All the New Stuff in iOS 7

Apple announced iOS 7 with a ton of new features, a complete overhaul to the interface, and plenty more. Here are all the new features.

New User Interface
The biggest difference with iOS 7 is a brand new interface. From the lock screen to each of the apps, the entire system is overhauled. Apple has moved away from the ridiculed skeuomorphic design in favor of a simpler look. Calendar, messages, weather, mail, the notification center, and more have been overhauled with the new look.

Control Center
Control Center adds a quick-toggles bar to iOS so you can change brightness, add a flashlight, do not disturb, turn on airplane mode, and plenty more.

Multitasking
Multitasking now works for all apps. iOS tracks your app usage and decides when and how to give an app background cycles. So, if you're opening something like Facebook all the time, then Facebook is updated more often. Push notifications also trigger a background state in apps so that when you open the app it'll be updated. Switching between apps is also done with a new gesture and a swipe that shows the full app instead of just an icon.

Safari
Safari gets a new full-screen mode, as well as a new quick search feature. With a tap at the top of the screen you get instant access to a search field that looks both online and in page. The iCloud Keychain announced for Mavericks is also added into Safari. Tabs also get a new look with vertical scrolling, and the eight tab limit is removed.

AirDrop 
Airdrop allows you to instantly share any file in an app that supports it. This can be done with any other iPhone user near you, or over messages, mail, or social networks. It's peer-to-peer WiFi, and works on the most recent devices.

Camera and Photos
The camera is overhauled to include video, a new square camera, panorama, widescreen camera, and also has new photo filters. The Photos app is also redone, and automatically organizes your photos into "Moments" based on where and when they were taken. Sharing is also expanded to include Mail, AirDrop, iCloud, Twitter, and Facebook. The iCloud photo sharing gets a new shared photos setting where you can create shared photo streams with friends where anyone can upload pictures and comment on pictures.

Siri
Siri now has a new voice, including both male and female voices in several languages. Siri also gets a little smarter and can now recognize commands like, "increase brightness," or "play last voicemail." Services like Wikipedia, Bing, and Twitter are integrated right into Siri.

iOS in the Car
iOS 7 adds support for various car models and their in-car displays. In supported devices, iOS will be able to display Maps, messages, and more.

The App Store
The App Store now has a few new discovery methods. You can search for apps based on age range, or by apps that popular based on your location. The App Store also now updates your apps automatically.

Music
The Music app also gets a visual overhaul. All your music from iCloud and your local library are integrated in one library. A new sideways interface is also added to flip through your albums.

iTunes RadioiTunes Radio is integrated directly into the Music app. Like Pandora or Spotify Radio, iTunes Radio is essentially a streaming radio station that exists within the Music app. Everything you play is synced across your devices so you can easily track down songs you've heard. On top of iOS, it's built into iTunes and the AppleTV. The service is free with ads, or ad-free if you're an iTunes Match subscriber.

Activation Lock
New to the Find My iPhone function is the ability to lock out thieves from your iOS device. If your phone is stolen you can set it so it can't be activated again without your iTunes password.

The iOS 7 beta is available to developers today, and will be launching publicly this fall for the iPhone 4 and above, iPad mini, and iPad 2 and above.

Source: Lifehacker

‘Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on [patents] exceeded spending on research and development of new products’

Tonight—a big technology patent deep-dive by The New York Times (non-paginated), with some super-interesting reporting [and I rarely say that about anything with 'Patents' in the title] and lots of Apple sourcing. (Interactive: Three Apple patents that were involved in recent lawsuits and a new version of the patent war map.) Some interesting notes:

• Vlingo, which is the engine behind Samsung’s S-Voice Siri competitor, almost went bankrupt defending itself from Nuance. Winning one case cost it $3M and forced it to sell itself to Nuance.
• In 2006, Apple settled with Creative over the original iPod MP3 player design.  Steve Jobs said “Creative is very fortunate to have been granted this early patent.” Jobs immediately gathered execs afterwards and did soemthing different with iPhone. While Apple had long been adept at filing patents, when it came to the new iPhone, “we’re going to patent it all,” he declared, according to a former executive. Apple’s engineers were asked to participate in monthly “invention disclosure sessions.”
• In the last decade, the number of patent applications submitted by Apple each year has risen almost tenfold.
• “If we can’t protect our intellectual property, then we won’t spend millions creating products like the iPhone,” a former Apple executive said, noting that some of Apple’s patents, like the “slide to unlock” feature on the iPhone, took years to perfect. The concept “might seem obvious now, but that’s only after we spent millions figuring it out,” the executive said. “Other companies shouldn’t be able to steal that without compensating us. That’s why the patent system exists.”
• The “Siri Patent” #8,086,604 took 10 attempts to get approved. Today, though the patent was not among those Vlingo and Nuance fought over, it is known as the Siri patent because it is widely viewed as one of the linchpins of Apple’s strategy to protect its smartphone technologies.
• “When I get an application, I basically have two days to research and write a 10- to 20-page term paper on why I think it should be approved or rejected,” said Robert Budens, a 22-year patent examiner and president of the examiners’ labor union. “I’m not going to pretend like we get it right every time.”
• Some experts worry that Apple’s broad patents may give the company control of technologies that, over the last seven years, have been independently developed at dozens of companies and have become central to many devices.“Apple could get a chokehold on the smartphone industry,” said Tim O’Reilly, a publisher of computer guides and a software patent critic. “A patent is a government-sanctioned monopoly, and we should be very cautious about handing those out.”

Apple, for its part, issued the following statement to the NYT:

“Apple has always stood for innovation,” the company wrote in a statement in response to questions from The New York Times. “To protect our inventions, we have patented many of the new technologies in these groundbreaking and category-defining products. In the rare cases when we take legal action over a patent dispute, it’s only as a last resort.
“We think companies should dream up their own products rather than willfully copying ours, and in August a jury in California reached the same conclusion,” the statement said.

http://9to5mac.com

Now Samsung Is Suing Apple Over the iPhone 5

The patent brawl between Samsung and Apple marches on. Samsung on Tuesday filed amendment documents requesting to add the iPhone 5 to its existing suit against the Cupertino company.


Samsung accuses Apple’s latest smartphone of infringing eight of its patents, the same ones it claims Apple’s new iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, and iPod touch also infringe. In its filing, Samsung states, “The iPhone 5 has the same accused functionality as the previously accused versions of the iPhone, so the proof of infringement of the patents-in-suit by the iPhone 5 is the same as for other Apple devices already accused of infringement in this litigation.”


To justify adding the iPhone 5 to the previous filing, Samsung states in its amendment that it “could not have known whether the rumored iPhone 5 would practice its patented technologies when it filed its infringement contentions on June 15. The product was not on the market at that time and could not have been included in the contentions.”


Nonetheless, Samsung had already threatened to sue Apple over the iPhone 5 this month. And earlier reports indicated that Samsung had planned to add the iPhone 5 to its list of infringing Apple devices once it confirmed that the smartphone had 4G LTE capability.


The news comes just over month after a U.S. jury found Samsung guilty of violating many of Apple’s design patents. The jury decided Samsung owed Apple close to $1.05 billion in damages.