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Microsoft is asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to deny Apple a trademark on the name "App Store," saying the term is generic and competitors should be able to use it. Apple applied for the trademark in 2008 for goods and services including "retail store services featuring computer software provided via the internet and other computer and electronic communication networks" and other related offerings. Apple launched its App Store for the iPhone that year along with its iPhone 3G. The store is now available on any device that runs the company's iOS software, namely the iPod Touch and...

Apple Is Granted Its First Liquidmetal Patent [Exclusive] 10 comments »By Leander Kahney (4:00 am, Jan. 05, 2011) A prototype fuel cell mobile phone by Hitachi. Apple may be working on similar technology for the iPhone and iPad. Photo: Slashphone Apple has been granted its first patent related to Liquidmetal, a space-age metal alloy. But the patent isn’t for a new iPad enclosure or iPhone antenna, as experts have predicted. Instead Apple’s Liquidmetal patent is for an internal component of a fuel cell.Apple’s new patent describes “amorphous alloy” collector plates for fuel cells, an electrochemical battery that uses hydrogen...

CES opens its doors officially tomorrow, and while Apple isn't there the event is already expected to see over 100 tablets from many different firms take their first (and, in some cases, last) bow. Meanwhile, Apple prepares iPad 2.0. While some hope CES will see the spark of a proper fight-back against the genre-defining Apple iPad tech titan, such optimism is misplaced. For iPad haters, CES will be a tragic tryst, a dooomed affair. Too little too lateThe mantra has to be "too little, too late", with even the world's biggest software manufacturer, Microsoft, playing catch-up this time around. Look...

On October 20, 2009, Apple introduced the wireless Magic Mouse (US$69), the first mouse to use Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ technology. Pioneered on iPhone, iPod touch and Mac notebook trackpads, Multi-Touch allows customers to navigate using intuitive finger gestures. Instead of mechanical buttons, scroll wheels or scroll balls, the entire top of Apple's revolutionary Magic Mouse is a seamless Multi-Touch surface. Yesterday Microsoft announced their new Touch Mouse which will be available - not immediately, of course, - in June 2011 for the estimated retail price of $79.95. Congratulations Windows sufferers: This time you're just 20 months late and only out...

For the first time ever, the U.S. Senate is allowing offices to ditch the PC and go Mac - and Sen. Mike Lee is totally going there. Lee, a Utah Republican and the youngest senator, has an iPhone and boasts a large Mac screen on his desk in his new temporary office, and the rest of his staff have embraced the Apple as well. "That's young and cutting edge," Lee's chief of staff, Spencer Stokes, joked. Before this year, the Senate system didn't allow Macs, I'm told, but maybe Steve Jobs has convinced the new, more youthful upper chamber to...

The Mac App Store has arrived and with it comes access to more than 1,000 different free and paid apps. While nearly identical in design to the iTunes App Store for iOS apps, the Mac App Store represents a big shift in Mac application discovery and development. We’ve already done a walkthrough of the new store. What follows is our analysis of the overall store experience after spending the last few hours exploring the store, downloading applications, comparing the release to initial expectations and ruminating on how it will change the developer ecosystem. If you’ve yet to experience the Mac...

Apple today released Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.6 which is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. It also includes the Mac App Store, the best way to discover and buy new apps for your Mac. The Mac App Store, a new application you'll find in the Dock, includes the following features: • Discover Mac apps: Browse featured apps, top charts, and categories, or search for something specific. Read detailed app descriptions and user reviews, and flip through screen shots....

Apple is telling us that the apps' content is considered "likely to expose a group to harm" and "to be objectionable and potentially harmful to others." Inasmuch as the Manhattan Declaration simply reaffirms the moral teachings of our Christian faith on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexual morality, and religious freedom and the rights of conscience, Apple's statement amounts to the charge that our faith is "potentially harmful to others."

InfoWorld - You won't find many businesses with a more complex, security-conscious environment than JPMorgan Chase. So when the huge bank decided to deploy iPads in its investment-banking arm -- following similar moves by Crédit Suisse and Citigroup -- it was more than just a straw in the wind. Apple, long rooted in education, creative endeavors, and (more recently) consumer electronics, is now an enterprise company.The most obvious trend driving the company's shift, of course, is its smashing success in consumer-oriented electronics. Because so many businesspeople use iPhones and now iPads, IT departments have been forced to accommodate them at...

Apple is the dream company we always wished for when we were children. The messiah of companies that we never thought would come to Earth in our lifetimes. Getty Images Steve Jobs When I was a kid the only thing I wanted in life was an Apple II+. When I finally got one, (my dad took one from his work and gave it to me for about six months) I did everything a young boy does with his computer. I programmed (in BASIC) the computer to type my name over and over again. I then went to the local computer...

I'll avoid the dicey proposition of naming what I think is the best product of the year. But I can say with certainty that Apple's iPad was the most disruptive. My iPad is usually beside me in the car. (Credit: Brooke Crothers) Beyond the iPad's well-chronicled popularity, impressive shipment numbers, and reported theft of Netbook market share, the disruption for me was very personal: it played havoc with my own computing habits and with people around me who bought the iPad. As I've written before, initially, I could do little more than paw at the screen in a vain effort...

An iCal alarm popped up for us today. It said: Mark Oct. 22 on your calendar. That's the day that Apple's classic 'I'm a Mac. I'm A PC' attack ads are going to cease to be humorous. Oct. 22 is, of course, the formal release date of Windows 7... Here's what I believe will happen: The Windows 7 launch will take those market-share gains Apple has seen over the past several years and make them disappear... Yes, the Mac has had a great run for the past couple of years. Gartner says Apple's share of the U.S. computer market for...

According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek on Wednesday, Apple will hold a special event by Valentine’s Day to introduce a new iPhone compatible with the Verizon Wireless network. The report mirrors one of two theories posed by BGR Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Geller earlier this month. Businessweek goes on to suggest that while the launch of an iPhone for Verizon Wireless could have a sizable impact on AT&T’s business, it will not be the “death blow” many have speculated. Even if AT&T loses as many as 6 million subscribers as a result of Verizon’s iPhone launch, Businessweek postulates, the lost revenue...

(CNN) -- Less than a year ago, some technology pundits questioned whether Apple's "iTablet" would find any buyers. InfoWorld ventured to explain "Why Apple's rumored iTablet will fail big time," while VentureBeat's 2010 predictions included the claim that "tablets will fail." Fast-forward to the end of 2010, and the iPad is a smash hit. eMarketer predicts that Apple will sell 13.3 million iPads this year, and one survey ranked the iPad as the most-wanted gift this holiday season. But the iPad has reshaped more than just the device market: From publishing to web design, we're seeing the iPad change the...

The year’s most significant new technology was a disruptive product made by Apple. This year, the editors of TIME Magazine chose for its Person of the Year award a young, enterprising 27-year old male who built a social networking website that has 500 million users and now has a net worth of $30 billion. Man, that’s so 2006. I mean, was 2010 so crappy that the only real choice was between an obnoxious, ethically-challenged egotistic Web 2.0 billionaire Wunderkind or an Information Technology terrorist pretending to be a journalist and Internet activist? Couldn’t they come up with someone who...

Despite what you may have heard, Apple products are not immune to viruses and other computer attacks. In 2007 an annual computer security conference called CanSecWest sought to prove this point by hosting a hacking contest called Pwn2Own. They offered $10,000 plus the MacBook being used to anyone who could successfully break into the brand new, fully patched MacBook running Tiger. (The name Pwn2Own comes from the hacker word "Pwn" which means to take over a computer, so you Pwn the computer to own the computer). Any vulnerabilities used in the contest would have to be given to the organizers...

CPTN Holdings LLC (acquirer of 882 Novell patents): Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle are the partners according to German antitrust notification Breaking news: Twitter user @VM_gville (whose account has meanwhile disappeared) pointed me to the website of the German federal antitrust authority ("Bundeskartellamt"), which discloses a merger (or more precisely, joint venture) notification filed a week ago (on 09 December 2010), according to which the four companies behind CPTN Holdings LLC -- the acquirer of 882 Novell patents -- are Microsoft, Apple, EMC, and Oracle. The product market in which the newly formed company plans to operate is defined as...

Nokia announced it has filed claims in the UK High Court, Dusseldorf and Mannheim District Courts in Germany and the District Court of the Hague, Netherlands, alleging that Apple infringes Nokia patents in many of its products sold in these countries, including iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. "These actions add 13 further Nokia patents to the 24 already asserted against Apple in the US International Trade Commission and the Delaware and Wisconsin Federal courts," said Paul Melin, vice president, Intellectual Property at Nokia. "The Nokia inventions protected by these patents include several which enable compelling user experiences. For example, using...

Apple is set to cash in, with nearly eight in 10 businesses opting for iPads, survey saysThe number of corporations arming workers with tablets will double early next year, a research firm said today, citing its recent survey of more than 1,600 IT buyers. The November poll by ChangeWave Research showed that Apple's iPad will remain the dominant workplace player even as historically strong enterprise players like Hewlett-Packard enter the market. Calling the demand for tablets "explosive," ChangeWave reported that 14 percent of the businesses polled said their firms are planning to buy tablets for employees in the first quarter...

A new report from NSS Labs studies how various Web browsers perform when it comes to blocking socially-engineered attacks. The startling results show that Internet Explorer isn't just better than rival browsers like Chrome and Firefox--but leaves competitors completely in the dust. ... NSS Labs reviewed Internet Explorer 8 and 9, Firefox 3.6, Safari 5, Chrome 6, and Opera 10 to see how well each browser helps users recognize and avoid these attacks. Data was collected 24/7 for eleven days, with 39 discrete tests run every six hours. The testing included 636 URLs identified as potentially malicious. ... Meanwhile, Internet...