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Apple

California Declares Today "Steve Jobs Day" 333

First time accepted submitter onezeta writes "California Gov. Jerry Brown, in an announcement via a Twitter post, has declared it 'Steve Jobs Day.' The Apple co-founder's life as a technology trailblazer will be marked Sunday by his company's home state at a private memorial service and in a television documentary airing tonight at 8 pm EST on Discovery."
Government

District Attorney Critiques Gizmodo Emails In iPhone 4 Prototype Case 155

lee1 writes "After the police broke in to a Gizmodo editor's home and collected emails from computers found there as part of the investigation of the stolen 2010 iPhone prototype, the San Mateo District Attorney's office petitioned the court to withdraw the search warrant, because it violated a law intended to protect journalists. Nevertheless, the DA, rather than apologize for the illegal search and seizure, issued a critique of the seized emails, commenting that they were 'juvenile' and that 'It was obvious that they were angry with the company about not being invited to ... some big Apple event. ... this is like 15-year-old children talking.''"
Businesses

Is Apple Pushing Away Professionals? 556

Barence writes "Is Apple turning its back on professional users to focus on consumers? That's the argument in this article, which claims Apple is alienating the creative professionals who have supported the company for 20 years or more. Fury over the dumbing down of Final Cut Pro, Apple's refusal to sell non-glossy screens and poor value hardware is fueling anger from professional Mac users. 'People will get hacked off. I'm only Apple because I want the OS, but if I could come up with a 'Hackintosh' with OS X, I'd be so happy,' claims one audio professional."
Iphone

100,000 iPhones Overwhelm Activation Server 166

dstates writes "What happens when Apple ships 100,000 iPhone 4S in a day? Answer, 100,000 users all try to activate their new phones. AT&T's activation servers are struggling under the load. Apparently Verizon and Sprint are doing a better job keeping up with the load." Adds an anonymous optimist: "The solution? Call AT&T by dialing 611 and talking to an operator to perform a manual activation with your IMEI and SIM card #, works every time!"
The Courts

Samsung Lawyer Fails To Differentiate iPad and Galaxy Tab In Court 495

Several readers sent in a story that's sure to be embarrassing for Samsung. The company has been involved in a drawn-out patent dispute with Apple over similarities between the Galaxy Tab and the iPad. Today, during a court session, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh held up both objects and asked one of Samsung's attorneys whether she could identify which was which. The attorney replied, "Not at this distance, your honor." The distance was roughly 10 feet. The judge then quizzed the rest of Samsung's lawyers. After a brief hesitation, one of them was able to correctly identify the Galaxy Tab.
Android

Android Phones Get Dual Accounts 109

holy_calamity writes "AT&T is adopting technology that gives a person with an Android device two user profiles, enabling company email and other data to reside in an encrypted partition separate from a user's apps, games and unfettered web browsing. AT&T is calling the feature Toggle, and plans to release it later this year. Toggle is a regular app that, once installed, creates its own encrypted desktop under the control of company IT bosses. Toggle is a rebranding of an app developed by startup Enterproid, which continues to develop its own version. AT&T think this move will encourage smartphone adoption in the enterprise. Interestingly, Apple's current version of iOS and app guidelines exclude multiple profiles on one device."
Iphone

Woz Is First In Line For iPhone 4S 287

An anonymous reader writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is already camped out in front of an Apple store for the new iPhone 4S. From the article: 'Woz and his trusty Segway showed up at his local Apple store in Los Gatos Thursday and said he will stay there overnight. He added he already has two phones coming to his house, but doesn't mind hanging out for one more for his wife.'"
Apple

Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac? 692

hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: 'The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children. It's second nature for us to ask a colleague or a friend a question and for them to answer the same way. Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly. It's a much more natural approach than using a mouse on a desktop. And I highly doubt the impact is going to stop at phones.'"
Cloud

No PDFs, No Co-editing On Underwhelming Apple iCloud 189

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's iCloud service has been a little overlooked in the bunfight for the iPhone 4S. When it was first announced some predicted it would wipe out companies like Box.net, DropBox and so on. As the NYTimes put it, "Maybe Apple will kill them all.' Box.net's CEO disagreed and it looks like he was right. You can't store PDFs and images on iCloud except with PhotoStream, there's no co-editing, and the document management interface is a shambles."
Australia

Australian Court Blocks Sales of Samsung Galaxy Tablet 158

jimboh2k writes "Apple has succeeded in blocking the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Australia until a final hearing can be heard in the case down under. The judgment on Thursday could effectively kill chances of the tablet ever launching properly in Australia after Samsung claimed further delays to the product would threaten hopes of gaining traction."
Games

Valve Boss Expects Apple To Challenge Game Consoles 197

Speaking at a panel during the WTIA TechNW conference, Valve CEO Gabe Newell had some interesting things to say about his expectations for the console business. Quoting: "The living room is the domain of the consoles, and its ability to exist independently from the other platforms is gone, Newell said. Newell expects Apple to disrupt the living room platform with a new product that will challenge consoles, although he doesn't have any particular knowledge of that new product. 'I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,' he said. Newell reiterated his concerns about a closed model being the 'wrong philosophical approach' but one that people will emulate because of the success of Apple and Xbox Live."
Communications

Slate Reprints Blue-Box Article That Inspired Jobs 121

Slate has reprinted the piece that Ron Rosenbaum wrote for Esquire in 1971, explaining to the world that there was an underground movement of people hacking the phone system. (Rosenbaum is now a columnist for Slate.) According to the article's new introduction and followup piece by Rosenbaum reflecting on its impact — and to the New York Times obituary for Steve Jobs — this article inspired Jobs and Wozniak to start building blue boxes themselves, an effort that made them several thousand dollars.
Iphone

iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Sell Out 327

Perhaps to no one's surprise, the just-announced iPhone 4S has been been leaping off the shelves ... in advance of it ever hitting shelves at all. In fact, as reported by numerous sources (here's the WSJ's version), the company's pre-launch inventory has all been sold — and they only started taking the orders on Friday.
Iphone

Was the iPod Accessory Port Inspired By a 40-Year-Old Camera? 263

An anonymous reader writes "While Samsung has been accused of repeatedly borrowing everything from Apple's hardware, to packaging and accessories, it appears that all current iDevices share a port which is very similar to one found on a forty-year-old Polaroid camera. It gets more interesting when you realize that camera was the 'supreme achievement' of a man Steve Jobs idolized. Edwin Land was the creator of the Polaroid camera and, if Steve Jobs obsessed over Land's devices the way many do with iPhones, etc. today, there's a chance this similarity is not a coincidence."
Android

Apple Tries To Patent 3rd Party In-App Purchasing 244

bizwriter writes "Apple has spared no effort in trying to injure its arch mobile rival through the courts, like blocking Android vendors from important markets through patent and trademark infringement suits. Now it's developing an additional angle: an attempt to patent in-application purchases from third parties, as an application filed on April 26, 2010 and made public on Thursday made clear."
Google

Patents Google Bought From IBM Are "Weak" 78

holy_calamity writes "Slashdot noted in September that Google had bought 1023 patents from IBM. Now IP analytics firms IPVision says they're a 'mixed bag' of mostly unrelated patents that won't be much use in defending against competitors such as Microsoft or Apple. Patents are most useful when they are tightly linked into clusters by references, such that they cover every angle on an idea, something Google's new collection lacks."
Image

Phelps Clan Tweets Intent To Picket Jobs Funeral Via iPhone Screenshot-sm 699

It comes as no surprise that Margie Phelps of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church has already declared the church's intention to picket Steve Jobs's funeral. What is interesting, is that she did so using an iPhone. The 142 characters of wrath read: "Westboro will picket his funeral.He[sic] had a huge platform; gave God no glory & taught sin. MT @AP: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has died at 56."
IOS

Oracle's Plans for Java Unveiled at JavaOne 155

msmoriarty writes "Oracle had lots of Java announcements at this year's JavaOne. So far the plans include: 'The availability of an early access version of JDK 7 for the Mac OS, plans to "bridge the gap" between Java ME and Java SE, an approach to modularizing Java SE 8 that will rely on the Jigsaw platform, a new project that aims to use HTML5 to bring Java to Apple's iOS platform, the availability of JavaFX 2.0, a pending proposal to open source that technology, gearing up Java EE for the cloud, and a delay in the release of Java 8.'"

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