Reuters:

Apple Inc deserved the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages Samsung Electronics Co Ltd paid for infringing patented designs of the iPhone because the product’s distinctive look drives people to purchase it, a group of design industry professionals told the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.

Setting up a clash with a number of Silicon Valley companies that have come out on the side of Samsung, more than 100 designers and educators signed on to a new court brief supporting Apple.

They include famous fashion names Calvin Klein, Paul Smith and Alexander Wang, the industrial design director at Parsons School of Design, the design director for Bentley Motors, and Tony Chambers, the editor-in-chief of Wallpaper magazine.

And:

Samsung asked the Supreme Court to review the case, and in March, the justices agreed to examine whether the total profits from a product that infringes a design patent should be awarded if the patent applies only to a component of the product.

The designers on Thursday said that in the minds of consumers, the “look of the product comes to represent the underlying features, functions, and total user experience.”

Stealing a design can lead to a lost sale, and Apple deserves to be compensated for that with the infringer’s entire profits, they said.

And:

Samsung has had a number of trade groups come out on its side, including The Internet Association as well as Silicon Valley heavyweights Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) unit Google, which makes the Android operating system used in Samsung’s phones.

The groups say the Federal Circuit decision is dangerous to the technology industry because it could empower companies that make money by suing over design patents.

From the amicus brief itself:

For a product that a consumer does not yet own, it is the visual design, rather than text or lists of features, that dominates print, television, and online advertisements, social media platforms, and e-commerce websites. And it the visual design that consumers encounter while walking on the street observing peers using the product — a powerful factor in purchase decisions. Thus, when a consumer encounters a product, the consumer identifies the look of the product with the underlying functional features and the visual design comes to represent the features, functions, and total user experience of the product.

I found the brief to be well put together and a fascinating read. Obviously, the only thing that matters is what the court thinks.

In this official Apple support document, Apple lists the limits on calendars and reminders, contacts, and bookmarks.

For example, here are just a few of the limits on contacts:

• Total number of contact cards: 50,000
• Maximum size of a contact card: 256 KB
• Maximum size of a contact photo: 224 KB
• Maximum size of a contact group: 256 KB

[Via 512 Pixels]

Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld:

Every online photo, all those Apple Maps requests, Siri interrogations, FaceTime chats, Apps downloads and iMessage exchanges all use drops of water.

In most cases the data servers enabling all these Apple services are kept cool by pumping water through the systems.

Apple used 160 million gallons of water across its data centers last year. (It used a total 573 million gallons (2.1 billion litres) of water across its entire US business).

From Apple’s Environmental Responsibility Report:

We’re constantly working to minimize our water use, so we monitor it within our cooling, landscaping, and sanitation processes and at our manufacturing sites. Then we develop targeted ways to reduce it. That includes creating cooling systems in our data centers that can reuse water up to 35 times. Or, for facilities in drier climates, installing intelligent irrigation systems that monitor weather and deploy water only when needed.

In 2015, we started collecting even more sophisticated data to help strengthen our con- servation strategy. We’ve begun to measure the water it takes to manufacture each of our products, starting with iPhone. And now we’re identifying the high-, medium-, and low-scarcity areas where we use water, so we can focus our e orts where they matter most.

When we began to measure the water consumption footprint of iPhone, we learned that the story was similar to our product carbon footprint: the vast majority is during the manufacturing phase. This is primarily due to water consumed in energy pro- duction, such as for oil extraction, distillation, and processing, as well as non-energy sources, such as process water consumed during metals processing. That’s why we are focusing on reducing water consumption in our supply chain, primarily through our supplier clean water and clean energy programs.

Interesting article by Jonny Evans, glad to see Apple is on top of this problem.

J. D. Biersdorfer, writing for the New York Times, talks through the complexities of teaching Siri how to properly pronounce an unusual name.

A key step in teaching Siri:

If your Contacts list contains names with unusual spellings and pronunciations that Siri cannot accurately match up when you ask for them, you can try adding a phonetic version of the name to the person’s contact card. To do that, call up the contact, tap Edit in the upper-right corner and scroll down to Add Field.

Tap the Add Field option and on the next screen, select Phonetic First Name or Phonetic Last Name. Once the chosen field appears, type in the syllables of the name the way that they sound rather than how the name is spelled.

This works well in iOS, but Siri is also available on the Mac. In the Contacts application on the Mac, you’ll want to open a contact card, click Edit (lower right of the card) then, from the Contact menu bar, select Card > Add Field > Phonetic First/Last Name or Phonetic Company. [H/T Mark Hurty and HYAPhoto]

Macworld:

During Apple’s third-quarter earnings call last week, Tim Cook teased a future for Apple TV beyond voice-controlled viewing and simplified sign-ins: “You shouldn’t look at what’s there today and think we’ve done what we want to do,” he said. “We’ve built a foundation that we think we can do something bigger off of.”

And:

The FCC recently took aim at DVR lock-in, proposing that operators deliver their service to any device using any open standard, not just the standard coaxial hookup.

If it becomes a mandate, it would allow Apple TV to become the primary box in our living rooms. It’s a move that would elevate Apple TV without the complexity and cost of negotiating a deal to sell “skinny” channel bundles. The beauty of Apple TV is its interface, and with tvOS powering the grid, there would no longer be a need to have a separate DVR and set-top streamer, putting Apple TV at the center of our home theaters.

This has got to be terrifying to the carriers. Imagine if Google Fibre got enough traction that there was real competition in the net connection marketplace. And then imagine if Apple TV offered an option that was cheaper than cable.

There’s the rub, though. Can Apple bring a package of premium services (HBO, Showtime, etc.) at a lower price than Comcast, Verizon, et al.

This isn’t the first site of its kind, but it never hurts for us to try out new places to find people to jam with.

Shares (TWTR) closed up 7% Wednesday on speculation about a rumored joint takeover bid by two billionaires who are major Twitter investors: former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, no stranger to substantial tech investments.

Twitter is different than anything Google or Facebook has, at least for me. The mere mention of Ballmer made me shudder.

No single spot can claim to be the Silicon Valley of such companies yet, but Seattle is on the short list of contenders, investors and entrepreneurs say. The area is home to two tech billionaires — Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft — who are funding ambitious, varied efforts to make space more accessible. They have been joined by a few smaller companies like Spaceflight, attracted by Seattle’s abundant supply of software engineers from stalwarts like Amazon and Microsoft and aerospace experts from Boeing, the aviation giant that has major operations in the area.

I didn’t know that, but it makes perfect sense.

The 13th straight quarterly loss for the Silicon Valley electric carmaker underscores the financial hurdles that hamper it while it takes on increasingly ambitious goals – a ten-fold ramp of vehicle production in three years and the recent plan to acquire solar panel installer SolarCity Corp.

Wow.

The Mac Observer:

Tim Cook announced on Twitter Wednesday that July was a record month for the App Store, and that Apple has now paid more than $50 billion to developers. Both represent massive accomplishments, and the $50 billion paid out to developers would make the reputation of any other company for decades to come.

Great news for Apple and developers. I find it mildly interesting Cook tweeted this out instead of issuing a press release.

Houzz shares its unique approach to e‑commerce, and how the experience evolved from a side project for co‑founders Alon Cohen and Adi Tatarko as they renovated their home to a multi-platform app with tens of millions of users monthly.

Wired:

What seems a strange and complicated ritual is actually simple: Swindonians enter the magic roundabout from one of five points. They aim their car at their destination, yielding to those ahead of them and following the white markings in the pavement.

While a driver entering a normal roundabout might have to make an entire turn to arrive at their destination, a person of Swindon in a magic roundabout can cut through the circles more quickly. A complex pattern emerges.

Roundabouts or traffic circles are fairly uncommon here in North American and can be very confusing to those unfamiliar with their operation. I generally have no problem with them but this “circus” looks like madness. I’m never going to Swindon.

Jeff Cable:

This is my fifth Olympic Games and I am always visiting the Canon Professional Services area to borrow equipment from them. And for all of those previous Olympics, they have always been very guarded about letting anyone, outside of Canon employees, go behind the scenes to see what they have in their inventory. And trust me, I have asked in the past.

Well, this year I was allowed into the back room to see the arsenal of cameras and lenses, and it was incredible! I have a warning for all the photographers out there. The photos in this blog are going to make you salivate!

Canon (and Nikon and others) operate a “loaner program” for professional shooters at major events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl. Photographers can borrow lenses, camera bodies, get gear cleaned, get advice from the over 70 support staff and basically test out the latest and greatest offerings. Imagine the logistics of taking care and keeping track of all this gear.

Apple World Today:

Developer John Saddington is definitely raising his 5-year-old daughter Arden well. He shared a blog post and video with me this morning that I just had to pass along. John had purchased a poster celebrating the 1997 Apple “Think Different” ad campaign and has had the poster on the wall of his bathroom since 2012. Arden surprised John by memorizing the speech, so he took a video — complete with intro.

This might be the single cutest thing you watch all day.

At Apple, we take a holistic view of diversity that looks beyond the usual measurements. A view that includes the varied perspectives of our employees as well as app developers, suppliers, and anyone who aspires to a future in tech. Because we know new ideas come from diverse ways of seeing things.

These are great numbers for Apple. They are moving in the right direction and they care.

The #1 app for turning your iPad into a drawing tablet for Mac! Astropad allows you to use your iPad to draw directly into Photoshop and any other Mac creative tools, including: Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Affinity, Corel Painter, Manga Studio, Pixelmator, Mischief and any other Mac app you like!

This is a huge update.

I’ve mentioned a number of times in the last week about my increasing fascination with telescopes and space, so I thought I’d post some of the ones I’m looking at. The price variance is incredible, as are the features. I still need to do a lot more research, but it’s interesting to see what they can do.

Earlier this year, we released two amazing new services: 1Password Families and 1Password Teams. Both rely on our new hosted platform to bring awesome new features that weren’t possible when 1Password was just a standalone app.

The response has been amazing and many of you asked for a special plan so you could also enjoy these benefits. We now have the perfect answer: our new service made for individuals!

I love 1Password. It’s installed on all of my devices and has been for quite a while. It’s a company I trust.

The Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) is powered by electricity and can carry passengers above two lanes of traffic while cars drive underneath it. The 22 metre long, 7.8 metre wide and 4.8 metre high bus trundled along a 300 metre stretch of road in the city of Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, at an excruciatingly slow speed for its inaugural test run, but the finished version should hit speeds of 40 mph.

That thing is huge.

Ben Brooks:

It’s no secret that I love, and use, Ulysses all day long — nor is it no secret that I publish with WordPress and only use iOS. This storm of factors means that I have a very specific set of requirements to make a dream writing app, and The Soulmen (the company behind Ulysses) asked me what I still yearned for in their app. The above features were at the top of my very short list.

This sounds like a great release.

Apple argued that Caltech did not file the lawsuit until May 26, 2016, more than six years after the publication of the 802.11n wireless standard, and thereby the time limit to collect damages has passed under U.S. law. It also argued that Caltech does not make, use, or sell any product that practices any claim of the asserted patents.

This is worth scanning through and bookmarking, even if you don’t have the need for this just yet.

If you’ve never used the Mac’s Console application (Applications > Utilities), this article is a solid place to start. Not only does Kirk McElhearn show off some of the basic Console features, he also focuses on what’s new in the much improved macOS Sierra version.

Console is an important resource. Pretty much everything you do on the Mac ends up sending a message which is accumulated in a log somewhere. Console lets you read through those logs and, as Kirk shows you, this new version of Console makes it much easier to find what you are looking for.

Greg Barbosa, writing for 9to5Mac:

Twitter’s latest iOS update, released today, now includes iPad-compatible keyboard shortcuts. Users with paired Bluetooth keyboards or Smart Keyboards will now be able to use their keyboards to create new tweets, or move between tabs.

And:

Holding down the command key on the keyboard on devices running iOS 9 or higher shows a small dialog indicating which keyboard shortcuts are available to use.

Good to know.

IDG News Service:

A lawsuit in a federal court raises the ticklish issue of whether a company can be hauled to court because its augmented reality game places coveted fantasy creatures and in-game benefits in private property without permission.

Jeffrey Marder, a resident of West Orange, New Jersey, found in the days after the release of the successful augmented reality game Pokémon Go, that strangers, phone in hand, had begun lingering outside his home.

At least five of them knocked on Marder’s door and asked for access to his backyard to catch and add to their virtual collections of the Pokémon images, superimposed over the real world, that the game developer had placed at the residence without his permission.

No easy fix here. If this lawsuit is allowed to go forward, Niantic is going to have a thorny problem to solve. The database they rely on is incredibly large and complex. I can’t imagine it will be easy to excise all the private property from the map. And, if they do, will they replace those gyms and pokéstops? Or will the game get more sparsely populated?

Is this much ado about nothing? Not sure. But if the lawsuit does gain some teeth, I can definitely see lots of folks jumping on the bandwagon.

Dan Moren, writing for Six Colors:

The intent of the Apple TV Remote app is to duplicate all the functionality of the hardware remote, and in that it mostly succeeds. The majority of the screen is taken up by an area that mimics the hardware remote’s touch surface, and you can swipe or tap to control the onscreen interface. There are also dedicated buttons for Menu, Home (which you can double tap to bring up the multitasking switcher), Play/Pause, and Siri.

And:

It seems that if you have HDMI-CEC enabled to control your TV’s volume via the remote, it seems the iOS device’s physical volume buttons will actually control your TV’s sound.

This is just a bit of the review. If you haven’t downloaded the new Remote app (it is a completely different app – I deleted my old one), it is absolutely worth it.

Note that it works with the previous generation Apple TV and allows you to save profiles for multiple Apple TVs, in case you have more than one.