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Samsung’s Lawyers Ask Apple To See iPhone 5 and iPad 3

As part of the ongoing lawsuits between Apple and Samsung, started back in April when Apple sued Samsung over the “look and feel” of the Galaxy phones and tablets, This Is My Next points to an interesting piece of information that details how Samsung’s lawyers have asked Apple’s legal team to hand over “final, commercial versions” of the next-generation iPhone and iPad, whether they’ll be called iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPad 3 or not. Samsung is also asking to see the retail packaging design of the devices to evaluate if their future products, like the Droid Charge and the Galaxy Tab 10.1, could share similar features with them and be subject to legal action from Apple – that is, assuming both Apple and Samsung products come out at the same time in the next months.

This move comes after a judge ruled Samsung should hand over prototypes of the Droid Charge, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G and Galaxy S 2 to Apple’s external legal team for evaluation in regards to the lawsuit. Similarly to Apple’s request, Samsung says only the company’s lawyers would be able to see the iPhone 5 and iPad 3, with no one else inside the company (hardware engineers, executives, and so forth) getting access to the units.

Samsung’s asking for a court order requiring Apple to produce “the final, commercial versions” of the next-generation iPhone and iPad and their respective packaging by June 13, 2011, so it can evaluate whether there’ll be confusion between Samsung and Apple’s future products. If the final versions aren’t available, Samsung wants “the most current version of each to be produced instead.

Samsung says “fundamental fairness” requires Apple to give up its future products, since Samsung had to do the same. Tellingly, Samsung doesn’t reference any precedent or law to bolster this line of argument — it’s basically just asking the court to be nice.

Basing on “internet reports” and “Apple’s past practice”, Samsung believes new devices from Apple are in the works, and in order to avoid future confusion with their products they’re asking the court to apply the same procedure that granted Apple’s lawyers access to Samsung’s upcoming products. The obvious difference is that, while Samsung teased / demoed / announced / gave away some of these devices for free in the past (like the Galaxy Tabs at Google I/O), Apple’s usual veil of secrecy made sure there’s no official word yet of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 – just rumors. But as Samsung says Apple will discontinue existing devices when the new ones come out, they want to see final versions of production units of iPhones and iPads coming out later this year or in 2012. As Nilay Patel at This Is My Next points out, this is kind of strange considering Apple usually keeps old devices available for sale on its website even if new ones are available (example: iPhone 3GS).

So why is Samsung even pursuing this? I think it’s a calculated gamble for additional leverage. Apple and Samsung held negotiations for a year before giving up and heading to the courts, and I’m reliably informed that there haven’t been any substantive settlement discussions since Apple first filed its complaint. That means talks have been at a standstill for a long time now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung was trying to put some additional heat on Apple to try and kick negotiations back into gear.

The full breakdown of Samsung’s latest request can be read over at This Is My Next. After Apple’s initial lawsuit, Samsung fired back with countersuits in Europe and Asia, as well as in the United States.

Google Rolling Out Revamped Mobile Search UI

As noted by some of our readers overnight, Google is rolling out a revamped search interface which better showcases all the services offered by Google and allows you to easily and quickly switch between Search, Images, Gmail, Blogs and more. The new page design is not available for everyone (I can’t see it on my iPhone 4 in Italy), as it’s apparently slowly propagating internationally. MacStories reader Kevin, however, managed to grab some screenshots of the updated mobile interface; a new bar at the top provides links to Google Search, Images, Blogs and Gmail, and a “more” button to expand the bar and reveal the icons seen in the screenshots above. Another section of the new top bar displays the Google account you’re currently logged in with, as well as two tabs for Search and Apps. In the Apps section, Google has a Gmail shortcut that takes you to the usual mobile mail interface for iOS devices. Other services are likely visible in the Search tab of international Google domains, as our reader could only see the new design on Google.lu.

Google has updated several of its online services and web apps over the past months to be more functional on iOS and Android devices. Together with Instant and App Store search results, Google made lots of changes to Gmail mobile, improved the weather widget and completely revamped the Maps web app last week. Check out more screenshots below. [Thanks, Kevin] Read more

Selling A Copy Every Second, The Heist Overtakes Angry Birds

A few days ago we reported on a new game to hit the App Store, The Heist, which is an iPhone game from the team behind the popular MacHeist bundle. In just a few days it has done astoundingly well, managing to knock off Angry Birds from the top of the paid apps list in the App Store – which is no small feat.

It’s first day had 25,000 downloads according to The Loop, but on day two those figures skyrocketed to 89,798 purchases. Effectivelly that means for just its second day on sale, The Heist was selling more than 1 copy a second (there are 86,400 seconds in a day), supremely impressive for a paid app, even if the app is $0.99.

With revenues approaching $100,000 and sales already well above the 100,000 figure, its obvious to see that the MacHeist team have done a supremely good job in creating and marketing the game – some of the marketing included clues that were hidden in the first Twitter for Mac client this year. Will it sustain the top spot and keep off Angry Birds? Only time will tell.

[Via TechCrunch]

Mozilla Releases Firefox 6.0 Alpha

Firefox 6, also referred to as Aurora, has just begun its development cycle and a rough alpha release is now available for testing and feedback. As with any alpha, it is in a very unfinished state at this point, but there are some notable new features that are included.

Those new features include new features for Panaorama, enhanced HTML5 support, new developer tools, improved add-ons manager and new permission manager window. The permissions manager is interesting in that it will allow users to give different sites varying amounts of permissions for cookies, pop-ups, offline storage and location access, giving users greater privacy controls. Whilst developers will likely be impressed with new features including a ‘Scratchpad’ that allows them to build and test JavaScript snippets on a site.

You may be scratching your head wondering why Aurora has gone into alpha when it was only in the past week or so that Firefox 5 went into Beta – that is all due to Mozilla’s development cycle where three major versions must be in active development at any one time. As a result, Firefox 4 is the mainstream and stable release build whilst version 5 is in Beta and now version 6 is in development as an alpha (or Aurora) build. You can download the Firefox 6 alpha here.

[Via Electronista]

Third Build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 Seeded to Developers

Earlier today Apple seeded a new build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 to developers. The new build, weighing at the usual 1 GB, is available now for download in the Mac Dev Center and carries number 10K531. As with the previous versions, people familiar with the build tell us focus areas for testing haven’t changed – Apple still wants developers to test AirPort, Graphics Drivers, Mac App Store, Networking, QuickTime and VPN.

The releases of Mac OS X 10.6.8 have been following a weekly schedule, with new builds appearing on Thursdays and Fridays. The last build was released last week – with the WWDC coming up in less than two weeks and OS X Lion likely to follow shortly after (according to the latest rumors) or throughout the summer, Apple might release 10.6.8 as one last maintenance update to Snow Leopard before the new OS goes public.

iA Writer Launches on the Mac App Store

Fans of the well focused Writer for iPad can now find their favorite editor on the Mac App Store. Writer for the Mac has no settings, with your only available options to write in a window or full screen mode. Unlike Byword, there is no support for a dark or light interface, however, Writer does have some syntax formatting for Markdown. Like the iPad, Writer also allows you to focus on a single line of text at a time, the idea being that you’ll be more focus on writing (finishing the sentence and moving on) than being distracted by editing, rereading, and revisiting previously written lines of text in the draft process. Writer is entering the market a premium price of $17.99 (and that’s with the entry 10% off discount), and we’ll be certainly be giving the text editor a thorough test before publishing our definitive review. After the break, we’ve included a short demo-video showcasing the app’s features. For more information, you can also check out the announcement on the IA blog.

Read more

MacStories Product Review: SuperTooth Buddy

Despite our daily commutes, it’s almost required that we stay connected on our mobile devices during the long drive to and from work. Bluetooth accessories and various car kits have exploded in the automobile market, and many new vehicles come with phone syncing capabilities built in. As people consider the safety hazards of driving and choose to focus on the road instead of their phones, many purchase an in-car speaker or bluetooth headset so both hands can stay on the steering wheel. SuperTooth is one of the companies whom offers various solutions for motorcycles and automobiles to keep your hands off your ears. One of their latest products is small, pocketable, and doesn’t require a mechanic to install. Today we’re looking at the SuperTooth Buddy, a small handsfree Bluetooth speaker that goes where you go.

Read more

Spotify for Mac Will Soon Support Bowtie, Airfoil and Take Five

Those who have been looking for ways to control the Spotify application for Mac using third-party utilities, keyboard shortcuts and desktop music controllers will soon be able to do just that thanks to Spotify’s latest update on OS X. Upgraded to version 0.5.1 (version 0.5 brought a new UI as well as iPod sync and improved store experience), Spotify for Mac now comes with basic AppleScript support, meaning playback can be controlled externally without using the official app.

A new version of the Spotify client is out, version 0.5.1. On the Mac, this version contains a basic AppleScript dictionary for getting the current track and controlling playback. You will be auto-updated to version 0.5.1 of the client over the coming days, but you can download the update manually from www.spotify.com/download if you can’t wait.

This is an experimental feature at the moment, which means it may change or disappear in a future version depending on how feedback on the feature goes.

For those users who don’t want to manually fiddle with AppleScript and writing code, this also means other developers will take care of updating their apps to include Spotify integration. The first three big names posted on the Spotify blog are exactly what I’ve been personally looking forward to: Bowtie, the Iconfactory’s Take Five for Mac and Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil will soon support Spotify playback and (hopefully) album artwork display. Take Five (our review) and Airfoil (our review) are the two apps I’ll make sure to test right away as they enable Spotify controls, considering how much I use them on a daily basis to un-pause music from iTunes and send audio around the house from any Mac app.

On a side note, a few weeks ago the Spotify team also said on the company’s Twitter account that they’re actively developing an iPad app, which should be available soon.

iOS 5 Won’t Feature Apple’s Maps Service, Google Maps Still In?

Following today’s reports on iOS 5 coming with completely revamped notifications and widgets, 9to5google claims the next major version of iOS 5 won’t feature the maps service Apple was rumored to be working on, but it will keep using Google Maps as in the current versions of iOS.

Now, sources have told 9to5Google that although Apple is working to improve the iOS Maps application, iOS 5 will not bring an Apple developed maps service and Google Maps is still in. Besides Apple’s purchase of both Placebase and Poly9, some speculated that Apple is building their own maps service to either compete with Google or step away from their input into iOS.

The speculation on a map service developed by Apple to replace Google Maps integration on iOS devices indeed started after the company purchased Poly9 and Placebase – two companies focused on mapping softwares and location databases – also followed by various job postings Apple put up on its site, asking for map engineers and navigation experts to bring Maps for iOS “to the next level.” Putting this information together, many believed Apple skipped iOS 4 only to bring its new and improved maps to iOS 5, set to become publicly available later this year, perhaps in the Fall. Apple also briefly mentioned in the location tracking Q&A that they’re building an “improved traffic service” to launch in the next couple of years, giving more credence to the reports of Apple developing its own system, rather than an additional layer to Google Maps.

Others also suggested the disputes between Steve Jobs and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as the competition with Android might be the reason behind Apple’s intention to drop Google Maps from iOS. While it might be true that Apple would rather use its own map solution rather than someone else’s, it’s worth noting that Google Maps is the de-facto solution for online maps (used by millions of users every day) and other Google services are embedded in iOS, such as Gmail integration and search.