HTC, a Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer, filed a complaint Tuesday against Apple in the U.S. District Court of Delaware over patent infringements. READ MORE
Citing a Japanese tech news site with a history of accurate Apple predictions, CNET reports that the company is expected to unveil the next generation iPhone 5 on Sept. 7 along with a new lineup of iPods. Most interestingly though, CNET points to a different report that claims Apple also will be launching a free cloud-based iPhone alongside the full iPhone 5. READ MORE
Apple is making it a lot easier for consumers to retire their old iPhones, PCs, and even, gulp, iPads. The company is now letting consumers trade in their old devices for Apple gift cards as part of its recycling program. And users can trade in their gadgets for free. Previously, the company had a $30 charge (to cover shipping costs) and there was no trade-in value placed on devices. READ MORE
Chances are you’ve heard all about Square, a small dongle that plugs into the earphone jack of iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, and Android devices, turning them into a wireless credit-card swipe machine. It’s a great idea, it turns out, but not an overly secure one. READ MORE
As Apple switches to its new A6 chip next year, will the company merge its iOS operating system, used in iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches with the Mac OS X operating system (currently at version 10.7 or “Lion”)? READ MORE
Apple has long had to deal with unscrupulous counterfeiters creating and hawking fake iPods and iPhones–any fashion house would say it’s the price for having the sexiest products–but now the company is faced with deception on a much larger scale, with whole retail locations set up to look like authentic Apple stores (with varying degrees of success) popping up around the globe. Ironically, these stores are often selling authentic Apple products–likely the result of profitable and illegal resale efforts. READ MORE
A new product called Pic3D, from Japanese company Global Wave, aims to bring 3D viewing to any TV or mobile device. Pic3D is a thin sheet of transparent film made with the same lenticular lens system used in some 3D television screens; the sheet is fitted over an existing mobile phone or television to provide a glasses-free 3D experience when video is played through the Pic3D media player application (side-by-side 3D video format only). READ MORE
For a company that so vigorously defends its own patents, Apple’s claims that patents owned by Personal Audio LLC were “invalid” sound more than a little odd. And a jury in the Eastern district of Texas agrees. They have ordered Apple to pay Personal Audio $8 million for infringing on the company’s playlist patents. Personal Audio had sued for $84 million, reports Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng. READ MORE
Does the back of your desk look anything like ours? We suspect it does: A snake’s nest of cables connecting the printer to the PC to the monitor to the speakers to the docks for various wireless devices. It looks awful, catches easily on anything, gathers dust, and to add insult to esthetic injury, those cables in toto probably cost a couple of hundred bucks. READ MORE
The Dot lens hasn’t gotten beyond a prototype yet, but last-generation iPhone and iPod owners are already drooling. This neat little lens-and-app combo lets these devices shoot video in 360 degrees, so nothing need ever be lost again because it was out of frame. READ MORE
