Apple's been having some pretty bad luck on the patent and trademark front lately. It recently lost a trademark battle in Mexico for its world-renown 'iPhone' moniker, and it's fighting a similar battle in Brazil.
And that bad luck continues this week with reports claiming that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has turned down the Cupertino company's trademark application for its just-launched iPad mini...
As you know, United States District Judge Lucy Koh shaved $450 million off the $1.05 billion verdict the jury handed to Apple in the high-stake Apple v. Samsung patent trial last August, citing “an impermissible legal theory.” She ordered a new trial for the remaining fourteen Samsung products and Nokia - of all companies - filed a brief with the appeals court on behalf of Apple, claiming Judge Koh got it all wrong. And in the latest twist to the ongoing legal saga, the South Korean conglomerate in court documents expresses worries that the second damages trial could see Apple win even more than before...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhVMXjD3oXM
Who would have thought Disney Interactive would ever produce a smash hit for the iPhone? Seemingly against all odds, that's exactly what the company has accomplished with its charming puzzler, Where's My Water? (free, $0.99 universal). The game knocked Rovio's Angry Birds off the top spot on the App Store's list of paid apps just 24 hours following its release and ratcheted up a million downloads in its first month of release, enough to score an Apple Design Award for iPhone apps.
Where's My Water? was also Apple's 25 billionth app download and was featured in a free download promotion. Disney, of course, wasted no time building a merchandising business around the game. But that was 2012. Now in 2013, Disney is looking to replicate its success with a brand new physics-based puzzler involving kittens and aptly named Mittens. Have a look at the official trailer and jump past the fold for additional info...
Remember the good old days, in iOS 5, when you could listen to a video's audio in the background on your device while multitasking? All you had to do was double tap the Home button, swipe to the left to reveal the iPod controls, and press Play.
But for some reason, Apple disabled this feature in iOS 6, leaving us without a native way to do things like listen to YouTube videos in Safari while texting or browsing Twitter. But the good news is, we've come across a fairly easy way to get it back...
Yesterday we showed you a new jailbreak tweak that allows you to customize the look of your app icon badges. And today, we've got something for those of you who'd rather just get rid of them. Introducing Badge Clearer.
Yes, I'm well aware that there are already a few tweaks out there that clear app badges. In fact, we just reviewed one a few weeks ago called Clear Badges. But this one goes about doing it a little bit differently than they do...
I'm on my iPhone all throughout the day, so when an update for an app pops up, I usually grab it right away. On my iPad, however, it's a different story. Sometimes I'll go a couple of days without using it, and the updates tend to pile up.
For those of you with a similar problem, you'll be happy to hear that there's a jailbreak tweak called Auto App Updater that can automatically install your updates for you. So you'll never have to worry about installing them manually again...
Good news this afternoon on the jailbreak front, the popular backup/restore tool iBye has been updated to support iOS 6.x. The app, which is developed by Evil Penguin, allows you to backup everything from Cydia to your usual iTunes content.
Today's update brings iBye to version 3.0.1, and includes support for the latest jailbreak, as well as a few other improvements. Users will enjoy faster upload and download times, bug fixes and memory fixes. There's more details after the fold...
There's been a lot of speculation over the last several months regarding Apple's streaming music service. Rumors of the company working on a Pandora-like service have been bouncing around for years, but late-2012 reports have rekindled the story.
It was initially believed that Apple's iRadio project would launch sometime in early 2013, but that plan was reportedly derailed by conflicts with record labels over pricing. There's a new report out today, though, that says the new goal is this summer...
Twitter's Vine is fine for random sharing of six-second videos and today they issued an interesting new update promising to make embedding own or someone else's clips easy as a pie. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
The new version won't let you just grab an embed code in-app. For reasons beyond our comprehension, the software sends you to a special web page where the embed code can be created.
It's not the end of the world, but the solution is cumbersome and inelegant, though it works. To start injecting those beautiful Vines into your blog posts, web pages, email newsletters or pretty much into any other other type of HTML content, just follow our quick guide and you should be fine...
Today we're going to be taking a look at Badge Customizer, a new jailbreak tweak that allows you to customize the look of your app icon badges in iOS 6. You can alter their color, size and where they are positioned on your Home screen icons.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Cody, there's already tweaks out there that do this." And you're right. There's AppTag, and I'm sure a few others. But I don't know how many of them work with iOS 6. Besides, it never hurts to have options...
Twitter's Vine app has seen just one noteworthy refresh following its January 24 arrival, one giving it a 17+ age rating shortly after the Internet's morality police cautioned about porn content surfacing in Vine’s Editor’s Pick, a flaw the app makers attributed to a "human error."
Now, I love Vine and even though I'm not a regular user, I find myself occasionally recording and sharing a quick clip.
It always bugged me that tweeting out those links used to be my only choice to share Vines with the web at large - of course, in addition to Facebook and shares through the Vine service itself. But what about embedding a Vine on your blog? Well, I'm pleased to report that today's update has made Vine a whole lot more useful for a bunch of people: the new version includes web embeds, letting you easily inject your own or other people's videos into blog posts...
We are getting more hints at how Apple could create a cheaper iPhone, a device also dubbed by the press the iPhone mini and apparently meant to improve Apple's standing in emerging markets such as India. In a new patent filing, the iPhone maker describes a production method similar to laminated fiberglass, but using ceramics. Zirconia and alumina could be combined to create a new kind of Unibody shell.
The use of zirconia would mesh both with a report earlier this month that a low-cost iPhone could include a fiberglass housing, while also potentially drawing on a 2006 Apple patent regarding zirconia as being radio transparent...