The ongoing patent infringement battle between Cupertino-based Apple and Korean born Samsung is about to come to a full swing next week when the official trial starts in which a judge will attempt to determine who exactly has infringed upon who and what the punishment will be. Apple is heading into the case in confident and jubilant mood thanks to recent judgments ruling that Samsung can't sell specific devices in the United States, but it is worth remembering that this isn't a small case with Apple looking forward to claim $2.5 billion in damages from the world’s current leading smartphone vendor.
The last couple of days has been rammed full of Apple related goodness with more than enough news coming out of Cupertino to keep the most hardcore Apple fan content. The release of the financial figures for the third quarter of 2012 showed great progress with seriously impressive sales of the iPad and a profit of $8.8 billion raked in during the period. And today, we saw the final retail version of OS X Mountain Lion hitting the Mac App Store, and is all set to consumed by millions of Mac users out there.
Apple Q3 2012: $35 Billion In Revenue, 26 Million iPhones, 17 Million iPads, And 4 Million Macs Sold
That time we look forward to every three months has come around again with Apple announcing their earnings for Q3 of 2012. It seems that the world can't help but be fixated on the company's earnings call to see just how well the most profitable company in the world has done. As is always the case when these kind of figures are presented, they are compared against estimates made by experts in the industry as well as Apple's own projected earnings.
It is possibly the news which many people didn't think they would ever hear when talking about Apple's iOS App Store, but one app that is available on the store for download has been found to contain a malware worm within its guts. Before we all go raising the alarms and condemning Apple for first having security vulnerabilities that allowed in-app purchase protocols to be bypassed and now hosting an app that contains malware, it is worth noting that the worm in question is classified as extremely low-threat and is only a possible disturbance to those who are using the Windows operating system.
As part of the ongoing court battles with Samsung, Apple is seeking to recover a whopping $2.5 billion in damages for patent infringement, as well as $30 per device sold by Samsung, according to new court filings.
Although the chatter regarding the purported iPad Mini has been pretty relentless over the past couple of months, few people - if any - have really suggested how Apple plans to release two products at around the same time. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has built up a reputation of accurately predicting the Cupertino company's movements, has given his estimations on when Apple plans to release these new devices.
A couple of days ago, we reported of a hacker by the name of Alexey Borodin, who had found a way to exploit the in-app purchasing system of iOS. Apple always responds properly whenever there's a whiff of a security flaw, and as well as promising developers the issue will be completely resolved when iOS 6 arrives around October, the Cupertino outfit has delivered an interim fix.
Of all the features that arrived when iOS 5 reached the end-user back in October of last year, iMessage has been arguably the most significant, and by now allowing messages to be sent and received in a faster, more secure manner across a variety of platforms, it has to go down as one of the best in the business. Granted, it has its occasional downtime, but it's not bad as is, and with the service also arriving to the Mac with OS X Mountain Lion, it will almost certainly become the sole mode of quick communication to many Apple enthusiasts.
With the on-going development of iOS 6, the production of the next generation iPhone and the rumored smaller iPad, as well as the imminent release of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has been really scrutinized lately be a Russian researcher who found a way to bypass the in-app purchase process in apps available via the official App Store. The bypass procedure, involving an intermediary server and two iPhone certificates undoubtedly caused an internal headache at Apple and prompted almost immediate action.
Sparrow, the creator of those very popular iOS and OS X applications, has just been acquired by Google, in a move which will certainly raise more than a few eyebrows. Sparrow has dedicated its existence on making some altogether great apps for Apple's platforms, but it is the Big G that has decided to swoop for the start-up, and Sparrow will now join the Gmail team to "accomplish a bigger vision."
