With the well documented patent infringement court case between two mobile industry titans - Apple and Samsung - it's easy to forget amongst the bickering and finger-pointing, that the two companies share a pretty rich business relationship.
If we told you that Apple was planning on launching a service that allows users to search for, select and then stream music across multiple iOS and OS X devices, then it probably shouldn’t come as a great surprise. After all, Apple pretty much pioneered the shift in music and paved the way for digital downloads and the like, so the surprise would be that it has taken them this long to adopt the strategy and actually come up with a service similar to that offered by the likes of Pandora and Spotify.
It seems like only yesterday when the original iPhone was announced to the world by the late Steve Jobs, a revolutionary device that was going to turn the industry on its head and be the new benchmark for what manufacturers would need to live up to. Although it seems that Samsung took the challenge a lot more literally than others, the race for the top of the smartphone charts is still going strong, and it's only a matter of days until Apple introduces the world to their sixth-generation iPhone. We can't wait.
The Apple media event has been confirmed, the date is on our diaries and now we sit patiently to see what the next six days bring us in terms of news and possible insight into what Tim Cook and his team will bring us when they adorn the stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It's all but guaranteed that the new sixth-generation iPhone will be the main focal point of the media event, but there is still a strong possibility that we will be treated to a couple of new iPods or even the mysterious iPad Mini that we have been hearing so much about.
British newspaper TheTelegraph believes Apple is about to cease the sale of the iPhone 3GS when the iPhone 5 is introduced to the fray, instead retailing an 8GB version of the iPhone 4S, which is currently sold in 16, 32 and 64GB configurations.
In the past couple of weeks, we've been met with an almost non-stop barrage of iPhone 5 part leaks. The mobile device repairs companies have been receiving the innards of the upcoming device sporadically, and now, we can take a close look at the earpiece speaker of the iPhone 5.
The iPhone 5's announcement is almost upon us, and although we've seen prototypes of the upcoming smartphone measured up against the current iPhone 4S on numerous occasions, many of the images and videos released hitherto have been far from clear. Now, though, parts and repairs company iResQ has fully assembled an iPhone 5 using various bits and pieces it has received, and offered the anxious tech world a very up-close and personal look at the next-gen Apple smartphone compared with its predecessor.
Apple has always been extremely quick to refer to the Apple TV as their "hobby" project whenever the little black box gets a mentioning at any kind of press event. When the second-generation Apple TV was announced and launched, I got the feeling that it was a result of damaged pride, with the company needing to prove that it could be a viable product after their initial soiree into the set top box market failure. Even though they have continued to develop the product, release a new and improved 1080p version of it, and dumped significant resources into it, they still publicly refer to the gorgeous little entertainment provider as a hobby.
With Apple sending out media invites today for the official unveiling of the next iPhone - or the iPhone 5 as the subliminal message reveals in the invite image itself - we’re just days away from getting a glimpse of what is going to be yet another game changing smartphone from Apple.
The patent fight has often been analogized as being like the Cold War, and it's a battle which Apple appears to be winning right now, given that Judge Lucy Koh recently ruled in favor of Apple in the well-documented San Jose fiasco. Samsung was hit pretty hard by the decision of the jury, and as well as losing a billion dollars plus (barring a successful appeal), the Korean outfit has been made to look like the inferior, copycat company.
