HTC Android handset sales banned in US

Apple wins patent case, but HTC has until April to fix infringement

Apple has won a legal case which, in theory, bans the sale of some HTC Android phones in the United States from April 2012.

According to the International Trade Commission's findings, the Taiwanese smartphone titan has infringed upon an Apple patent.

Corsair Announces 8GB and 16GB DDR3 Memory Upgrades for Apple Computers

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced of 8GB and 16GB DDR3 memory upgrade kits for Apple Mac desktop and laptop systems.

Mac systems with two memory slots have traditionally been limited to only 8GB of memory. By increasing the individual module capacity to 8GB, Corsair's latest memory upgrade kits allow Mac owners to upgrade to 10GB, 12GB, or even 16GB of memory.

Apple Unable To Beat Competitors By Applying Lawsuits, Forced To

There's nothing quite like the irony of trying to shut down your prime competitor and giving their products a big boost in brand awareness instead. It seems that there are two basic ways to compete in this world: make a better product at a better price, or try to shut down your competitors with lawsuits and sell your inferior product at a nice fat mark-up. Well, unfortunately for Apple, they chose the latter. A week ago, we brought you news on how Apple's lawsuit against a Chinese competitor had suffered a setback over the name "iPad" which Apple tried to take off them – the court didn't buy Apple's arguments and the competitor kept the name.

Apple Founders: The Third Man

It's common knowledge that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, as is often parroted in news stories, history articles and documentaries about Apple. However, what isn't such common knowledge, is that there was actually a third man who founded Apple, one Ronald Wayne. This fact has now become very apparent, because the original contract to found the company and signed by the three men, has just been sold at upmarket auction house, Sotheby's, for a cool $1.35 million. Yes, seriously, $1.35 million. There's much better things to spend that kind of money on, we think. On top of that, the winning bidder, Eduardo Cisneros, chief executive officer of Miami-based Cisneros Corporation, had to pay Sotheby's a 12% commission, making the total amount spent $1.6 million, which caused his credit card to catch fire and explode (we made that last bit up). Anyway, the document was expected to sell for a maximum of around $150K, but somehow did much better. Perhaps this is because of Jobs's fame and the fact that he has sadly passed away recently.

Apple Working on Retina Display for Macbook Pro

Apple sure knows how to surprise us when it comes to display advancements, be it its retina display on iPhone products, 2560 x 1440 pixels in 27-inch monitors (Apple was first to market with that density), or talk of 2048 x 1536 pixels native resolution with the next generation iPad. This latest news is bound to shock and awe. Apparently, Apple is working with upstream suppliers to develop a retina display for its Macbook Pro products. As early as in Q2 2012, Apple will launch a new Macbook Pro with 2880 x 1800 pixels (that's more pixels than even the costliest of today's 30-inch displays can manage). More importantly, it's a return to the 16:10 aspect ratio. It will achieve this without upscaling display dimensions. Meanwhile, Apple's PC competitors ASUS and Acer plan 1920 x 1080 display notebooks around that time.

Source: DigiTimes

Apple Outsources IP Disputes to Patent Trolls

These are some lively times at Apple's legal department. The company is locked in intellectual property disputes with multiple companies, in multiple countries. Some of these are familiar foes such as Motorola Mobility and Samsung, others regional and lesser-known. The one thing patent disputes do, to all parties involved in them, is dent PR. Every legal dispute attracts or at lease leaves scope for bad press, and more often shapes public opinion against the disputing parties.

Apple Mac App Store passes 100 Million Downloads

Cupertino-based Apple Inc. has just announced that its Mac-friendly app store has managed to surpass 100 million downloads in less than a year. Launched on January 6th (2011), the Mac App Store is accessible to Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Mac OS X Lion users, and offers thousands of free and paid apps covering Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. In contrast, the iOS-only App Store has over 500,000 apps and has surpassed 18 billion downloads.

Motorola Breaks Through Apple's FRAND Defense in Germany

In a development that potentially threatens to prevent Apple's European sales arm from selling 3G-enabled iPad and iPhone products, Motorola Mobility won an injunction against it in Germany. On the table was a key Motorola patent related to cellular data transmission, which is part of wireless data transmission standards that are obstructed by an agreement to license it on "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) terms.

iPad 3 to Feature 2048x1536 High Resolution Display

Until recently, some industry observers appeared to have given up any hope that the next generation iPad would feature a Retina Display. Reports had suggested that Apple's supply chain couldn't gear up fast enough to organise mass production of the high resolution displays for the iPad 3, others pointed to Moore's Theory claiming that getting such advanced screens produced on the desired scale was simply undoable at this point in time.

iPad Still Dominates Tablet Web Traffic with 88%

There has been a lot of talk about Apple's competition becoming tougher in the tablet market with the introduction of a number of new devices; however, the Cupertino-based company still dominates the tablet market, as a recent study of web usage within the sector indicates, Slashgear reports.

The analysyis, conducted by Royal Pingdom, revealed that the iPad managed to get 87.6% of all global tablet web traffic in the first two weeks of November. Android tablets accounted for just 10.9% of web usage, while webOS and BlackBerry OS tied for third place with merely 0.7% each. To complement this data, a comScore report showed that in October iPads accounted for 95.5% of US tablet web traffic.

Apple iPad Tops Kids' Christmas Wish List

A recent survey by Nielsen questioning 3,000 children and young people in the US shows Apple's devices are the most-wanted items this holiday season. The survey measured their interest in buying/receiving various electronics products and also revealed brand awareness among the young consumers.

Apple slinging iPad 2 to 25 more countries this Friday, even more next month

Still having trouble locating an iPad 2 here in the US of A? Grab your passport, bub. Starting on Friday, March 25th, Apple will start hawking its latest and greatest tablet in 25 other nations, with sales to begin at 5PM local time through Apple retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers (or 1AM online).

Intel refutes Apple exclusivity for Thunderbolt I/O, LaCie and Promise detail first Thunderbolt peripherals

We can think of a pretty good reason why Apple might have a head-start when it comes to Thunderbolt-capable machines, but Apple doesn't actually have a timed exclusive on the technology, at least according to Intel PR. The company told us that while it's currently targeting an early 2012 launch for Thunderbolt with other OEMs -- whereas the new MacBook Pro has Thunderbolt right now -- there's nothing stopping other manufacturers from launching machines with the 10Gbps interconnect a good bit earlier if they so desire.

Apple updates MacBook Pro line with Sandy Bridge, Intel's Light Peak

Apple has brought their popular line of MacBook Pro notebooks up to date using Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors across the board, including quad-core CPUs in the more expensive 15" and 17" models.

While it was easy to anticipate all major PC manufacturers would be unveiling their 2011 models using Intel's latest platform around this time frame, in true Apple fashion a lot of speculation surrounded the revamp of the new MacBooks, though only part of the rumors held true.

iPad loses significant share to Android tablets

Apple's iPad still reigns supreme among tablets, but its grip on the market is starting to loosen.

In the fourth quarter, Apple's tablet captured 75.3 percent of worldwide market share, easily besting Android-based devices' 21.6 percent share, according to market-research firm Strategy Analytics. However, those figures differ vastly from the third quarter when Apple had 95.5 percent share and Android had just 2.3 percent.

Apple Slammed with Class Action Suit over iPhone 4 Glass Breaking

A California man has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple claiming the company is falsely advertising its controversial iPhone 4, after having its glass enclosure shattered as the result of a drop.

Rumored iPad 2 launch in February may be smaller iPad instead

Last week we heard rumors that Apple intends to release the iPad 2 by the end of February. That’s based on reports that Foxconn’s plant is preparing to ship hardware within the next 100 days. But while it has been assumed this is going to be an iPad 2, it may in fact be another model of iPad.

Apple disables iOS jailbreak detection API

According to Networkworld Apple have quietly disabled their jailbreak detection API that was built in to its iOS 4.2 firmware, less than six months after it was first introduced.