To find context ahead of Tuesday’s showdown between Apple and Samsung in the US Supreme Court, you need to go back over a century to a row over some rather attractive carpets.
It’s 1885, and John and James Dobson stand accused of nicking designs from other carpet makers and selling them off as their own.
A couple of companies, Hartford Carpet and Bigelow Carpet, were so incensed they took the Dobsons all the way to the highest court in the land.
The firms were quite right to be upset, the Supreme Court agreed, but then it got more complicated. The court hit a stumbling block over the amount of money the firms deserved in damages.
In late April 2016, the company FAIRTIQ SA has radically simplified the purchase of tickets by launching the application that bears his name in conjunction with public transport Fribourg (TPF) and Lucerne and the Rhaetian Railway. Until then, to get a ticket, users were faced with sometimes complicated tariff systems.
The FAIRTIQ innovation has transformed this event into a breeze: the passenger signals the start of his journey with a click before boarding the vehicle and terminates in the same way once arrived. Thanks to the GPS, the system calculates the distance traveled and the corresponding ticket most advantageous. If the user makes several trips in a day and a day pass would have proved a more economical option for him FAIRTIQ not charge him the amount of the daily chart in question. Also, if you forget the part of the user, the application automatically calls to end the trip.
Below is a video showing the app at work. I find this sort of 3rd party integration of Apple Watch and Apple Pay a sign of thing to come and of critical mass in the adoption of both.
Following the update, trainers will now earn a catch bonus when capturing more of a specific Pokemon type, so for example, capturing Abra multiple times will now increase your chances of encountering the rarer, evolved Kadabra.
If you are a Pokémon Go player, read the article and grab the update when it hits in your region.
Samsung Electronics Co. is ending production of its problematic Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, taking the drastic step of killing off a smartphone that became a major headache for South Korea’s largest company.
Samsung had already recalled the Note 7 once last month after early models exploded and the latest move comes after customers reported that replacement phones were also catching fire. Samsung will be without its highest-end smartphone that was supposed to compete against Apple Inc.’s iPhones and other premium devices during the holiday shopping season.
This is a remarkable turn of events. Can you think of another major product that went through testing and release and was then completely killed off before it finished its first wave of shipping?
Mixpanel’s version of iOS 10 adoption is, obviously, not measured by App Store internals. According to the latest Mixpanel trend numbers, the iOS 10 adoption rate is 67.21%.
Both sets of numbers are reasonably up to date and, also obviously, pulled from different sources. Apple pulls data from App Store visits on a specific day (in this case, October 7th), and Mixpanel pulls their data from web site visits, sort of like Google Analytics, though with a deeper embedding in applications.
Interesting to see such different measures of adoption. Regardless, iOS 10 has a significantly higher adoption rate than Android Marshmallow (about 20%). As a reminder, Android Nougat is the latest and greatest, but it is limited to a few devices at this point, so Marshmallow owns the largest slice of the Android pie.
Thanks to Marketcircle, makers of Billings Pro for sponsoring The Loop this week.
Tired of manually creating invoices and keeping track of your time slips with spreadsheets? Billings Pro is a simple time-tracking and invoicing app for the Mac, iPad, iPhone & Apple Watch. It’s used by lawyers, consultants, photographers, graphic designers & more all over the world.
Track time from any Apple device – whether you’re at the office, working at a coffee shop, or tracking time for an on-site client meeting. Whip up invoices lightening fast from your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Choose from over 30 professional templates on the Mac or customize your own. Keep track of overdue invoices, set recurring invoices, and add client payments no matter where you are.
New in Billings Pro is the Mini Timer on the iPhone. Now you can start, pause, or resume a timer from anywhere in the app just by tapping or swiping up.
Controversy erupted last week when Apple cancelled the account of a popular developer app called Dash. Apple told the developer “they found evidence of App Store review manipulation,” an accusation the developer denied, but Apple has proof.
Apple’s anti-fraud team has apparently been working with the developer for some time to stop fraudulent positive reviews, and negative reviews on competitors accounts. According to Apple, all attempts to work with the developer have failed, resulting in the account being terminated.
“Almost 1,000 fraudulent reviews were detected across two accounts and 25 apps for this developer so we removed their apps and accounts from the App Store,” Apple spokesperson, Tom Neumayr, said in a statement provided to The Loop on Monday. “Warning was given in advance of the termination and attempts were made to resolve the issue with the developer but they were unsuccessful. We will terminate developer accounts for ratings and review fraud, including actions designed to hurt other developers. This is a responsibility that we take very seriously, on behalf of all of our customers and developers.”
It’s really important to note that this has been going on for quite some time—it’s not a quick decision that Apple made on the spur of the moment last week. In fact, a warning was first sent to the developer two years ago, but the behavior did not change.
The integrity of the App Store is as important to Apple as it is to consumers. When you read a review on the store, you want to know that it’s real. In some cases, they can be the deciding factor on which app you purchase and download.
This is part of the reason we trust Apple and the App Store. They found inconsistencies in a developers account, tried to work with them to resolve the issue, and took decisive action to protect developers and customers when their attempts failed.
It seems to me Apple has given the developer every opportunity to change the behavior that started this whole mess. I don’t think we can ask any more from Apple in these types of situations. App Store fraud cannot be tolerated.
A Yahoo Inc media executive fired from the internet company last year has filed a lawsuit claiming a job review process implemented by Chief Executive Marissa Mayer was used to cut men from executive ranks and lay them off illegally, court papers showed.
It’s not often you hear about this type of lawsuit.
After five years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday in the bitter patent dispute between the world’s two top smartphone manufacturers over the amount Samsung should pay Apple for copying the iPhone’s distinctive look.
There is absolutely no doubt that Samsung stole everything it could from the iPhone. They should pay up and stop stealing.
In 2013, the Food and Drug Administration approved Mars’s petition to use the microscopic algae spirulina to make the first natural blue dye approved for use in the United States. As a result, any food manufacturer in the country can legally use spirulina as a colorant. Mars spent years researching spirulina’s safety; in order to overhaul 1,700 or so recipes and update its global manufacturing capabilities, the company desperately needs a substitute for synthetic Blue No. 1, as does the rest of the industry. But right now, there isn’t nearly enough spirulina dye to go around — and in any case, sometimes it doesn’t yield just the right blue, or the color degrades and comes out blotchy, or it tastes odd. So researchers are still looking everywhere for other natural blue pigments.
Really interesting article about the industry’s search for natural alternatives for the colors found in many of our favorite foods.
Overall, I think that if there’s any phone that is worth 650-750 USD at its base, it’s the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. If you’re upgrading from the iPhone 6s Plus you probably won’t find a ton of differences, but it’s still a significant step up in display, camera, speaker quality, battery life, and system performance.
The iPhone might not excite like smartphones once did, but the amount of attention to detail and execution in the hardware is unparalleled and a cut above anything else in the industry.
This is the typical long, technical and very well done review from the folks at AnandTech. Settle in for a while to read more detail on the new phones than any other publication can manage.
Ministers have been barred from wearing Apple Watches during Cabinet meetings amid concerns that they could be hacked by Russian spies, The Telegraph has learned. Under David Cameron, several cabinet ministers wore the smart watches, including Michael Gove, the former Justice Secretary.
However, under Theresa May ministers have been barred from wearing them amid concerns that they could be used by hackers as listening devices. Mobile phones have already been barred from the Cabinet because of similar concerns.
It’s unclear how much of this can be put down to general (possibly misguided) fear of what might happen versus there being an actual threat or possibility.
Samsung Electronics has suspended production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones following reports of fires in replacement devices, South Korean media said on Monday, a further setback for the tech giant trying to manage its worst ever phone recall crisis.
Samsung’s decision to temporarily halt Note 7 production was done in cooperation with authorities in China and the United States, as two U.S. carriers have stopped exchanging or selling new Note 7 phones, Yonhap News Agency cited an unnamed source at a Samsung partner firm as saying.
Certainly the death knell of the Galaxy Note 7. The next question is, how will it affect Samsung’s brand and sales going forward?
The rise of cassettes and CDs shrunk the dimensions of the artwork on album covers from 12-inches square to just five, or even less. A few decades later, beautiful and intricate album-cover art was being crammed onto the tiny thumbnails that accompanied digital music played on handheld devices.
In fact, the art of the record jacket never went away, as the current vinyl revival so clearly shows. For more than 50 years, one of the best album-art printers has been Stoughton Printing Company, which opened for business in 1964 in Los Angeles.
I miss album cover art more than I miss the sound of vinyl.
Malicious websites and apps can gain access to your webcam and microphone. A lot of people might consider this to be an urban legend but there is truth to it. Unfortunately, a website or an app that does this isn’t going to be easy to detect by the average user. Tech savvy users might be able to tell if their webcam or mic is being accessed but for the ordinary user, and Mark Zuckerberg, you likely have to tape a bit of paper over your webcam to be safe. Oversight is a free macOS app that makes this much easier. It monitors all connected webcams and microphones and alerts you when they are accessed. It’s a very simple app that monitors current processes and can identify which app started a process to access these two devices.
This may be unnecessarily paranoid but sometimes it’s better to be safe than sorry. Or at least in the case of this app, aware of what’s going on.
We’re nearing Apple’s 10-year anniversary of the iPhone, and the device still refuses to recognize common curse words. (Steve Jobs memorably insisted on keeping the iPhone PG-rated.) Damn! But one genius posted a workaround on Twitter that let’s you drop expletives with ease.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor problem but it is an incredible annoyance to those of us with foul mouths.
The court said that there was substantial evidence for the jury verdict related to Samsung’s infringement of Apple patents on its slide-to-unlock and autocorrect features, as well as quick links, which automatically turn information like addresses and phone numbers into links.
It’s obvious that Samsung blatantly stole this from Apple. Time to pay up for your thieving behavior, Samsung.
DPReview is one of the go-to sites for deeply technical camera reviews. Note that that this is an iPhone 7 gallery. Here’s a link to the DPReview iPhone 7 Plus gallery.
Kirk McElhearn, writing for Macworld, on finding your listening history in iOS 10:
There’s no way to do that in the iOS 10 Music app. In the Apple Music For You section, you can see your Recently Played music, but it only lists albums and playlists, not the songs in the order you heard them. And that’s only for Apple Music, not for your music.
But there is a path:
Interestingly, there is one way you can find this, and you have to enter Apple’s new Byzantine Messages app. Create a new message to yourself or to a friend. Tap the gray arrow to the left of the text field, then tap the App Store icon. Tap the grid icon at the bottom left (the one with the four ovals), then tap Music. When you do this, Messages displays a list of your 30 most recently played tracks.
The fact that this info was available made me dig a bit further. In the Music app, as Kirk suggested, I tapped the Library tab, then tapped Playlists. Down a bit was a playlist labeled Recently Played that, sure enough, had a nice long list of my recently played music, complete with a Shuffle All option at the top of the list.
My Recently Played list was indeed a list of songs and artists, in order. Not sure what Kirk experienced, but seems like there must be a setting somewhere that customizes the look of that list. I’ll ping Kirk on this, see what he thinks.
Most interesting to me is the TERRIBLE selfie iOS chose as the icon for that list. Really curious about the logic that led to that choice. But it did make me laugh.
UPDATE: Spoke with Kirk, his take is that my Recently Played playlist was inherited from my Mac via a past iTunes sync. Has to be this, since you can’t make smart playlists in iOS. Interesting.
Rene Ritchie has lived with his new Series 2 Apple Watch for three weeks. His review is realistic and well worth the time if you are thinking about buying one.
One quote on performance:
watchOS 3, unsurprisingly, runs great, as well. Scratch that. On the original Apple Watch, it runs great. On Series 2, it flies.
That’s thanks to the new S2 system-in-package (SIP), which now includes a dual-core central processor and an amped up graphics processor. A fresh app launch is still count-the-spinner-wheel-seconds slow, but way better than before. And given how recent and favorite apps are now kept in memory, it’s also rarer than before.
The S2 also includes GPS. It is assisted GPS in the most assisted sense of the word — it only fires when you’re tracking an workout route and your iPhone isn’t around to piggy-back on. As a result, power drain is minimal.
Combined with the new, bigger battery and more efficient processor, it’s so minimal that I’ve done two workouts in a day and still been well over 50% by sundown.
The difference between the original and the Series 2 is ridiculous.
At a hearing in San Francisco federal court on Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Donato said he was “concerned” with Airbnb’s position because the San Francisco statute targets only bookings processed by Airbnb, not what the company publishes on its website.
Basically, the law would require Airbnb to verify that the person renting the property was registered with the city. Airbnb is saying that it is the responsibility of the person to follow the law and they are providing a publishing service.