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...iPhone.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/11/16/annie_liebovitz_recommends_iphone_as_snapshot_camera_of_today.html

For those who don't know, she's an American portrait photographer known for such iconic photographs as the 1980 portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono with Yoko laying on the floor and John, nude, against her in a fetal position and as chief photographer for Rolling Stone in the 1970s.

I disagree. The very real risk (result!) is from the carriers putting crapware/spyware/etc. that you can't remove. I don't fear Google or Apple in this respect. Consider that yesterday it was revealed that Japan's largest carrier doesn't sell the iPhone precisely because Apple won't allow them to install such things.

Secondly, I don't consider it truly open source, unless I can reasonably make changes, which you can't do with Android phones currently on the market.

Deprecated in iOS 5.0
uniqueIdentifier An alphanumeric string unique to each device based on various hardware details. (read-only) (Deprecated in iOS 5.0. Instead, create a unique identifier specific to your app.)

It is possible (necessary?), that Apple retains private APIs to be able access this and does so with their applications - while the game that you propose writing wouldn't be able to access the UDID. If you want to do so, do so rapidly and hope your app doesn't get rejected.

I'm pretty confident that even at $0.99/song, the margins are pretty fat for the record companies given that the marginal cost of sales done digitally is a good approximation of zero.

Apple states they only get 10% of the song price for their overhead and most of that goes to the iTunes infastructure. There are some non-per-song costs involved that come out as well, but the remainder goes to the label.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/archive/index.php/t-27959.html

80-90% to the label is pretty fat indeed.

But they have the same shape. If you've been paying attention to lawsuits, you'd know that shape is pretty much the only real factor in phones.

If you're talking about the Apple vs Samsung spat then it's more than just about shape. It's about hardware design, interface icons and package design.

Plenty of other manufacturers manage to not slavishly copy Apple. Hell, Samsung even managed to use an iPhone screenshot on their own website.

You seem to be forgetting that there is a "free*" iPhone now which, incidentally, is sold out.

*Free as in, no up front cost making it as free as any of the fee Android phones.

"What's with all the Android-baiting on Slashdot lately?"

What is with the blind faith in Google? They are a for-profit corporation, so obviously they aren't going to be open. They spent two years' profit on Moto Mobility, so of course they are going to give them preferential treatment. From the Oracle lawsuit discovery:

"If we gave [Android] away, how do we ensure we get benefit from it? [We] create policies that allow us to drive the standard,"

Have you ever even looked at the evidence against Samsung? I'm guessing not since you posted Anonymous. They copied the design, the icons, the packaging, even the power adapter is identical. This isn't some 'vague look and feel', but pretty much straight clone. It is an obvious attempt to cash in on customer confusion.

http://copyrightcommerceandculture.com/2011/05/12/did-samsung-copy-apples-iphone-ipad/

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/09/29/apple-samsung-copycat-2/

How can you look at the above links and call it 'vague'? Hell they even got caught using iPhone graphics on their own webpage.

http://feeds.appleinsider.com/click.phdo?i=d1a78f8d91e14e80da004b76d84dbe93

I mean seriously?

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/18/samsung_accused_of_lifting_iphone_screenshot_for_galaxy_player_promo.html

How many times does Samsung need to copy Apple outright before people finally recognize that yes, they are, in fact, copying Apple at every turn. Yes, I know it's easy to blow off this story or the icons or the shape or that individual story and that other individual story but, for most people, when viewing all of these examples as a whole, the picture becomes very clear - Samsung copies Apple every chance they get. Time and time and time and time again, Samsung is copying Apple.

When are people going to realize this?

You don't have to like Apple to acknowledge the truth when it's obvious. Feel free to hate Apple all you want, as seems so en vogue on /. lately, but you demonstrate a disconnect from reality when you stick your head in the sand and ignore the simple fact that Samsung really is copying Apple. Often. In many ways.

I would think that the /. crowd would be opposed to that, regardless of who is doing it and to whom it is being done...

Yeah. I know. I must be new here/I'm an Apple fanboy (take your pick).

Interesting comparisons. Just from the first link (hardware design), it looks like there's a better case that Samsung is copying Apple on phones than it is on tablets. (Incidentally, the iPad trademark matches the earlier Samsung picture frame on every single point,

Ohh? Let's check every single point (and not just the front) mkay?

You mean this photo frame - yeah, especially from the side it looks just like an iPad or Galaxy Tab. And it is younger than the design patent.

Corporations shouldn't be taxed, period. Money that comes OUT of that corporation through stock dividends and wages and bonuses and perks should be taxed. And that should all be taxed as plain old income, not special kinds of income like "capital gains" that has lower rates to compensate for corporate taxes already taken out.

Which more or less ignores the fact that the old-timey notion of paying a stock dividend which even approaches net corporate profits gave its death rattle in the 1990s and has not come back despite record corporate profits.

Instead, corporations choose to amass extremely large liquid asset positions for purposes that are questionable even by modern business standards.

Yet you propose to eliminate taxes on corporate profits while increasing taxes on corporate dividends and long term capital gaings (note: capital gains are irrelevant unless attributable to a stock buy-back, since other stock appreciation is merely an increase in the price that another buyer is willing to pay a seller). That would tend to silo even more wealth into the de facto treasuries that have grown up in the 90s and 00s, as opposed to directing wealth into the hands of individuals (the beneficiaries of the funds typically holding stock) and, partially, the government.

I'm reasonably certain that corporations benefit from and directly use government services. There is no philosophical reason why a corporation that is earning a long term average profit should not be subject to taxation in order to pay for those benefits and services, yet natural persons earning non-trivial incomes should. The "fair share" argument has very little to do with anthropomorphisis, and quite a bit more to do with a sense that the seemingly accelerating trend of externalizing the corporate share of the costs of running our society cannot continue.

What you're advocating is that "everything" (yes, not literally everything) be paid for by personal income taxes or consumption taxes as opposed to personal income taxes, corporate taxes, and sales taxes. What you're failing to consider is the effect on investment and wealth distribution. Point to a non-trivial nation that has implemented anything close to what you're advocating and look at the effects on that society. Note that the tax havens that spring to my mind, like Bermuda, are trivial nations in the sense that the corporate revenue that is being complained of is more or less disconnected from acutal corporate economic activity in that nation.

or rather, here

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/21/worker_commits_suicide_after_iphone_prototype_goes_missing_reports.html

He may of been killed and they made it look like a suicide.

True, the iPhone/iPod/iPad sales are a big part of their bottom line. But Macintosh sales are still doing quite well, and even outselling PC sales at the moment. You also have to consider that their other products can also be technically classified as "computers", even though they might be classified in other areas. For example, the iPhone is a telephone, sure, but it also has a processor, RAM, solid state storage, an operating system based on UNIX, an internet connection, you can check email on it, and do other things that you can do with a computer. Same goes for the iPod Touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the phone part, as well as the iPad.

Asking how many patents I hold is an easy way to tell that somebody has no counter argument. Effectively a "NO U" response."

That might be true if that were my argument. My argument was that Jobs holds 300 patents and is therefore an innovator by definition. You chose to ignore that part and instead nibble at my snarky hook. Anyone who knows anything about Apple under Jobs is aware that he micromanaged everything and approved every detail of his products, down to the screws used on the iPhone. And Jobs is the one who put iPad on hold to make a touchscreen phone with iPad's technology. How many touchscreen smartphones were there before iPhone shipped?

And iOS is already being outsold by Android, so its 15 minutes of fame are over as well.

This is untrue. Android is not outselling iOS:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/03/report-suggests-ios-hit-all-time-market-share-high/

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/10/ipad_now_97_of_tablet_traffic_eclipses_iphone_ios_remains_mobile_leader.html

And now that 3GS's are free with contract, look for Android to get killed on the low end that they specialize in. And it has yet to be proven Google makes any money on Android, so don't get too cocky. Google spent two years of profits on Moto! HP is the market leader in PC's and they are dying to the the hell out of PC's, so market share isn't everything, bub. And that doesn't even count what Google is going to have to pay for each handset when they lose the lawsuit to Oracle. You know, Larry Ellison, Jobs' best friend? He's going to tax every Android handset. So yeah, just like with Facebook, let's see how profitable it turns out to be before we canonize the Google execs.

As for shoddy products, however, maybe you weren't actually around 20 years ago when Apple was in its darkest years, but they did in fact make a lot of really shitty machines.

I was around then, in fact, I was a stockholder then, and you are right, even I didn't know all the redundant, lackluster models from one another. But Jobs wasn't at Apple then, so that's irrelevant. He came back in '96, when Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy, and immediately cut the product line by the dozens to like 4 items, then turned Apple into a wildly profitable (they make in a quarter what Google does in a year) company that has the largest market cap on earth; from 3 billion to 350 billion in 15 years, while launching several computing revolutions (iPod, iPhone, iPad) that Android has been following like a hungry little puppy dog.

That's just false. The only reason that Apple has penetration into the school system is because some artsy-fartsy ex-teacher thought "our kids deserve the best" and Apple is held up as "The Best" even though this is demonstrably false.

The current generation of teachers, at least those teaching on a Apple, are doing a disservice to their students by teaching them how to use a computer that probably isn't the computer they'll be using in the real world. Your tired platitude about "the media running on Apple" aside an overwhelming majority of computers are going to be PCs.. Now even if these teachers assumed "Every one of my students are going work with the media" there's still a great chance that they won't be working with Apple computers.

Overall Apple's market share of every segment of the PC market is tiny when you combine all the PC manufactures. So now our emerging students will instructed on how to use a computer which by most Apple fan accounts is "so easy it doesn't require any instruction" even though these computers barely make up 8% of the computers used in business. If you've ever been to siggraph (and I have) you'll know that Apple is just a small player in the graphics game. There may be a few production shops that only use Apple, but for each one you should find about 10 that use PCs. If you're running a business and you're asked which to buy an Apple or a PC, you're told they do exactly the same thing but one costs twice the price of the other which do you think a majority of business will choose? Don't answer, it's a rhetorical question - 90%+ choose PC, that's just a fact. If you can find a citation about how Apple absolutely owns the media (or graphics) segment like you're suggesting I'd be interested to read it, because I looked and I can't find one.

People who are not fans of Apple generally dislike the same thing. #1 Apple is deceptive, they lie about their competition and their own capabilities. (Pllleeese ask for a citation, I'm just dying to give you a bunch) #2 Apple is restrictive for no good reason. (Why can't I put OSX on any PC like I can put FreeBSD on any PC? Oh, because Apple wants to waste my money on their hardware. Why do I need a $500 box to hookup my Apple to my TV when PCs do it without a box and for free? Again, Apple feels the need to make you grab your socks.) #3 The people who use and defend Apple are generally brainwashed morons who parrot the lies Apple made in the #1 and cannot be argued with because they already know that Apple is better. When asked for citation they'll say "everyone knows that". When confronted with citations that contradict their belief they attack the messenger or change the subject (it's called cognitive dissonance). I for one, wish logic would be the prevailing factor, but Apple's whole operation relies on deception. Apple: "We own the graphics segment - who are you going to believe us or your lying eyes?"

I could have a actual time machine that diamonds pour out of any time you press a button, but if I told an Apple fan it had a PC in it they would claim that Apple can do it better - and without citation or logic. So if it seems like some people are angry with Apple and Apple users, it's a well deserved anger. I could go on but this is already too long.

When the Compact Disc first came out not many had any chance to play one. It was expensive, part of extravagant home theatre systems, and only the rich could afford it. Years later it was adopted by the masses once it was able to be cheaply reproduced. The same goes for this piece of technology. While truly innovative and new technology almost never starts out as being ubiquitous; it does move us forward. This is my point: it is better, faster, and eventually it will be cheaper too. That and I heard Apple had exclusivity on the hardware totally until 2012 with regards to it. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/24/intel_details_thunderbolt_as_exclusive_to_apple_until_2012.html

In the past jobs seemed to be a bit of a design nut.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_39/b4002414.htm
Apple everyone knows their employment depends on living up to Jobs's high standards. According to one story, possibly apocryphal, Jobs once demanded that a designer of a new Mac not allow a single visible screw. When the designer built a prototype that had one screw, tucked out of sight under a handle, Jobs fired him.

Also he seemed a bit of a thin nut as well with the mini, imacs and laptops.

Will there be any change in being more open for enterprise use?

Not saying that you need to go all the way with os x on any hardware.

But have

Boxed software or some kind of easy way to work the app store.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=133132&highlight=education+end

I'm fine downloading software, but the issue isn't the download it's the fact that a purchase has to be tied to an iTunes account. If the APP has DRM then you need to also be logged in with that account. This causes serious issues in an Enterprise, much like the iPad does. The institution wants to always retain it's own purchases forever and so we end up managing hundreds of email aliases we use to generate iTunes accounts. It wouldn't be so bad, but there is also no model like the Volume Purchasing Program for the App Store for the Mac App Store and so tax exempt schools get taxed on purchases and then have to go through a process to get their tax back.

It's a boat load of overhead in a managed environment to say the least. Cart before the horse in regards to the Mac App Store. But I get it...Enterprise is the second class citizen to the bread and butter personal consumers.
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Laptops with battery you can change like just about ALL OTHER laptops.

some kind of hardware / software road map.

Mate displays

imacs with easy to get to HDD's other AIO don't make you use suction cups to take the screen off just to change a HDD.

specs bumbs or lower pricing on systems like the mac pro that stays the same for 6mo-1year + at times.

a bigger mac mini that has more for better cooling, desktop cpus (lower cost and more power then the laptop cpus in the mini), room for desktop HDD's, quad core + low to mid rage video chips.

A mac mini tower or lower price mac pro will also be good for enterprise use the mini is ok but same specs with more room for cooling may be needed.

Apple briefly banned the ability to code iOS apps using 3rd party dev tools, but then relaxed the restrictions: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/09/09/apple_no_longer_banning_third_party_ios_development_tools.html

The best-case scenario for RIA developers is to have a single code base that has multiple profiles for publishing to different devices. Adobe is using Flash Builder for this exact scenario. FB 4.5 allows a developer to have multiple profiles for Android, iPhone, iPad, numerous other tablets, Web, etc....

Also, Adobe AIR SDK 2.7 really improves the performance of SWF apps published for iOS devices and other devices in general. There is a noticeable difference. I think that Adobe still has a very relevant future in rich internet applications.

I'm not sure about other developers, but I'd rather write my app in a single language and then deploy it to every platform I want to publish to.

In the case of Apple, Samsung has been taken to court in various districts around the world...

I think you forgot to specify "...after Apple attempted to settle the situation with Samsung without involving lawyers.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/29/steve_jobs_contacted_samsung_in_2010_to_resolve_apple_patent_dispute.html

I know it's fun to portray Apple as a raging maniacal corporation that's on a suing rampage but they did try to resolve the situation amicably.

like so:

Update: SetteB.IT reports (via Google Translate) that the app wall is part of the Euronics store's design and not commissioned by Samsung.

Samsung's idea of a tablet pre-iPad

Here, I fixed that for you.

Yes, it's just rounded corners, heaven forbid it also be about the fact that Samsung repeatedly steals Apple's UI IP.

like so.

I really don't give a shit anymore about who wins. this isn't apple's first legal wrangling over look and feel, and I don't give a shit if they win or lose.

Reality is, it is inarguable that everyone's rushing to make iPad competitors because the iPad hit it big and to do that they have to steal what made the iPad a success in the first place(minimalist hardware, touch screen UI).

Samsung's idea of a tablet pre-iPad

And of course, post-iPad it looks like a fucking iPad.

http://photos.appleinsider.com/samsungvsapple.081911.jpg

We know what Samsung thought phones and tablets should look like before and after the iPhone and iPad.

From any other angle it looks wildly different than an iPad.

http://photos.appleinsider.com/samsungvsapple.003.082411.jpg

This is why anti-Apple sites only show you the front of the frame, to make you think the whole thing looked like an iPad. The patent does not just concern the front, but the whole design together, which must be copied in order to get an injunction. And that's what Samsung did.

My guess (I don't have Lion) is that this new little utility is designed to be launched from some other user facing application

Well, more like from the user-facing Wi-Fi menu extra (the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar on the right side); option-click on that and you get some additional stuff even in pre-Lion releases, such as signal information; as the AppleInsider article on this app notes, it's launched by the "Open Wi-Fi Diagnostics..." option+menu item for that menu extra.

As the AppleInsider article says, you launch it by holding down the "option" key and clicking on the Wi-Fi "menu extra" and selecting the "Open Wi-Fi Diagnostics..." menu item. It's "hidden" because it's in an option-click menu, not because it's in /System/Library/CoreServices (it's in /System/Library/CoreServices because it's intended to be launched from the aforementioned menu).

In a number of cases, option+click will bring up a menu with more items than the menu you get by just clicking has. I'm not sure whether Apple document that anywhere, so I'm not sure whether that stuff is "hidden" in the sense of being something Apple doesn't tell you about at all or "hidden" in the sense that you don't get it by default.

Is there a menu item in the menu for the Wi-Fi menu extra (either when you click on it or when you option-click on it) that starts the Wi-Fi diagnostics?

Yes.

If so, that might be why it's stuffed under CoreServices - the intent is to run it that way, not by double-clicking on it or running it from Launchpad.

Yes.

You are an idiot.

Excellent, a picture of a Samsung product that only looks like an iPad in one single picture, which happens to be the picture you used, of course, which came out in 2006 which was two years after Apple registered their design, which Samsung then went on to help them build. People didn't buy the iPad based on the Samsung Frame, but people did buy the Tab because of the iPad, or so Apples filling says, your mistake is thinking that I give a shit either way, simply because I can see the comedy and fact in what both sides are trying to say.

I don't like vague patents but I also think it's pretty clear that Samsung was trying to cash in on Apples success and that the Tab looks like an iPad, more so than I can say for any other tablet on the market.

And as much as Samsung want to protest otherwise, this looks nothing like an iPad.

I agree Google is just doing what it needs to do but I could do without their whining. They knew what they were getting into with Android, from potential Java lawsuits to getting heat from Apple, but they didn't have any choice. Google didn't have a choice because they couldn't let Apple have the power to lock them out of the mobile market and their OEM's had no choice because they were blind sided by Apple to the point where it could buy their entire industry out of petty cash.

In fact, I don't think they have sued anyone over software patents yet.

They sued Samsung over the slide to unlock patent. How trivial is that? Mind you, suing someone over rounded corners shows that they will stoop to the same level on the hardware side of things too.

Yes, you can obviously make a tablet without fear getting sued by Apple - but Samsung decided they'd rather copy the design.

Can you perhaps explain, then, why the iPad looks suspiciously like a Samsung media player from 2006, down to the aspect ratio and rounded corners? If anything, it seems that the iPad took inspiration from Samsung's design, and that the Galaxy Tab is simply continuing Samsung's internal design language.

So you accept that Apple had the CD in 2004, but than ignored that and used a PICTURE FRAME as an inspiration? A picture frame that looked like this? And if Samsung thought their design was so damn good it would make a good tablet (if you fixed the backside), why did the next version look like this?

Yes, you can obviously make a tablet without fear getting sued by Apple - but Samsung decided they'd rather copy the design.

Can you perhaps explain, then, why the iPad looks suspiciously like a Samsung media player from 2006, down to the aspect ratio and rounded corners? If anything, it seems that the iPad took inspiration from Samsung's design, and that the Galaxy Tab is simply continuing Samsung's internal design language.

So you accept that Apple had the CD in 2004, but than ignored that and used a PICTURE FRAME as an inspiration? A picture frame that looked like this? And if Samsung thought their design was so damn good it would make a good tablet (if you fixed the backside), why did the next version look like this?

The SFPD has already admitted that they did indeed go to this house. This is a lot to do about absolutely nothing.

Link

If by "absolutely nothing" you mean "a fourth amendment violation", then I concur.

The SFPD has already admitted that they did indeed go to this house. This is a lot to do about absolutely nothing.

Link

If you read the article you would understand that they are suing because Motorola is trying to extort Apple for more money than they normally license these patents that are part of F/RAND.

In the case of Samsung, they are being sued because they are a bunch of copy cats. You can't argue that they have blatantly ripped off Apple in every way possible, right down to the boxes their devices are packaged and sold in. Just look at this.

While Apple had to Photoshop the Galaxy Tab to fool the courts into thinking it looked like an iPad, your source was much more clever. They strategicly tilted the galaxy tab when comparing it to the iPad to shorten the apparent aspect ratio to closer match the iPad.

Do Apple lawyers write their articles? Probably not, cause whoever did that was much more clever than Apple lawyers.

It's really very unfair. Here we were, just defending our rightful monopoly over all things rectangular with screens on the front, and these uppity bastards with their "patents" on "foundational RF technologies" that they supposedly "invented" are getting all touchy about it. WTF?

Problem with your thinking is....no tablet looked anything remotely like the ipad until the ipad came out. Look at the picture at the bottom of the link to see the blatant copying Samsung did. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/30/apple_accuses_motorola_samsung_of_monopolizing_markets_with_patents.html

http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/

http://lawpundit.blogspot.com/2011/08/samsung-digital-picture-frame-2006-is.html

It's really very unfair. Here we were, just defending our rightful monopoly over all things rectangular with screens on the front, and these uppity bastards with their "patents" on "foundational RF technologies" that they supposedly "invented" are getting all touchy about it. WTF?

Problem with your thinking is....no tablet looked anything remotely like the ipad until the ipad came out. Look at the picture at the bottom of the link to see the blatant copying Samsung did. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/30/apple_accuses_motorola_samsung_of_monopolizing_markets_with_patents.html

Although HP took a $100,000,000 charge on an estimated 250,000 units, selling at a loss would probably have been cheaper. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/18/hp_eats_100_million_charge_to_cover_unsold_stockpile_of_touchpads.html

The loss leader approach could have been very successful and market disrupting.

TFA also doesn't touch on the other side of the coin. The tech consumer is a fickle consumer. If a product isn't available when the consumer wants it, they wander off to the next shiny thing - very few product segments have people willing to wait in lines for extended periods of time. This means that the company has to either not have a large amount of inventory at launch and let customers walk away or they need to have a large amount of and hope they get the customer counts they need.

If they get it wrong (either too little interest or too much interest), then the company has problems and the product is still-born. Of course this is what the "Marketing" team needs to get right (Marketing != Sales, Marketing = Market segmentation, analysis and demand generation). And in tech it's _really_ hard to get this right.

Except in typically /. fashion, you overlook that although this about the general look of the device, it also involves technology patents. It's also important to note the way Samsung's product line morphed after the iPhone and iPad hit the market. Various people on these forums ignore their products prior to the iPhone and iPad and claim these are 'obvious' while turing a blind eye to Samsung's products prior to the iPhone/iPad and then looking at those same products after the iPhone/iPad.

Apple's US case for a preliminary injunction against Samsung relates to three US Design Patents (D618,677, D593,087 and D504,889) and a technology patent (7,469,381 described as "list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display") which Apple has previously asserted against HTC and Nokia.

Apple's D677 and D087 patents relate to the design of the front face of the iPhone, while D889 pertains to the iPad's overall design. The '381 patent is "a clever method for displaying images on touch screens: when one uses a finger to drag a displayed page past its bottom edge, for example, and releases the finger, the page bounces back to fill the full screen."

http://photos.appleinsider.com/samsungvsapple.081911.jpg

The different before and after is pretty telling considering Samsung was a primary hardware manufacturer for various components. Their entire product line miraculously morphed into iPhone/iPad clones after Apple released them.

Hard to ignore the before and after pics.

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/23/samsung_cites_science_fiction_as_prior_art_in_us_ipad_patent_case.html

Except in typically /. fashion, you overlook that although this about the general look of the device, it also involves technology patents. It's also important to note the way Samsung's product line morphed after the iPhone and iPad hit the market. Various people on these forums ignore their products prior to the iPhone and iPad and claim these are 'obvious' while turing a blind eye to Samsung's products prior to the iPhone/iPad and then looking at those same products after the iPhone/iPad.

Apple's US case for a preliminary injunction against Samsung relates to three US Design Patents (D618,677, D593,087 and D504,889) and a technology patent (7,469,381 described as "list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display") which Apple has previously asserted against HTC and Nokia.

Apple's D677 and D087 patents relate to the design of the front face of the iPhone, while D889 pertains to the iPad's overall design. The '381 patent is "a clever method for displaying images on touch screens: when one uses a finger to drag a displayed page past its bottom edge, for example, and releases the finger, the page bounces back to fill the full screen."

http://photos.appleinsider.com/samsungvsapple.081911.jpg

The different before and after is pretty telling considering Samsung was a primary hardware manufacturer for various components. Their entire product line miraculously morphed into iPhone/iPad clones after Apple released them.

Hard to ignore the before and after pics.

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/23/samsung_cites_science_fiction_as_prior_art_in_us_ipad_patent_case.html

So there have been a number of articles about how the 3DS (with an actual 3D screen) is having a hard time competing against the iPhone. Sony's entry? Basically the same specs as an iPhone 4. Yeah the Vita has a faster cpu and hardware buttons, but it also has a lower resolution screen and the games will be more expensive. Needless to say all the rumors point to a new iPhone being released in the next few weeks which would probably close the gap on the cpu. Are hardware controls really going to sell $40 games?

Google is in it up to their heads and they are about to be buried:

Google fighting to suppress evidence Android willfully infringed upon Oracle's Java

Back in 2005, well before Android was released, Rubin wrote, "If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language - or - 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way."

Regarding that email, Mueller noted that the judge overseeing the case observed, "Google may have simply been brazen, preferring to roll the dice on possible litigation rather than to pay a fair price [to license Java]."

Rubin's email suggests that the Android group was fully aware that it had already invested a lot of work into its Java-related platform, too much so to shift to the adoption of Microsoft's alternative language and runtime.

However, Google also rejected a deal with Sun to pay for Java licensing, and Rubin's comments make it clear that the company planned to just keep going and see what would happen, inviting "enemies," and, presumably, their legal response.

"We need to negotiate a license for Java"

Nearly five years later, a second internal Google email known as the "Lindholm draft" stated, "What we've actually been asked to do (by [Google founders] Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We've been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."

That email caused federal judge Alsup to observe in a hearing that, as Florian reported, "a good trial lawyer would just need that document 'and the Magna Carta' (arguably the origin of common law) to win this case on Oracle's behalf and have Google found to infringe Oracle's rights willfully."

REF: http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?threadid=130086

That information is no where in TFA. This is all it says about Skyhook.

One alleged example has come to light in a private lawsuit, filed against Google by Skyhook Wireless Inc. The Boston-based company accused Google of using its market power to pressure smartphone makers into dropping Skyhook's location-sensing technology in favor of Google's own, competing service. Google has called it a "baseless complaint."

[Citation Needed]

More information on Google scraping competitors information and placing it on it's own Google Places service:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/10/ftc_begins_antitrust_investigation_into_google_android_web_services.html

OH NOES ! TEH MACZ ARE TAKING OVR !
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/07/13/apples_share_of_u_s_pc_market_rises_to_nearly_11_on_strong_growth.html
(10.7% for OS X running Macs only, iDevices not counted)

I, for one, welcome ... ;-)

I believe Apple are now supporting OSX server in non apple hardware, or at least within some hypervisor implementations...

No, they aren't, VMware extended their products to offer support, the ball was in Apples court but Apple just fucked the enterprise over with 10.7's EULA. You're only allowed to run it virtualized on Apple hardware. Additionally, If you want the hardware to actually be supported by Apple, you're pretty much relegated to virtualizing on top of OS X using Parallels, Fusion or VirtualBox as Apple will not support you running ESXi on their hardware. Not to mention, the Mac Mini and Pro aren't even server class hardware anyways.

He can also check this link: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/07/13/apples_share_of_u_s_pc_market_rises_to_nearly_11_on_strong_growth.html which shows Apple with a 10.7% share. The article explicitly says the iPad's are not included. I wonder if the GP is a paid Dell troll.

This is a variation on what I was trying to say, that we're not seeing more Mac sales, we're seeing fewer PC sales.

Nice theory, until you look at actual sales numbers. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/13/first_quarter_mac_sales_grow_9_6_in_us_as_rest_of_market_drops_10_7.html - and no, that isn't the only quarter.

It would be interesting to see how Apple stacks up in Asia, where the PC market is still growing at 12% per year..

They are selling like hotcakes:

Overseas growth driving Mac sales as US consumers hold out for new models

In the March quarter, Apple reported 28 percent growth in Mac sales for a total of 3.76 million units. In the Asia Pacific region, Mac sales grew 76 percent year over year.

Asia becomes fastest-growing Mac market

The company reported a 160% year-on-year jump in Asian Mac sales after selling a record-breaking 3.47 million computers in its third quarter ended June 26.