The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) announced today a draft of the new video compression standard called H.265 and also known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and MPEG-H Part 2. As the name suggests, it delivers the same video quality in half the bandwidth of the current (nearly a decade old) H.264 standard, which is adopted across Apple's iOS and OS X platforms...
It's the third week of the Apple v. Samsung mega-suit and Samsung is on the offensive with some interesting assertions meant to invalidate some of Apple's key patents. For example, the Galaxy maker, whom Apple accuses of ripping off its iPad and iPhone wholesale, now counterclaims that Apple stole its patents related to things like e-mail, photo albums and playing music in the background.
Furthermore, Samsung brought a number of experts who testified that Apple's patents should be invalidated due to a bunch of prior art. Heck, the company even wheeled in a monstrous Surface-like tablet computer into the courtroom in an attempt to invalidate Apple's pinch-zoom feature and establish that everyone, even Apple, takes inspiration from someone else's work...
iDB first discovered traces of high-speed fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) cellular networking in iOS 5.1 code. Since then, multiple code hooks, hardware hints and credible sources have all but confirmed the industry's worst kept secret, that the next iPhone is widely expected to work over 4G LTE networks.
But is it going to be a worldphone in respect to 4G? What if it doesn't support a variety of LTE frequencies in use today? A new report from South Korea alleges that local telcos have been attempting to talk Apple into supporting the 1.8-gigahertz LTE frequency used in the country. This implies that the iPhone 5 may not support the numerous 4G frequencies in use across the world...
Yesterday's newspaper report told a story of 35-year-old Kariem McFarlin who last month burglarized the Jobs' family house in Palo Alto, stealing $60,000 worth of computers and personal items.
The house was under renovation and surrounded by a temporary construction barrier, leading the police to speculate the homeless man raided it by accident.
A new report sheds more light on the crime and lists the stolen items. Among them: valuable Tiffany jewelry and Steve's wallet with his annual salary in it...
News of Apple working on special screws for the next iPhone with asymmetric heads to prevent tampering spread like wildfire across the blogosphere. It wasn't that the made-up story was attributed to a particularly credible source, not at all. At least on the surface, the report came across as perfectly plausible.
After all, Apple did switch to Pentalobular screws for the iPhone 4, provoking an outrage from repair experts iFixit. As you know, the story was exposed as an elaborate hoax by a Swedish design shop Day4, a case study of sorts on how sticky crazy Apple rumors really are.
Joy of Tech, a webcomic created by Canada-born Liza Schmalcel and Bruce Evans, has a funny take on the short-lived iPhone 5 screws meme, see it right below...
In the overcrowded world of iPad cases, an accessory manufacturer has to make its covers extremely unique to stand out. Well it doesn't get much more unique than this.
Meet the Padintosh Case for iPad. The cover promises to bring out the Macintosh geek in you with its nostalgic 1984 Mac design, while still protecting your 2012 tablet...
You'd have to be living on a deserted island with no connection to the outside world to not have heard of Pinterest by now. The pinboard-style social photo sharing service has taken the web by storm over the past 12 months.
And there's good news this morning for folks who frequent the social network: the Pinterest app has finally landed on the iPad (and Android). This means you can now re-pin all of those silly cat photos from the comfort of your tablet...
We're a little bit late to the party on this one, but if you haven't seen this new OS X Pad HD theme for the iPad, you have to check it out. You've seen OS X themes before, but you've never seen anything like this.
The theme has a fully functional Finder bar with interactive menu options, a customizable dock, and editable folders that look just like real OS X folders. It almost seems more like a software upgrade than a theme...
A little over a week ago we reviewed BrowseInApp, an extremely handy jailbreak tweak that allows you to open URL links in apps like Messages and Mail without ever having to switch to Safari.
If you liked the tweak, and haven't purchased it yet, you'll be happy to know that iDB has teamed up with the developer to give away 10 copies of BrowseInApp to our awesome readers...
Amidst all of the leaked parts and reports regarding the new iPhone, we haven't seen or heard much of anything regarding the iPad mini. The absence of information has some folks thinking that the smaller tablet was just a myth.
But according to a new report, the iPad mini is very real, and coming this fall. It will look very similar to a larger iPod touch, with smaller bezels, and front facing camera for video conferencing. More details after the break...
Good news for fans of Research In Motion: the embattled BlackBerry maker may soon see some much-needed light at the end of a long tunnel as the company has confirmed putting finishing touches on the way overdue BlackBerry 10 operating system. RIM also has some new phones and they're all done, too.
Yesterday, RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins agitated spirits with news that his company is actively seeking partners to license BlackBerry 10 software, which was unveiled three months ago. It would mark a significant departure for RIM as the company never allowed a third-party to make BlackBerry-certified handsets.
Today, Heins reveals a couple more tidbits on the state of the BlackBerry platform...
Attorneys for Apple embarrassed Samsung last week by showing the jurors half a dozen images meant to prove that the Galaxy maker shamelessly ripped off the look of the iPhone's icons. Though Apple believes that Samsung’s TouchWiz interface makes it a copycat, that's ultimately up for the jury to decide.
Today, a Samsung designer took the stand to testify that she didn’t copy Apple when creating the icons for the Galaxy line of products. Call me stupid, but how the heck then she'd managed to come up with icon design that strikingly resembles Apple's?