Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/10/tuesday-morning-news241017/
The original Samsung v Apple trial from 2011 is this morning’s designated gift that keeps on giving, with the whole thing being such a stunning testimony for patent law that it’s honestly incredible we still have patents at all. The latest summary, as described by Ars Technica, is that US Judge Lucy Koh has laid out the rules for the new trial in a 35-page PDF document, which will dictate how the hearings will proceed. This latest trial will determine the final outcome for the litigation of design patents between the two companies, and maybe in a few years, we’ll get a verdict.
Japanese company Emonster owns the “Animoji” trademark in the US, and they have now sued Apple for using the word to name a feature on the iPhone X. Emonster launched their own Animoji app back in 2014, which displays animated emoji in a loop like a GIF. For its part, Apple says that Emonster registered the trademark to a non-existent business, so it can’t own the trademark.
Apple COO Jeff Williams recently spoke at the 30th anniversary celebrations of TSMC, where he spoke about Apple’s seven year partnership with the chip manufacturer. Apple has invested billions into TSMC, with Williams saying that Apple essentially bet the company on TSMC to output leading edge technology at established technology volumes. There’s no full transcript of Williams’ words, as far as I can find, but MacRumors has a few more details on what he said.
The worldwide rollout of Apple Pay is continuing, with Apple VP of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey announcing that the mobile payments technology would soon be launching in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the UAE, bringing the total number of Apple Pay countries up to 20. More importantly, those 20 markets represent 70% of the world’s card transaction volume, with the other stunning statistic being that Apple Pay accounts for 90% of mobile contactless transactions where it’s active.
Apple SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federghi has confirmed there will not be an October special event. It’s getting a little late in the month for that, and because Federighi says they’re all Keynoted out for the season, that probably means we won’t get any more events this year. I’d expect the iMac Pro and HomePods to launch with very little fanfare.
Last weekend Apple released the fourth developer betas of iOS 11.1 and watchOS 4.1, and earlier this morning they released the fifth developer betas of the same. The fifth developer release of iOS 11.1 release is now also available to members of Apple’s open beta testing program.
Apple has blocked Thunderbolt devices using the TI82 chipset from connecting to Macs running Sierra or High Sierra. The good news is that this blocking is all done in software and can be worked around by disabling SIP and using a hack from a third party to restore functionality. There’s a few caveats, but if none of them apply or don’t particularly bother you, feel free to check out the workaround.
Brett Terpstra’s tip on rebooting your Mac suggests rebooting it in Safe Mode, which invalidates caches that would usually persist on reboot. Definitely one to add to your troubleshooting arsenal, if you have a Mac that’s not running properly and plagued by seemingly random issues.
MacStories tells us about Apollo, a new Reddit client for iOS created by a former Apple intern. While the app looks like it follows many standard iOS design conventions, that doesn’t prevent it from being a functional, customisable Reddit client that’s perfect for the full spectrum of Redditors.
The Verge wonders if the iPhone 8 Plus will be better than the iPhone X. While straight comparisons on the screen are hard to make due to small accounting differences, the familiarity of the iPhone that uses technology that we all know (and some we don’t) might mean that in some cases, you might want to opt for the iPhone 8 Plus over the iPhone X — provided you can even find one of the latter.