eldavojohn writes "Techdirt brings word that China-based MIC Gadget, the maker of a four inch 'SJ figurine,' is being sued by Apple to stop making the product. The fairly well detailed figurine went for $80 and the manufacturer offered updates as it quickly sold out of the first 300 and was subsequently sued before starting a second batch. The glasses, the black turtle neck, the salt and pepper beard, the blue jeans and the new balance sneakers — that is Steve Jobs' look and you don't even have to consider the smug look or the iPhone 4 in his hand while standing in a classic press event spotlight pose. So far, this notice for copyright infringement only exists for the 'SJ figurine' (no mention of Apple or Jobs in the store listing) but it appears other companies are allowing MIC Gadget some leeway with trademarks or perhaps they just haven't noticed yet. Could it be that Apple is just concerned that their followers are purchasing lead-painted false idols?"

CWmike writes "Exploiting an Apple interface design, identity thieves can hide URLs on the iPhone's limited screen real estate, tricking users into thinking they're at a legitimate site, a security researcher said on Monday. Nitesh Dhanjani demonstrated how criminals can easily hide the true URL of a site from users by building a malicious Web application. 'Note that on the iPhone, this only happens for sites that follow directives in HTML to advertise themselves as mobile sites,' said Dhanjani on his personal blog and in an entry on the SANS Institute's blog. The ability to hide the address bar in iOS is by design, noted Dhanjani, who said he had reported the problem to Apple. 'I did contact Apple about this issue and they let me know they are aware of the implications but do not know when and how they will address the issue,' he said."

recoiledsnake writes "Apple dialed its battle with Android up a notch today by banning an Android magazine app from its App Store, leaving no way for users to install the app on iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches without jailbreaking. The reason for rejection, as given by an Apple rep, was: 'You know... your magazine...It's just about Android.... we can't have that in our App Store.' The bi-monthly publication — the Android counterpart to an iPhone magazine Dixon began putting out earlier this year — launched Nov. 11. 'It's funny really because I don't think we would sell many magazines on Android through Apple App Store,' Dixon told Media Watch. 'But the question is where this is going.' This comes on the heels of Jobs lashing out at Android, calling it fragmented, and its patent attacks on Android."

nk497 writes "A Mozilla exec has attacked Apple, Microsoft and Google for installing plugins without users' permission. 'Why do Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others think that it is an OK practice to add plug-ins to Firefox when I'm installing their software packages?' Asa Dotzler asks. 'That is precisely how a Trojan horse operates... These additional pieces of software installed without my consent may not be malicious but the means by which they were installed was sneaky, underhanded, and wrong.' He called on them to 'stop being evil.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "John Boudreau writes in the Mercury News that during its just-completed fiscal year, Apple broke four consecutive quarterly revenue and profit records and amid the worst recession in decades, hired thousands while others cut jobs, but what most distinguishes Apple is that while other tech titans spent 2010 cutting costs and acquiring new technology through mergers, this $65 billion company has been relentless in innovating like a startup and ruthless in promoting technologies that disrupt its own product lines. '"It's been an awesome year. The frequency of new stuff just boggles the mind," says Charles Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. "There is no company that is remotely close to what Apple is doing. They are the Energizer Bunny." In September 2005, Apple killed off the popular iPod Mini to make way for the the iPod Nano; Apple openly acknowledges that the iPhone is cannibalizing its iPods — and they don't seem to care; and the iPad tablet could ultimately threaten its core laptop business. "[Apple] has a different cultural mind-set," concludes Wolf. "They are acting like a startup, though they are becoming a $100 billion company."'

Barence writes "Control of the web is up for grabs. Each of the big three computing companies – Microsoft, Apple and Google – has its own radically different vision to promote, as does the world's biggest creative software company, Adobe. And HTML itself is changing, too. This article examines the case for each of the contenders in the war of the web and, with the help of industry experts, assesses which – if any – is most likely to emerge as victor."

An anonymous reader writes "Over the past few years, Apple has systematically upgraded the base level MacBook to a level where the difference between the Pro and consumer models were arguably becoming negligible. That's about to change. Apple will reportedly introduce a completely re-designed MacBook Pro this April that will borrow features from the recently released MacBook Air. The new Pros will reportedly come with an SSD and Light Peak technology, a transfer protocol capable of 10 Gbps both up and down. Light Peak, jointly developed by Intel and Apple, will reportedly be an Apple exclusive at first."

EMB Numbers writes "Sony has revealed that the new SNAP development environment for 'consumer electronics' is based on Objective-C and the open source GNUstep implementation of Apple's Openstep spec. While Apple has continued to update their specification in the form of Cocoa and Mac OS X, GNUstep has preserved the original standard. Anyone familiar with Cocoa Touch and iOS will feel right at home developing for Sony. There may even be some source code compatibility between the platforms. The world continues to chase apple — probably for the better."

digitaldc writes "An Apple computer purchased more than 30 years ago has sold for 425 times its original selling price. From the article: 'An Apple-1, one of only about 200 such machines built in Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' parents' garage, sold at Christie's auction house in London today for 133,250 pounds (about $210,700). The Apple-1, which didn't include a casing, power supply, keyboard, or monitor, originally retailed for $666.66 in 1976. Apple discontinued the model in 1977.'"

Xenographic writes "NPR has a story about someone whose personal iPhone got remotely wiped by their employer. It was actually a mistake, but it was something of a surprise because they didn't believe they had given their employer any kind of access to do that. This may already be very familiar to Microsoft Exchange admins, but the problem was her iPhone's integration with MS Exchange automatically gives the server admin access to do remote wipes. All you have to do is configure the phone to receive email from an MS Exchange server and the server admin can wipe your phone at will. The phone wasn't bricked, even though absolutely all of its data was wiped, because the data could be restored from backup, assuming that someone had remembered to make one. But this also works on other devices like iPads, Blackberry phones, and other smartphones that integrate with MS Exchange. So if you read your work email on your personal phone or tablet, you might want to make sure that you keep backups, just in case."

adeelarshad82 writes "Apple's highly-anticipated iOS 4.2 update for iPad, iPhone, and the iPod touch finally arrived this morning, along with an update for Apple TV. The update includes Airplay, which enables wireless streaming of video, photos, and music from your iOS device to Apple TV. AirPlay is an exciting new development for iOS device owners who also have Apple TVs. As long as the devices are on the same wireless network, they automatically detect each other. AirPlay also lets users multitask while streaming video to an Apple TV. Unfortunately though, AirPlay is a one-way street. Users cannot stream something they rented on Apple TV to their iOS device. The iOS 4.2 update also included the introduction of AirPrint, which is the wireless printing solution for the iPad. (The ability to print to a printer attached to a local PC or Mac was dropped from the release, however.) Other minor changes Apple squeezed into this update were: better Word document fidelity in iWork, multi-tasking, and Game Center."

An anonymous reader writes "On PC World's blog, Keir Thomas suggests reasons why tablets have never taken off in business, and explains how Apple's iPad was able to waltz in and steal the entire market. It's all about giving users freedom to figure out how useful tablets can be, he says, rather than forcing them into narrow usage scenarios: 'There's a lot to be said for having faith in users to make best use of their computer, without pushing and pulling them in ways you think are best for them.'"

theodp writes "Q. How many Facebook engineers does it take in 2010 to duplicate a lone Apple engineer's 2003 effort? A. 15! On Nov. 15th, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook Messages, which uses whatever method of communication is appropriate at the time — e.g., email, IM, SMS. A day later, ex-Apple software engineer Jens Alfke was granted a patent for his 2003 invention of a Method and apparatus for processing electronic messages, which — you guessed it — employs the most appropriate messaging method — e.g., email, IM, SMS — for the job. Citing Apple's lack of passion for social software, Alfke left Apple in 2008. After a layover at Google, Alfke landed at startup Rockmelt, whose still-in-beta 'social web browser' also sports a pretty nifty communications platform."

bonch writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's quote that Android would dominate over iOS was widely covered by the tech press, but after seeking clarification, Engadget reports that Wozniak was misquoted by Dutch paper De Telegraaf. 'Almost every app that I have is better on the iPhone,' says Woz, claiming that he would never say that Android was better than iOS. 'I'm not trying to put Android down, but I'm not suggesting it's better than iOS by any stretch of the imagination. But it can get greater marketshare and still be crappy.' Woz has an Engadget account and has posted further comments to the linked article."

cloudcreator writes "Woz [said] that Android smartphones, not the iPhone, would become dominant, noting that the Google OS is likely to win the race similarly to the way that Windows ultimately dominated the PC world." Update: 11/19 04:54 GMT by T : Apparently, Woz's words were taken slightly out of context.

jfruhlinger writes "AT&T's wireless network came under a microscope when it seemed unable to handle the massive data use boost that came when the iPhone arrived on the scene. The company has since put money into its infrastructure, and that growth rate has slowed somewhat, but it's still gone up 30 times over the past three years."

1sockchuck writes "Rural counties in western North Carolina have hit the data center trifecta, landing major projects from Google, Apple and Facebook. These marquee tech companies will invest more than $2 billion in small towns like Forest City, Kings Mountain and Maiden, a town of just 3,300 residents. How did western North Carolina become a tech hub? Aggressive tax incentives and an abundant supply of cheap power, a legacy of the textile mills that once thrived in the region, which narrowly missed winning a $499 million Microsoft data center project that ended up in Virginia."

silverpig writes "Apple has finally approved the official Google Voice app for iOS. After 16 months of being in app-review limbo, the app is finally here, but only for users in the US, and not for iPod Touch users. An interesting use for the app would be to use it as a dialing front end on an iPod touch in concert with a VOIP service, but it seems like this isn't an option for now. It seems like non-US users can get the app if they have a US iTunes account. You can create a US iTunes account without a credit card by following this Apple article."

Yesterday Apple put a big old teaser up on their homepage for an unknown announcement to occur today. Speculation ran rampant from the delayed iOS 4.2, to iTunes Streaming to a release of the Beatles catalog on the iTunes store. Well, it was the latter. They have 13 albums on the store now, and a $150 box set. So here's hoping that we get that iPad multitasking yet this November.

CWmike writes "Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who coined the term 'net neutrality,' now says that Apple is the company that most endangers the freedom of the Internet. Wu recently published the book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, in which he details what he calls 'information empires' such as AT&T, NBC, Facebook, and Google. He told The New York Times, 'It's largely a story of the American affection for information monopolists and the consequences of that fondness.' When asked whether the Internet could similarly be controlled by large companies, he told the Times: 'I know the Internet was designed to resist integration, designed to resist centralized control, and that design defeated firms like AOL and Time Warner. But firms today, like Apple, make it unclear if the Internet is something lasting or just another cycle.' Asked which companies he feared most, Wu replied: 'Right now, I'd have to say Apple.'" Wu has been in the news a bit lately.