Apple

The iPad mini finally starts to take shape

After months of questions, Apple's long-rumored iPad mini is finally starting to take shape. Multiple reports popped up last night detailing what the tablet may look like, and this morning, a purported headphone jack surfaced.

The three write-ups that were released last night came from three different sources of Apple intel, but they all point to the same thing: a smaller iPad, with an iPod touch-thin profile, and smaller bezels on the sides of the display...

Mini iPad to have relocated headphone jack?

Remember a French blog which recently leaked a bunch of images purportedly representing the iPhone 5 Nano SIM tray, the full front assembly of the device and its smaller dock connector? They're back at it again with today's photo of the purported iPad mini dock connector flex cable.

It supports earlier claims that the rumored device will have a smaller dock connector, which is expected to debut on the iPhone 5 this September. Even more interesting, the part has the headphone jack at the bottom, just like the iPhone 5 is thought to have.

It would seem that Apple is ready to adopt the new dock connector and move the headphone jack at the bottom across all upcoming iOS devices...

MPEG drafts bandwidth-efficient H.265 standard with support for 8K resolution

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...

Samsung says Apple lifted the iPad’s design from a 1981 tablet, other prior art claims

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...

Thief also stole Steve Jobs’ wallet with his yearly salary in it

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...

Fake iPhone 5 screws get a Joy of Tech treatment

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...

Cover your iPad in nostalgia with the Padintosh Case

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...

More purported details regarding the iPad mini surface

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...

Samsung designer: we didn’t copy Apple’s icons

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?

Fragmentation? Here’s your iOS platform matrix

A developer took it upon himself to create a handy chart with all of Apple's iOS devices, their key hardware characteristics and iOS software builds running. Even a brief glance reveals very little fragmentation as approximately 70 percent of all iOS devices in the wild are shown running iOS 5, the latest public version of Apple's mobile operating system.

The upcoming iOS 6 is already on five percent of devices in the wild and iOS 4 is still found on approximately ten percent of devices. On the hardware front, both the third-generation iPod touch/iPhone and newer plus all iPad models run on the ARMv7 application processor.

This makes software optimization much easier than on the Android platform, where a variety of form factors, hardware configurations and device models contribute to high fragmentation....

Chart shows all of Apple’s patent claims against Samsung

On the surface, Apple's beef with Samsung is fairly easy to understand. Apple feels that Samsung has intentionally copied the design of its smartphones and tablets, and it wants justice (along with compensation).

But in reality, Apple's claims are much more complicated. They involve four design patents, three feature patents, and around 20 different Samsung devices that Apple believes are infringing on its inventions...

Apple granted patent for rumored in-cell display tech

Among the many changes we're expecting to see in Apple's new smartphone, one of them is a reduction in thickness. The new handset is said to be noticeably thinner than its predecessor.

So how is Apple going to pull this off while still adding things like LTE and a larger display? By doing things like reducing the size of the charging port, and using in-cell touchscreen tech...