Hasta La Gadget!

There’s been gnashing of teeth between Apple and Samsung in courts across the globe for a while now, but Australia’s temporary injunction against the sale of a Samsung tablet is a huge win for Apple, and could be very bad for the Android platform.

A court in Australia ruled today that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 cannot be sold in the country because it infringes on two patents held by Apple relating to multitouch. Because the patents are so broad, other Android device makers could find themselves mired in similar litigation, FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller said.

The two patents in question describe a “multipoint touchscreen” and a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics.” (Steve Jobs is listed as an inventor of the latter.) The preliminary injunction could have drastic effects for Samsung, leaving the tablet “commercially dead” in Australia and causing the company to miss out on lucrative holiday sales.

Samsung commented in a written statement, “We are disappointed with this ruling and Samsung will be seeking legal advice on its options.” Apple did not respond to a request for comment for Wired.com.

Apple began battling Samsung in court over design-related patents in April. In that lawsuit, Apple claimed that similarities between Samsung’s products and Apple’s iPhone and iPad were so similar it was “beyond the realm of coincidence.” Apple has continued to sue Samsung in courts across the world, including Germany, The Netherlands and Australia. The launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was initially delayed in Australia, but today’s injunction makes it even more likely that the tablet may never reach Australian consumers.

There are currently more than 20 lawsuits in litigation between Apple and Samsung.

Mueller stated in a blog post, “I believe no company in the industry may be able to launch any new Android-based touchscreen product in Australia anytime soon without incurring a high risk of another interim injunction.”

In previous rulings — for example, when Apple beat Samsung in a Netherlands’ court battle regarding a page-turning patent — Samsung was able to simply re-engineer a function and issue an update (often barely noticeable to the average smartphone user), and skirt the issue. But today’s ruling is different, because it concerns a patent for key, intrinsic, product-defining features.

“Today’s ruling is the broadest win that Apple has got so far,” Mueller said in an interview with Wired.com. There’s not much Samsung can do but countersue, and Mueller feels, “It’s really unimpressive what Samsung brings to the tablet against Apple.” Samsung has yet to score any wins against Apple.

Apple is already in litigation with three major Android device makers: Samsung, HTC and Motorola. Mueller believes Motorola could soon overtake Samsung as Apple’s main target, given Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

As for non-Android devices — such as Windows Phone, webOS and BlackBerry models — they don’t have as much to worry about.

“Apple is careful to exclude Windows Phone; they own far too many patents,” Mueller says. And as long as HP owns webOS, it may be in a stronger position than Google as far as patent challenges. And BlackBerry, well, it’s likely that Apple doesn’t feel threatened by RIM as it’s on the decline. It would be a far more efficient approach, Mueller says, to just erode RIM’s market via retail sales of iPhones and iPads.

Mueller says that unlike Microsoft, which uses its vast trove of patents as leverage to raise cash, Apple uses patents as they were originally intended: to create a monopoly. “Apple really seeks and optimizes its products for differentiation. Apple takes a more exclusionary approach to patent enforcement,” Mueller said. Microsoft, by comparison, has established licensing deals with a number of manufacturers in order to score a cut of retail sales revenue. The latest example is PC manufacturer Quanta, the ninth OEM to pay Microsoft royalties for Android products.

Android makers are especially susceptible to litigation because they are late entrants to the market, and don’t have licensing deals or extensive patent holdings in place yet.

You probably don’t know them. They lurk in the shadows, putting their leaders’ decisions in motion and making sure the day-to-day operations run smoothly. Like Apple’s Tim Cook before he was handed the reins by Steve Jobs, these unsung heroes of tech serve an important role without the harsh glare of the limelight. More »

If you have a new enough iPhone or iPad, you can now edit photos on the device. Photo Charlie Sorrel

iOS 5 is here, and with it iCloud. ICloud is the biggest step yet towards cutting the cord with desktop computers, and it arguably does away with the old-fashioned idea of files and folders. One of the best parts of iCloud is Photo Stream which, in combination with the new Photos app, lets you forget about the computer completely. Almost.

Camera

First, and most noticeable, are the new Camera and Photos apps. Any iOS 5 device can now snap a photo using the volume-up hardware switch (which is right next to the lens in the iPad 2 and almost laughably hard to use without photographing your finger). iPhone users can also double-tap the home button on the lock-screen to reveal a shortcut button that launches straight to camera for quick shooting.

You can also call up a grid overlay, lock the exposure and autofocus before recomposing (iPhone 4 and 4S-only), and pinch to zoom as you are shooting. When you have snapped a picture, you can swipe right to enter your camera roll. This won’t work if you accessed the camera through the lock-screen shortcut.

Once you are viewing you photos, you can now edit them. This is done the same way as if you were in the Photos app itself. Open an image, tap edit and you can rotate and crop (with or without constraints), correct for redeye and enhance the image. This last just adds a little pep, tweaking the white balance and contrast.

The edits seem to be non-destructive: You save your image, but if you choose to edit it again later you can still revert to the original.

From here you can also share images (email, Twitter, Messages), assign to a contact, print, copy or choose to use as wallpaper.

Photos

Head over to the Photos app and you can use all of the same editing tricks, only you now have access to all the photos on your iDevice, not just your photo roll. Curiously, when editing photos here, you are prompted to save a copy. Thus, you cannot revert, but you still have the untouched original. Editing won’t work on the iPad 1.

You can also rearrange the photos into albums, although it isn’t obvious at first how you might do this.

First, you need to tap the arrow-in-a-box icon, the one usually used for sharing things. Then you select the images you want to use and tap the “Add To…” button. Then choose to make a new album or add to an existing one. Note — if you cancel here, then all your photos are deselected. This is a pain if you start off adding to an existing album and then decide you want a new one instead. You’ll have to start over.

You can also choose to add images to an album from within it, using the same arrow-in-a-box icon. Oddly, you can re-add the same photos and they’ll show up as duplicates. I assume that this is a bug.

Photo Stream

Finally, there’s Photo Stream. Any photos you snap with the camera, or save from various applications (including screenshots), or import using the camera connection kit. are added to your Photo Stream. And any photos in your Photo Stream are uploaded automatically to iCloud (over Wi-Fi) and then beamed down to any other Photo Stream-enabled devices.

Full resolution files are sent back to your computer for safekeeping, and kept in the cloud for 30 days. Smaller JPGs are sent to the iDevices, which helps speed up downloads. If you regularly use your iPad to import RAW photos from your camera, though, Photo Stream will send the whole files up to iCloud. I spend half a day with unresponsive Internet before I realized what was happening.

Any edits you make on the iOS devices will be mirrored immediately on other devices.

The master library is stored on your Mac or PC. On a Mac you can use Aperture or iPhoto, and this is the only place a computer comes in. The workaround is to save files out of the Photo Stream and to you camera roll to keep permanently. You might be glad you bought the 64GB model after all. One thing to note: Once something is in your stream, it is impossible to remove. This, too, sounds like a bug.

Video

Finally, on a related topic, iMovie on the iPad and iPhone has been updated. It will now work with movie files imported from your camera, which means no more tedious workarounds. It now recognizes Motion JPG video from my Panasonic GF1, although it won’t see AVCHD Lite files. It seems like anything that can be imported via the camera connection kit should work. Give it a try.

Photo Stream really shows what Apple’s strategy is for iOS. Sure, we don’t need a computer now, but neither do we need to worry about our files at all. Our photos and videos are automatically backed up and available wherever we want them. No more thumb drives, no more e-mail attachments. It just works.

See Also:

• Photo Stream – Wired
• Syncomatic Automatically Beams Photos from iPhone to Mac …
• What's Inside: The iPhone 4S Camera

With iCloud, you can now watch angst-ridden but sexy vampires on any iDevice, anywhere

Amidst the deluge of software launches from Apple yesterday, it was easy to miss an update to the company’s “hobby,” the Apple TV. Version 4.4 of the set-top box’s OS is rather conservatively named, as it comes with many iOS 5 features.

AirPlay Mirroring

Before, you could stream video and audio content to the Apple TV from an iOS device via AirPlay. Now, with the iPad 2, the Apple TV supports AirPlay Mirroring, which lets you mirror the entire screen of the iPad 2 on the TV connected to the Apple TV.

Photo Stream

The Apple TV now acts like any other iOS device, and any photos added to your Photo Stream on an iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac or PC will be pushed to the Apple TV. Smart, as a big screen is a great place to share photos. The Apple TV will keep only the latest 1,000 snaps you have taken.

Trailers

You can now browse and watch movie trailers, just like you could do in Front Row all those months ago. Tip: if you don’t have an Apple TV, and use the U.S App Store, you can grab the free Trailers app for your iOS device.

Hockey

What’s to say? Live streaming of mullets and fights joins baseball and basketball on the big screen.

WSJ Live

Watch the streaming WSJ Live channel on the big screen, just as if you were watching regular TV.

There are also bug fixes and small additions (extra slideshow transitions), but the big thing is probably the integration of iCloud. The Apple TV already lets you stream previously-bought content. Now it has Photo Stream, and when iTunes Match launches later this year, the promise of no longer needing a computer at all will come a little bit closer.

Apple TV product page [Apple]

See Also:

• Photo Stream – Wired
• iCloud's the Limit: How iOS 5, Lion Push Apple's Lock-In Strategy …
• AppleTV
• Hands-On With New $100 Apple TV

'No, your honor, we didn't copy the iPad. In fact, we've never even seen one before.'

One thing Samsung doesn’t seem to be able to copy from Apple is the success of its crack legal team. The latest court to ban the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet is Australia, which upheld a temporary injunction against selling the device in Oz.

Samsung’s defense appeared to largely take the form of shouting “it’s not fair.” The South Korean company’s lawyers argued that if the tablet wasn’t allowed to go on sale, it would be “commercially dead” and wouldn’t be able to make any money from Christmas sales. Maybe Samsung should have thought of that before making its iClone.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Samsung hinted it may appeal the Sydney court ruling.” “Hinted” isn’t exactly fighting talk, which was reserved for the company’s only real recourse — get nasty over alleged patent violations. In a statement, Samsung said “We will continue to legally assert our intellectual property rights against those who violate Samsung’s patents and free ride on our technology.”

That’s more like it.

The fact that Samsung is lying down quietly, and even making changes to its Tab 10.1 in order to get it back on store shelves, seems to show that courts are convinced that it has ripped off the iPad’s design. That Samsung is retaliating with patent threats is even more telling of its confidence to beat these injunctions.

Apple Wins Block on Samsung Tablet in Australia [WSJ (Use Google to get around the paywall)]

See Also:

• Courts Ban Sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab in Europe
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9. Seriously?
• The Copyist
• IClones