iPhone, iPad and second-generation Apple TV.

Continue reading XBMC for iOS and Apple TV now available

XBMC for iOS and Apple TV now available originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As reported by Reuters earlier today, the ongoing recovery and rehabilitation of wounded Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has progressed very well since the tragic and deadly assault at her event 12 days ago. Dr. Michael Lemole, the chief of neurology at Tucson’s University Medical Center, noted that Giffords has demonstrated several key skills: “She is beginning to stand with assistance, she is scrolling through an iPad — these are all fantastic advances for her. They do show higher cognitive function,” he said.

While it’s certainly possible to frame Dr. Lemole’s reference to the iPad as merely an example of the sort of thing Giffords and other brain trauma patients are able to attempt in the days and weeks after their injuries, the other side of the story is that the iPad has quietly begun to turn the world of assistive/adaptive technology — specialized software, hardware and medical devices aimed at improving function and quality of life for people with disabilities or challenges — on its head.

Continue reading Rep. Giffords’ recovery includes the iPad

Rep. Giffords’ recovery includes the iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The great Catan iOS game has added in its first expansion, available via an in-app purchase, and it’s based on the Seafarers of Catan expansion from the original German board game. The expansion introduces ships and shipping routes to the kingdom-building simulation, and it includes 10 different scenarios to build ships in, as well as pirates, a Gold River tile and some extra victory cards with different bonuses.

The expansion content is US$3.99 inside the app, but even if you don’t want to shell out the extra four bucks, one of the scenarios is included, so you can at least see how it changes the game. The Catan app itself has been critically acclaimed, and I really like this model of releasing content — it seems like a nice solid way of both making sure that content updates are significant improvements to an app, as well as allowing developers to get their own reward for releasing that content. Hopefully we’ll see some more apps, outside of the board game model, take this approach in the future.

[via TouchArcade]

Catan app adds Seafarers expansion with in-app purchase originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A while back at CES, I got to check out Gear4’s Pocket Loops, a little keyboard with a built-in iPod touch dock, but Ion’s Concert Piano takes that idea and goes big. It’s a full-sized, 88-key piano with an iPad dock built into it. Just like the Pocket Loops keyboard, there’s a downloadable app that lets you play music right out of your iPad (though I couldn’t find it on the App Store just yet), but unlike the Pocket Loops keyboard, the piano itself has a built-in speaker, so even without Apple’s tablet, you can make some music.

Also unlike Gear4’s keyboard, the Concert Piano seems like a premium instrument, with wood-grained paneling and actual weighted keys that are supposed to feel realistic. That probably also means it won’t be nearly as cheap as Gear4’s keyboard, but then again, when compared to a full keyboard or actual piano, the Concert Piano will probably stack up pretty favorably for your wallet. We’ve also seen even more complicated keyboards — the Akai SynthStation49 has its own separate controls in addition to the built-in dock. No word on price or release date for the Concert Piano just yet, but we can probably expect to see it available later on this year.

[via Dvice and Bornrich.org]

Ion’s Concert Piano has a built-in iPad dock originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released an update to iMovie ’11 that improves overall stability and fixes an issue that causes audio playback to be out of sync.

The update is now available through Apple’s support downloads and via Software Update.

iMovie 9.0.2 update available originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chronic Dev-team confirms the untethered iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak with Greenpois0n. P0sixninja of the Chronic Dev Team has just posted a video on YouTube demonstrating iOS 4.2.1 untethered jailbreak with Greenpois0n.

Checkout the video after the jump…

The video confirms an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2.1 firmware which is jailbroken (untethered) using Greenpois0n. It will not require iOS 4.2b3 SHSH blobs, as previously said by posixninja. Greenpois0n release seems imminent.

Pod2g: “A small bug remains, the wifi icon don’t show up. But it’s there. As you see, we need some more time to fix and pack everything.”

The untethered iOS 4.2.1 firmware jailbreak will be out soon!. We’ll keep you posted as soon as Greenpois0n jailbreak is out! Stay Tuned!