Apple recruiting ex-Google Maps engineers

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Darrell Etherington:

My source — a contractor who worked on Google Maps as part of a massive undertaking to integrate Street View and newly licensed third-party data to improve European coverage, as well as develop the platform’s turn-by-turn navigation — says that when attention turned to indoor mapping, things started to become less interesting and a lot of staff began looking around for other opportunities. That turned out to be good timing for Cupertino.

They should have done this a long time ago, but it’s still good to hear.

Google acknowledges Feedburner issues

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Subscriber counts and stats have been missing for days for publishers. At least they acknowledge the issue. Feedburner’s biggest issue is being owned by Google.

Defects

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Jean-Louis Gassée on Apple Maps: The ridicule that Apple has suffered following the introduction of the Maps application in iOS 6 is largely self-inflicted. The demo was flawless, 2D and 3D maps, turn-by-turn navigation, spectacular flyovers…but not a word from … Continued

PR Firewall

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But lately things have changed. It’s been a long, gradual shift, though I can definitely see it more clearly in the past year. Startups are hiding (or being hidden) behind a great firewall, intended to protect them until they’re ready … Continued

Apple asks court for additional $700 million from Samsung

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The total of the jury’s August 24 damages award ($1,049,393,540) and Apple’s requested enhancements, supplemental damages and prejudgment interest would be $1,756,121,384 ($1.756 billion). The amount could even go up to $1,911,963,273 if the court grants Samsung’s wish to disaggregate the jury award but ends up agreeing with Apple.

Pixelmator

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Now you can easily remove image imperfections or just about any image element you want, so your pictures look their absolute best.

That’s what I love about the Pixelmator guys. They keep making amazing software with features that everyone can use, not just the pros. Check out the video on their site to see the healing tool in action.

Many thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

Windows 8 tablet fragmentation

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Ben Bajarin:

Microsoft needs developers to be writing touch based applications but my concern with the touch based hardware fragmentation is that it will may cause them to target only specific screen sizes and not others. This would mean that the touch based software experience will be better on some Windows 8 hardware but not others. I can tell you right now that an application that is built for 10” Windows 8 hardware is not going to be a pleasant experience on a 27” all-in-one running Windows 8 with a touch screen.

Lazy bullshit reporting

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“Steve Jobs Would Have Never Released iOS 6 Like This”

You have failed your readers when that’s the headline for your story. Remember the first version of OS X? Yeah, that was Steve. Do some actually reporting.

Great use for NFC: Hacking a Samsung Galaxy S3 and Android

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Security researchers participating in the Mobile Pwn2Own contest at the EuSecWest Conference in Amsterdam today demonstrated how to hack Android through Near Field Communication (NFC). The 0day exploit was developed by four MWR Labs employees (two in South Africa and two in the UK) for a Samsung Galaxy S 3 phone running Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Two separate security holes were leveraged to completely takeover the device, and download all the data from it.

Perfect!

Apple responds to Maps criticism

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While Maps has worked well for me so far, not everyone has been so lucky. Complaints starting coming in today about various problems with the new app. Apple vows to make it better. “Customers around the world are upgrading to … Continued

You can still use Google Maps on iOS 6

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A couple of readers have written to point out that you can still use Google Maps on your iPhone running iOS 6. Just go to http://maps.google.com in Safari and add it to your home screen. That will give you directions, transit and many other features.

It’s not perfect, but for those having issues with Maps, it’s something.

The trouble with Maps

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iOS 6 is out. Check your iOS device — as long as it’s not the iPad 1 or iPod Touch 3rd generation or lower — and download it. Except, don’t if you use Google Maps. The new Maps application, Apple Maps, is awful.

I’ve heard from a lot of people about Maps after writing my review on the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 on Wednesday. In the places I tried Maps — Cupertino and Halifax, Canada — it worked flawlessly. However, it seems not all areas, countries and users are having the same experience.

iOS 6 release causes huge Web traffic spike

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This massive increase in traffic was then sustained throughout most of the day, and actually escalated as people got home from work in the evening. This resulted in traffic from Apple’s servers yesterday being over 9 times their average traffic levels.

I can’t even begin to imagine how much traffic and data Apple pushed yesterday.

Samsung confirms it will sue Apple over iPhone 5 LTE

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Florian Mueller:

In a case management statement filed late on Wednesday with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Samsung expressed its belief “the iPhone 5 will infringe [the eight patents that Samsung is already asserting in a California lawsuit against Apple, two of which have been declared standard-essential] in the same way as the other accused iPhone models”, and that it “plans to file a motion to amend its infringement contentions to address the iPhone 5 as soon as it has had a reasonable opportunity to analyze the device”.

We knew that was coming.

iOS 6 features you may not know about

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Chad Williams put together a nice list of lesser known features from iOS 6. Sometimes the coolest things aren’t always the most talked about.