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Now Apple’s new retail chief, John Browett, has told company leaders that the staffing changes were the result of a “mess up” caused by a temporary trial of a new staffing formula, according to Down Jones Newswires. Mr. Browett communicated his clarification to Apple Retail leadership and instructed them to inform their employees that the…

Apple and five book publishers were sued by the DOJ in April for allegedly conspiring to increase the price of eBooks and remove Amazon’s ability to offer books at a lower price by prohibiting books offered by Apple’s iBookstore from being sold for less anywhere else. Apple and the publishers deny any collective agreement and…

Users who search for “podcast” or “podcasts” within iTunes receive only one app result, Apple’s official podcast application, launched in June. Selecting “See All” or otherwise trying to find any of the excellent third-party options, such as Instacast, fails to reveal additional results.The results when a user searches for “podcast” or “podcasts” in the iTunes…

MacRumors reported earlier this week that anonymous sources claimed that recent hires in some Apple Stores have been laid off, in some cases shortly after they had completed their training. Those reports were attributed to Apple Store locations in the UK, but the site also said that some U.S. and Canadian sources had reported hour…

Theories on price ranged from around $500 all the way to $1000. While Microsoft still has yet to announce the official price, Engadget reports that the Redmond company is getting ready to launch the ARM-based Surface tablet on October 26 for a surprisingly low price of $199. At a sub-$200 price, the Surface would line…

A European rabbinical group is protesting an anti-Semitic text distributed as an app on Apple’s App Store and calling for its removal, according to The Jewish Press. The app, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” is a forged work from 1903 that describes a supposed Jewish plot to take over the world. The Brussels-based…

Jeeyuen Wang is professional designer working for Samsung on the company’s smartphone user interface. According to her own testimony as reported by Forbes, she helped design the icons used in some of Samsung’s smartphones. She is also up for consideration as designer of the year within Samsung, an honor that includes a 100 million South…

  Though Samsung’s attorneys have drawn more sanctions than Apple—four times as of the latest count—CNet reported that Judge Koh told the assembled attorneys for both sites that, “I want papers. I don’t trust what any lawyer tells me in this courtroom. I want to see actual papers.” Those are strong words for a federal…

Authorities arrested Kariem McFarlin, 35, on August 2 in connection with the crime. He was arraigned five days later on one count of residential burglary and selling stolen property. Mr. McFarlin, if convicted, would face a maximum prison sentence of seven years eight months, which is a year longer than normal due to his “excessive…

Moto Judge Barbara B. Crabb of the Western District of Wisconsin granted a summary judgement request from Motorola to dismiss antitrust claims by Apple. The action was based not on the merits of Apple’s claim, but rather on the reality that Apple wasn’t able to prove damages caused by Motorola’s patent-related actions. On the one…

According to AllThingsD, Apple revealed in court that it has a cross-licensing agreement in place with erstwhile mortal enemy Microsoft. That agreement specifically covers the same design patents that Apple is contesting with Samsung, but Apple has in place an “anti-cloning” provision. That provision stipulates that the companies, “can’t copy each other’s products,” according to…

New internal Samsung documents that indicate the Korean company based its device hardware and software on Apple designs were made public Friday as part of the patent litigation between the two mobile device giants. The latest documents come just three days after Apple successfully admitted another set of internal Samsung documents supporting the same claim.…

Original Mac 128K Credit: Image published under Wikimedia Commons Mr. Hertzfeld posted the video to YouTube and then linked to it on his Google+ account (and noted by 9to5Mac). According to that post, “Here’s a rare commercial for the original Macintosh that Chiat-Day made in the fall of 1983 , featuring snippets from interviews of…

And just like a real-life train wreck, you simply can’t look away. The train continues pumping forward, creeping towards its eventual doom. Destruction is its fate, and the only question remaining is finding out if anyone survives. At this point, I fear the answer to that question is no. That’s what I feel like when…

The defendants were accused of arranging the deal which netted them about $35,000 and for duping the teen into allowing doctors to remove one of his kidneys. One of the defendants, He Wei, said the boy voluntarily agreed to the surgical procedure and because of that he didn’t break any laws, according to the BBC.Mr.…

One of the U.S. attorneys representing Samsung in its California patent litigation with Apple was not admitted to practice law in the court’s jurisdiction, Samsung and the attorney admitted Thursday. Susan Estrich, a law professor and legal commentator for Fox News, recently represented Samsung in a motion concerning the deletion of relevant emails by both…

Merging the growing trend of Mac software bundles popularized by sites such as MacHeist and MacUpdate and the “pay what you want” mentality of sites such as the The Humble Music Bundle, a new promotion called StoryBundle offers to give readers an opportunity to purchase several well-reviewed DRM-free eBooks for as little as $1. The…

The Android and iOS mobile operating systems combined to power 85 percent of all smartphones shipped in the second quarter of 2012, according a new report published by research firm IDC Wednesday. The total represents a new high for the two dominant mobile platforms together, but shows a rare iOS market share decrease despite an…

Apple gets documents showing Samsung as copycat entered as evidenceThe document is a 2010 internal report from Samsung detailing a feature comparison between the iPhone and the Galaxy S smartphones. It also details what Samsung could do to make its smartphone more like Apple’s iPhone, according to AllThingsD, and that’s a bit of information that…

Reviving rumors from earlier this year, Research in Motion [RIMM] is up over 10 percent in early trading on rumors that mobile giant Samsung is interested in acquiring the beleaguered device maker. Today’s rumors follow a Barron’s report Tuesday that the future of RIM remained bleak and that a partnership or acquisition was necessary to…

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper is supervising Kodak’s bankruptcy proceedings, and those proceedings include the sale of more than 700 patents that Kodak wants to use to pay off creditors. In addition to bidding on the overall portfolio, Apple has claimed ownership of 10 of those patents, accusing Kodak of misappropriating technology jointly developed by…

A Taiwanese man has filed suit against Apple in China, alleging that the Cupertino company’s FaceTime video calling service infringes on his patent, according to Chinese site QQ Tech and translated by M.I.C. Gadget. The Intermediate People’s Court in Zhenjiang will hear the case but, thus far, Apple has failed to respond to the Court’s…

I’ve wanted a 128 GB iPad since the day I bought my first one over two years ago. I bought the 64 GB version, but I couldn’t get enough music on the darned thing. Since then iCloud and iTunes Match has just about solved my music problem, but I’ve run into another problem that iCloud can’t…

Apple and Google offered bids between $150 million and $250 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those bids, however, could climb quickly come Wednesday as the two companies fight to keep Kodak’s patents out of each other’s hands.Kodak’s patent auction may not bring in as much cash as it wantsApple partnered with Microsoft is…