Following last month's announcement that Apple and Samsung had agreed to high-level talks involving the two companies' CEOs in an attempt to resolve ongoing patent litigation, Reuters provides a preview of the session set to begin today in San Francisco. The talks, which will be mediated by a federal judge, are scheduled to take place over the next two days.

Commenting before his departure to the United States for the talks, Samsung mobile division chief JK Shin noted that while significant differences between Apple and Samsung still exist, a number of "negotiation options" remain on the table."There is still a big gap in the patent war with Apple," JK Shin said, before departing for the United States for the mediation talks. "But we...

Russian newspaper Izvestia reports [Google translation] that the organizers behind the Skolkovo technology park near Moscow are currently in talks with a number of high-profile companies including Apple, Google, and Facebook about locating research and development facilities in the area. Skolkovo has already landed agreements with Microsoft, IBM, General Electric, Cisco, and others, with the project's backers envisioning the region becoming Russia's version of Silicon Valley bolstered by dozens of major corporations.

According to the report, Apple officials in Moscow declined to comment on the claims, but Skolkovo executive Roman Romanovsky indicated that the two sides...

Aaron Sorkin, the creative genius behind The Social Network, The West Wing, and upcoming HBO show The Newsroom was recently confirmed as the screenwriter for Sony's upcoming movie based on Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs -- though, Sorkin himself says he has a lot of work to do.

Reuters reports that Sorkin held an interview with reporters and said he was still looking for something in Jobs' life to hang the movie on.
Sorkin noted that "The Social Network" saw the Facebook story through the lens of an acrimonious lawsuit that pitted CEO Mark Zuckerberg against his Harvard friends over the creation of the social...

Speaking at Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference earlier this week, J. Crew CEO and Apple board member Mickey Drexler shared his thoughts (via Business Insider) on several topics related to Apple, including Steve Jobs' dream to build an "iCar" that would have revolutionized the automobile industry. While the idea obviously never developed very far, it is an intriguing glimpse into Jobs' interests and ambitions.

Drexler also mentioned in passing that Apple will be making a push into the living room "in the near future", fueling further interest in and speculation on an Apple television set and perhaps ultimately content deals that could remake how television content is consumed.Look at the car business – it's a tragedy in America. Who's designing the cars? They talk...

TUAW reports that Apple will be scaling back on systemwide "hotkey" apps, which allow users to call up other apps and functions, in the Mac App Store as of June 1, the same date the company's sandboxing requirements are scheduled to go into effect.Apparently, Apple will allow hotkey apps that are already in the Mac App Store before June to offer only bug fixes after that. New sandboxed apps and any apps that add features (i.e. non-bugfix releases) will not be allowed to support hotkeys.

TUAW has been told that Apple will be rejecting all MAS apps with hotkey functionality starting June 1, regardless of whether the new features are hotkey related or not. Basically, if you're developing one of those apps, an app that assumes you can still add hotkeys, don't bother submitting...

On May 17, 2012, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple revealing a new manufacturing process. The main focus of this particular invention concerns the creation of devices with a unitary housing without seams or gaps. In March of this year we learned of Apple's use of ultrasonic welding in context with fastening parts within devices such as the iPhone. Today we learn of ultrasonic welding being used in conjunction with metal foil so as to create seamless form factors. It's the kind of stuff that keeps Sir Ive giggling in his sleep....

Exploring an observation initially made by iOS hacker @planetbeing, Shoutpedia notes that Apple has mysteriously begun censoring the word "jailbreak" in the U.S. iTunes Store. While not all mentions of the word are affected, the vast majority of them across all content types are currently being censored to "j*******k".

Apple has long objected to the jailbreaking process, which opens up iOS devices for installation of apps from non-Apple approved sources and other system tweaks. But it is unclear what the company is trying to achieve with its iTunes Store censoring, which affects such content as Thin Lizzy's song and album of that name and an episode of the The Roy Rogers Show from the early 1950s.

The censoring appears to only affect the U.S. iTunes Store at the present time, but it has been in effect for over...

Earlier this month, we noted that Apple had filed a claim with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) seeking to gain ownership of the iPhone5.com domain, which had hosted a small independent discussion forum for the past year and a half.

The Next Web now reports that the case has been terminated, indicating that the dispute has been resolved without WIPO having had to render a decision. The domain is now under the control of brand protection firm Corporation Service Company, presumably on Apple's behalf, and simply displays a blank page.

Apple's move to take possession of the iPhone5.com domain naturally fuels speculation that it will use the name for its next-generation iPhone, although that is not necessarily the case. Given the popularity of the...

Security firm Symantec previously estimated that the authors of the Flashback malware that affected hundreds of thousands of Macs at its peak could have been generating up to $10,000 per day by hijacking users' ad clicks. Further analysis from the company suggests that the developers may have only earned $14,000 over the three weeks the malware was active.
From our analysis we have seen that, for a three-week period starting in April, the botnet displayed over 10 million ads on compromised computers but only a small percentage of users who were shown ads actually clicked them, with close to 400,000 ads being clicked. These numbers earned the attackers $14,000 in these three weeks, although it is worth mentioning that earning the money is only one part of the puzzle—actually...

With Apple's MacBook Pro line now widely rumored to be gaining ultra high-resolution "Retina" or "HiDPI" displays at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference, CNET reports that such panels are already available in the supply chain and that they carry price premiums of up to $100 over their non-Retina counterparts. But what remains to be seen is whether that price difference will be passed along to consumers or if Apple will find ways to cut costs in other areas in order to maintain its existing price points.DisplaySearch Senior Analyst Richard Shim says that super high-resolution 13.3-inch and 15.4-inch panels that Apple would be a prime candidate to use are already available from suppliers.

"We're seeing it at 15.4 (inches)," Shim said in an interview yesterday. "You can get it."According to Shim, a Retina 15.4-inch display at 2880x1800 resolution for a density...

Digitimes' poor track record has been thrust into the spotlight in recent days, but that hasn't stopped one of the Taiwanese news site's reports from having a major effect on stock prices for Samsung and Hynix. The report from earlier this week claims that Apple has placed "huge" orders for DRAM chips with Elpida, soaking up half of the capacity at the firm's main plant in Hiroshima, Japan.

1 GB of Elpida DRAM in third-generation iPad (Source: iFixit)

As noted by Reuters, the rumor has had a significant effect on fellow DRAM manufacturers Samsung and Hynix, with Samsung losing $10 billion in market value today in a 6% stock decline. The smaller Hynix was down...

Last December, Apple won a U.S. International Trade Commission case against HTC, with the agency ruling that several of HTC's handsets infringed upon a pair of Apple-held patents. The agency's ruling included a ban on the import of infringing devices beginning in April, although HTC quickly responded to say that it had already designed a workaround for the issue in question.

But as reported by The Verge late yesterday, U.S. Customs officials have delayed shipments of HTC's new One X and Evo 4G LTE handsets into the United States as it investigates whether those handsets also infringe upon Apple's patents.We've learned today that the One X and Evo 4G LTE are indefinitely delayed at Customs as the agency investigates patent issues with Apple, and sources have...

Tim Cook met with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) today. It is unknown what the topic of discussion was, but it's possible that Tim Cook was lobbying the Mr. Boehner to pass a tax holiday that would allow Apple and other companies with large overseas tax holdings to bring back their earnings at a lower corporate tax rate.

As of its most recent earnings call, Apple held $74 billion of its $110 billion in cash and marketable securities offshore.

...

With long-running rumors of ultra high-resolution "Retina" displays for Apple's next-generation MacBook Pro receiving a significant boost with reports from several sources surfacing yesterday and similar upgrades now being rumored for the iMac, fans of the MacBook Air have been awaiting word on when they might expect Apple's smallest Mac notebooks to gain the feature.

9to5Mac now reports that Apple is indeed unsurprisingly planning to bring Retina displays to the MacBook Air, with that upgrade being the most significant change for the next-generation...

Bloomberg briefly reports that Apple and Disney are in talks to bring sports network ESPN's WatchESPN application [App Store] to the Apple TV set-top box.ESPN subscribers with AppleTV would gain access to the network’s Internet service on their TV sets. [Sean] Bratches, the network’s executive vice president of affiliate and advertising sales, spoke in an interview today.The brief report doesn't specify exactly how access to the WatchESPN functionality on the Apple TV would work, but currently customers of a number of cable and Internet companies have varying levels of access to the app's content on iOS and other platforms, which includes nearly all of ESPN's live broadcasts including online-only ESPN3 content.

Currently, cable...

Business Insider reports on a new research note from Macquarie analyst Ben Schacter, who claims that Google is working to bring a version of its Chrome browser to iOS devices. According to the report, Apple "may already be reviewing" the app, which could debut before the end of the quarter.

Google Chrome browser for Android

Google currently splits ad revenue share with Apple for Google searches performed through Safari, a deal that currently sees Google paying Apple roughly $1 billion per year. With a potential Chrome browser for iOS leading to Google keeping all revenue for searches through the browser for itself, Google could see a significant financial benefit if it can achieve a substantial user base on iOS.

The...

As long ago as last November, SemiAccurate claimed that Apple would be switching back to NVIDIA from AMD for the graphics chips in the next-generation MacBook Pro. With MacBook Pro rumors flooding out today, that claim is gathering renewed momentum from several sources.

In its roundup of the latest MacBook Pro rumors, ABC News specifically claims that Apple will be using NVIDIA graphics chips in the new MacBook Pro reportedly set for introduction at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference.The new laptops are expected to be powered by Intel’s latest processors, called Ivy Bridge. Those processors will be faster than the current generation of Intel...

Seventeen more states have joined the antitrust lawsuit against Apple and several book publishing houses over the pricing of ebooks. Perhaps more interesting are certain details released in the latest filing that were previously redacted, including one from Steve Jobs. Portions of this email have been seen before, but this is the first chance the public has had to see a major negotiation written by the former CEO.

As reported by PaidContent, Steve Jobs became directly involved in the pricing negotiations after Apple executive "Eddy Cue could not secure one of the Conspiring Publisher’s commitment directly from an executive." Jobs "wrote to an executive at the parent company, in part":...

While Apple moved fairly quickly to release software tools for OS X Lion and Snow Leopard to remove the Flashback malware from infected systems and patch the Java vulnerability it exploited, users of earlier operating system versions have remained vulnerable.

Apple addressed that issue today for users of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, releasing Leopard Flashback Removal Security Update to clean infected systems and disable the Java plug-in in Safari.This update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware. If the Flashback malware is found, a dialog will notify you that malware was removed. In some cases, the update may need to restart your computer in order to completely remove the Flashback malware.

To improve the security of your Mac, this update also disables the Java plug-in in Safari. For instructions on how to re-enable it,...

The Wall Street Journal briefly reports that Apple is planning to unveil an upgrade to iCloud at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), with one of the main new features being a photo-sharing functionality.The new features, expected to be announced at Apple's world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.Apple also appears to be looking to extend the Photo Stream feature to videos, allowing users to access their personal videos through iCloud. Finally, the report confirms that the Notes and...

Computing.co.uk reports on comments from the Chief Technology Officer of Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, who claims that his firm has been invited by Apple to probe security issues on OS X and to assess the platform's vulnerabilities.Speaking exclusively to Computing, Kaspersky CTO Nikolai Grebennikov said his firm had recently begun the process of analysing the Mac OS platform at Apple's request.

"Mac OS is really vulnerable," he claimed, "and Apple recently invited us to improve its security. We've begun an analysis of its vulnerabilities, and the malware targeting it," said Grebennikov.Grebennikov believes that Apple "doesn't pay enough attention to security", citing the Java vulnerability that led to hundreds of thousands of...

The casting of Ashton Kutcher in the role of Steve Jobs in an upcoming independent film focusing on the Apple co-founder's life has certainly generated a significant amount of attention for the project, despite the fact that the film is a completely separate effort from the high-profile planned Sony Pictures film to be based on Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Jobs.

With filming on the indie film starring Kutcher having already begun with the star on break from his work on the TV show Two and a Half Men, TMZ shares a few photos of Kutcher seen wearing Jobs' trademark outfit of a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. The photos were reportedly taken on Friday while...

Among Apple's early competitors in the tablet market, HP gained a significant amount of attention as it initially sought to build its niche around webOS, which it acquired along with Palm in early 2010. HP introduced its webOS-based TouchPad in early 2011, launching the device on July 1 of that year only to exit the tablet and smartphone business just six weeks later.

HP then successfully sold off its backlog of TouchPads at $99 fire sale prices, announcing that it would make webOS an...

Finnish game studio Rovio has begun to drop hints about its next game -- and its first outside the Angry Birdiverse. Amazing Alex will be based on the game Casey's Contraptions, which Rovio recently acquired.

Rovio CEO Mikael Hed told a Finnish TV channel that the game will focus on Alex, "a curious young boy who loves to build things." The Next Web quotes Ville Jeijari, Rovio's VP of franchise development:

The "gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre," adding "We are...

As noted by Steven Stroughton-Smith (via 9to5Mac), Apple appears to be testing a revised iCloud.com portal at beta.icloud.com that shows two additional icons for Notes and Reminders in the background of the login screen. The standard iCloud.com portal displays only icons for Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Find My iPhone, and iWork.

Attempts to log in through the beta portal are unsuccessful, and even access to the portal has become intermittent, with it occasionally showing broken images or simply redirecting to Apple's standard iCloud information page.

The development comes just days after Apple was observed...

9to5Mac reports that Apple will moving away from Google Maps services in iOS 6, making the transition to an in-house mapping service that included 3D views. According to the report, Apple's prior acquisitions of mapping companies Placebase and Poly9 are ready to bear fruit, with last year's purchase of 3D mapping firm C3 Technologies rounding out the suite of services.The most important aspect of the new Maps application is a powerful new 3D mode. The 3D mode does not come enabled by default, but users simply need to click a 3D button that is conveniently and visibly stored in the app. Perhaps under the fold like the current traffic, pin, and map view buttons. This 3D mode is said to essentially be technology straight from C3 Technologies: beautiful, realisitic...

With the launch of the new iPad, equipped with 4G LTE cellular data, it seems likely that the next iPhone will be similarly supplied. Until then, a new startup called FreedomPop is rolling out a new iPhone case/sled that includes a Wi-Fi hotspot powered by the Clearwire 4G network.

FreedomPop, being backed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, is offering the $99 device with 500MB of free data use each month, and should ship by the end of the summer. All Things D reports that the company is hoping to act as an alternative to throttled data services provided by native carriers.

"The timing couldn’t be better for our product," said FreedomPop VP of Product Mauricio Sastre in a...

iMore reports that Apple is "currently targeting" an October launch for a smaller iPad, with the device carrying a display of roughly 7 inches and being priced in the $200-$250 range. According to our source, which has proven reliable in the past, the reason for such aggressive pricing is to do to the tablet market what Apple did to the MP3 market in 2004 with the expansion of the iPod product line -- leave absolutely no space for competitors.Interestingly, the report's source claims that the 7-inch iPad will be "identical in every way" to the current iPad with the exception of the display size, apparently including a Retina display. That would give the smaller iPad a pixel density roughly identical to that of the iPhone 4S.

It remains unclear how Apple would be able to meet a $200-$250 price point for the smaller iPad given the apparent specs, although the device will...

Last week, Network World shared a long-lost internal Apple video from 1984 featuring a brief cameo by Steve Jobs in the role of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Given the early 1980s production value and Apple's alternate universe take on its battle with IBM, the video naturally sparked an array of reactions from around the Apple community,

But now another internal Apple video from the same timeframe is gaining some renewed attention for its inclusion of Jobs in another cameo appearance. The video, entitled "Blue Busters", is a spoof of the movie "Ghostbuster" using a reworked version of the film's theme song. And while edited clips of the video including an appearance by Steve Wozniak have been floating around for some time, Network World earlier this week...

Following a claim earlier this week that Apple had made its first settlement offer to Proview in the ongoing dispute over the "iPad" trademark in China, The Next Web now points to a report from Sina.com [Google translation] claiming that Apple's offer amounted to 100 million yuan, equivalent to $16 million.

That marks a substantial increase over the $55,000 purchase price in the original deal between Proview's Taiwanese arm and a dummy corporation set by Apple to acquire the trademark in a number of...

Apple today released OS X 10.7.4, the fourth maintenance update to OS X Lion. The update is currently available via Software Update and should appear on Apple's download pages soon.The 10.7.4 update is recommended for all OS X Lion users and includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac including fixes that:

- Resolve an issue where the “Reopen windows when logging back in” setting is always enabled

- Improve compatibility with certain British third-party USB keyboards

- Address an issue that may prevent files from being saved to a server

- Improve the reliability of copying files to an SMB serverDetailed information is available in the full release notes. Notably, the update also includes a fix for the...

Apple customers who purchased an iPod between September 12, 2006 and March 31, 2009 are being informed via email that they are being included in a class-action lawsuit filed against Apple in 2004 by RealNetworks. The lawsuit was granted class-action status by the courts last year and includes millions of customers who purchased any of a broad number of iPod music players. Notices are being distributed to customers covered by the class, directing them to the lawsuit's webpage.

The class-action suit was filed in January 2005 by a customer complaining about the exclusive nature of Apple's digital music offerings encoded with FairPlay, preventing users from playing music purchased from the iTunes Store on other companies' music players and other music stores' digital offerings from being played on iPods. In...

Roughly two weeks after the debut of a new Apple retail store in Madrid, Apple is preparing to open another store in Spain. As noted by ifoAppleStore, Apple has officially announced that the grand opening of its Nueva Condomina store in Murcia will take place on Saturday, May 12.The seventh Apple retail store in Spain will open this Saturday inside the Nueva Condomina shopping mall in the southern city of Murcia. The store fills in coverage along the Mediterranean coast of the country between existing stores in Valencia and Marbella.

The report notes that Apple is expected to open four more stores in Spain over the next year, marking a substantial expansion of the company's presence in the country.

...

Fortune yesterday released its 2012 "Fortune 500" list, ranking America's largest companies by revenue. As a result of its continued strong growth, Apple rose 18 spots from last year's rankings to land at #17 in the new rankings, which are based on companies' fiscal year reports.The company emerged from the tragic passing of co-founder Steve Jobs saddened but in no perceptible way weakened. Under CEO Tim Cook, the company continued pumping out new products -- like a significantly upgraded version of the iPad tablet. Apple nearly doubled its earnings per share in 2011, compared to 2010. That helped nudge management to announce plans for the firm's first dividend since 1995, returning some of the $97.6 billion in cash it had...

As revealed by Apple's iPad selection page for Latin America, the new iPad will be launching in 13 new countries in that region this Friday, May 11. The most significant new addition is Brazil, where Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn has been ramping up production on iPhone and iPad production.

A further examination of Apple's country-specific store pages reveals that this weekend's iPad launch will actually include a total of 30 countries. The majority of those countries will see the new iPad launch on Friday, May 11, but seven countries in the Middle East will debute the new iPad on Saturday, May 12. The full list of launch countries includes:

May 11: Argentina, Aruba, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil,...

Apple appears to be testing a notification service on the iCloud website. The test message appears at the top of the browser window upon logging into iCloud.com.

Apple introduced a new notification system in iOS 5 and has announced that a similar feature will be coming to the Mac in the Mountain Lion operating system this summer.

It's possible that Apple will include syncing code in iCloud to share notifications across devices, for calendar alerts and new mail, or the notifications may be used for some other purpose.

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The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of twenty-one newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. This past Sunday we reported on a newly discovered European patent application from Apple relating to Display-Integrated Cellular Antennas for a future MacBook 4G and today Apple chalks up their thirteenth patent win on this hot trend. Other patents ......

Last year, both AT&T and Verizon acknowledged that they were working on offering shared data plans, which would allow multiple devices owned by a single user or members of a family to draw data from a single monthly allotment. But while there has been evidence that Verizon is making progress on its plans, AT&T has been relatively quiet about its efforts aside from acknowledging that billing and other issues were complicating the work.

CNET now reports, however, that AT&T may be close to launching its shared data plans. The news comes from AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega, who indicates that the carrier knows what it intends to...

Apple today released iOS 5.1.1, offering bug fixes and other improvements for recent models of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:

- Improves reliability of using HDR option for photos taken using the Lock Screen shortcut

- Addresses bugs that could prevent the new iPad from switching between 2G and 3G networks

- Fixes bugs that affected AirPlay video playback in some circumstances

- Improved reliability for syncing Safari bookmarks and Reading List

- Fixes an issue where 'Unable to purchase' alert could be displayed after successful purchase

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222iOS 5.1.1, which arrives as Build 9B206, is available for the following devices via iTunes, Apple's site, and over-the-air download directly from the...