Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Apple : Apple loses another patent relevant to Samsung case

Apple : Apple loses another patent relevant to Samsung case

Apple loses another patent relevant to Samsung case

Posted:

Apple loses another patent relevant to Samsung case

Apple has lost another patent relevant to its perpetual twilight war with Samsung, again related to the ways users interact with touchscreen devices.

This time it was U.S. Patent No. 7,844,915, which describes the way a user can "pinch-to-zoom" and differentiates that function from scrolling.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has declared that that function was predicted by Patent No. 7,724,242, relating to gestures on touch screens and filed by W. Daniel Hillis and Bran Ferren in 2005.

The jury in the Apple-Samsung case previously ruled that 21 of 24 Samsung devices in question violated Apple's pinch-to-zoom patent, so this could have big ramifications for that fight.

History repeats itself

This shouldn't come as a surprise - the USPTO "tentatively invalidated" this same Apple patent late last year, and this most recent announcement appears to just be confirmation of that decision.

And this isn't the first time this has happened. Last year the USPTO ruled that an Apple-owned patent relating to the "rubber band" function of scrolling touchscreen devices was invalid.

The patent described the way the screen bounces when users reach the end of a page or document, and the jury found 21 of Samsung's devices infringed on it.

But that function no longer belongs to Apple either, casting yet more doubt on the already nebulous legal battle between Apple and Samsung.

Even more baffling is the fact that the patent apparently still stands in some countries, as a Japanese court found just last month that Samsung infringed on it.

Modern warfare

The big decision in the case of Apple vs. Samsung came last year when the jury awarded Apple over $1.05 billion (£688m, AU$1.15b), but the battle rages on nonetheless.

With the USPTO throwing all kinds of wrenches in Apple's holdings is it any wonder the two companies have been allowed to keep chipping away at one another in court?

Apple reportedly has two months to respond to the USPTO's most recent decision, and Apple can choose to appeal the decision and/or seek judicial review.

These nifty charts show just how fragmented Android is

Posted:

These nifty charts show just how fragmented Android is

A new study published this week uses colorful charts to demonstrate just how fragmented the Android ecosystem is, both by device and by OS version.

According to OpenSignal, of the last 682,000 Android devices to download the company's signal-finding app, there were 11,868 unique phone models. Compare that to the previous year, when there were just 3,997 unique models among 682,000 devices surveyed.

Of the 682K counted this year, 47 percent were made by Samsung, and 37.9 percent used Jelly Bean, the most recent version of Android.

In total there are still eight different versions of Android in use.

Android vs. iOS

Compare that to iOS, where 95 percent of devices are on the most recent version, iOS 6, 5 percent are still on iOS 5, and the older versions combined have less than 1 percent, OpenSignal claims.

No doubt that will change when iOS 7 drops this fall, but isn't that always the way of things?Android iOS pie chart

In November 2012 54 percent of Android users were stuck on Android 2.3: Gingerbread, a number that by now has dropped to 34.1 percent, according to OpenSignal.

The study also showed that Android devices have many times more screen sizes and shapes than other mobile operating systems, in particular iOS.

Pros and cons

"What is clear from this report is that Android fragmentation, of all varieties, is increasing," the study reads. "Too often this is treated as a problem with Android, rather than a strength, but we feel that this misses the bigger picture."

According to the study, "developing apps that work across the whole range of Android devices can be extremely challenging and time-consuming." No surprise there.

But is there a silver lining? "The availability of cheap Android phones (rarely running the most recent version) means that they have a much greater global reach than iOS, so app developers have a wider audience to build for," the study claims.

"It may be tricky to do, but the potential reward definitely makes it worthwhile. For consumers, extreme fragmentation means that they can get exactly the phone they want – big or small, cheap or expensive, with any number of different feature combinations."

Talking points

The fragmentation of Google's OS has been touched on many times before.

Android co-creator Rich Miner said just this month that Android fragmentation's no big deal.

And early last year analysts claimed that developers were losing interest in Android because of the difficulties of creating apps for such a fragmented OS - though to this day Android still leads the pack in terms of market share.

Still, it's definitely a problem, or it wouldn't come up so often. At least Google probably isn't in denial anymore at this point.

iTunes music takes back the living room in Apple TV update

Posted:

iTunes music takes back the living room in Apple TV update

A beta update of the Apple TV software released to devs will be music to people's ears, as the service has opened up the ability to purchase music from iTunes.

Until now we've been able to buy movies and TV shows on the set-top box, but while music streaming has been available, the ability to purchase iTunes tracks straight from the TV has been a no-no.

The new app in Apple's update has been made stylistically similar to the iOS version, letting you use scrollable panes to browse through artists and listen to song previews.

iChoons

On selecting an album you'll be told its most popular or latest track. Buying songs will sync with iTunes across your devices rather than downloading to the Apple TV box.

Another new feature is that you'll be able to use your iPhone, iPad or iPod to automatically set up Apple TV by syncing it with Bluetooth.

The new software is only available to developers at present - we're expecting the software to be released in its full form until later this year although nothing has been set in stone yet.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)