MacRumors

Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming iOS 10 update to developers for testing purposes, one week after seeding the second iOS 10.1 beta and a month after releasing iOS 10 to the public.

Registered developers can download the new iOS 10.1 beta from the Apple Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile is installed.

iOS 10.1 introduces a new "Portrait" mode for the iPhone 7 Plus that allows it to use the two built-in cameras to create shallow depth of field portrait photos with blurred backgrounds.

The update also likely includes bug fixes and other under-the-hood improvements to address issues that have been uncovered since iOS 10 was released.

iOS 10 has been described by Apple as the "biggest release ever" for iOS users, with features that include a redesigned Lock screen, a Siri SDK to allow third-party apps to integrate with Siri, and a completely overhauled Messages app with stickers, a full App Store, Digital Touch, Bubble Effects, and more.

Other features include a dedicated "Home" app for HomeKit users, new facial and object recognition capabilities in Photos, and redesigned Maps and Apple Music apps. For more details on iOS 10, make sure to check out our iOS 10 roundup.

Update: The third iOS 10.1 beta has also been released for Apple Beta Software Program members.

Apple today added a banner to its United States website, iTunes Store, and App Store asking customers to provide donations to individuals affected by the recent devastation from Hurricane Matthew. Like its usual relief efforts, all donations collected will go to the American Red Cross.

Donation tiers available include $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 and $200, and will be processed as normal iTunes or App Store purchases through a user's connected Apple ID.

Hurricane Matthew made landfall late last week, hitting the southeast coast of the United States and going on to ravage states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. As of yesterday, more than 2 million businesses and homes were without power, and over 3,000 people have been placed in safety shelters.

Nearly six years after the legal battle over smartphone design similarities began between Apple and Samsung, the two companies are now about to take the case to the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday, October 11.

At stake is the outcome of how much of a combined $548 million patent infringement ruling Samsung will be required to pay to Apple (via Bloomberg).

That amount is taken from Samsung's total profit of the 11 disputed smartphones targeted by Apple in the trial, an amount which Samsung refers to as a "disproportionate" sum for the patent infringement accusations leveled at it by Apple.

The Cupertino company has remained adamant in regards to Samsung's "blatant copying" of various iPhone design features, still fighting to win the full $399 million reward (the case involves approximately another $150 million focused on Samsung's alleged infringement of Apple's pinch-to-zoom patent).

Specifically, Apple's design patents cover "the rounded corners of its phones, the rim that surrounds the front face and the grid of icons that users view." Last December, a federal court in San Jose ruled in Apple's favor, and Samsung appealed days later in attempts to avoid the $548 million reward payment to Apple. In Samsung's appeal, the company gave the court a metaphor centering around owing a car's entire profits to a rival company for infringing upon their cup holder design.

In urging the Supreme Court to take up the appeal, Samsung said the ruling was akin to awarding the entire profits on a car because of an infringing cup-holder. Apple rejects that analogy, saying that its patented features are more like the design of the entire car.

The issue now appears to be focused on the difference between the court determining if Apple's accusations cover individual components of patent infringement, or the entire product. In court records, Apple is said to "accept" that in some cases the patent owner can collect profits only "attributable to a particular component," not the earnings of the entire Samsung smartphone.

All the same, Apple said that Samsung "failed to show that the patented designs applied only to part of its phones" during the previous half-decade of court proceedings, so the latter company's defense of paying less for individual parts of the smartphone shouldn't be allowed to stand. According to lawyer Kannon Shanmugam, the case "has essentially now devolved into a dispute over what party showed what at trial and who bears the burden of proof."

In total the patent dispute amounts to nearly $550 million aimed at Samsung. The company has already paid the amount, but a clause stipulates the potential ruling in its favor requires Apple to pay back the money. Just last week, in a completely separate Samsung-vs-Apple lawsuit, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted Apple a $120 million win over Samsung concerning the company's slide-to-unlock patent.

According to Chicago patent lawyer Paul Berghoff, a clarifying decision on the specific amount owed by Samsung to Apple could be the ultimate "catalyst for a final settlement" in the long-running case.

“Sometimes once litigants have been battling for so long, what happens is they develop levels of enmity and distrust on both sides that make it very difficult to settle the cases,” he said. “Face-saving is a very real issue for all companies. It’s hard to get out of it once you’re in it.”

Interestingly, the case also marks the Supreme Court's first examination of a design patent dispute in 120 years, "which cover the ornamental look of an object rather than any functional aspect." Previously, the Supreme Court oversaw design patents in disputes focused on spoon handles in the 1870s and carpets in the 1890s.

Samsung has halted production of its beleaguered Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after several replacement handsets reportedly caught fire and ended up with at least one person in a hospital.

On Monday, an official at a supplier for Samsung informed Korean Yonhap news agency of the decision, which is said to have been made in coordination with consumer safety regulators from South Korea, the United States, and China.

The decision came after all mobile carriers in the U.S. said they would stop issuing Note 7 devices following at least five reports of replacement handsets catching fire over the last five days.

On Wednesday, a flight from Louisville to Baltimore was evacuated while still at the gate because of a smoking Note 7. Saturday saw a Minnesota case involving a 13-year-old girl who said she felt a "weird, burning sensation" while holding her phone and suffered a minor burn to her thumb. "It felt like pins and needles except a lot more intense," she said.

Later the same day, a Kentucky man reported "vomiting black" after his Note 7 caught fire while he was asleep in bed, filling his room with smoke. "It wasn't plugged in. It wasn't anything, it was just sitting there," said the man, who later took himself to ER and was diagnosed with acute bronchitis.

Then on Sunday, another Note 7 bedside incident took place in Virginia. The phone "just burst into flames while on the night stand," said its owner. "I woke up in complete panic." By midday another device had caught fire on a table where a Texas family sat eating lunch together.

All the handsets in the incidents were replacements issued by Samsung, which the company had previously claimed were using batteries that are "not vulnerable to overheating and catching fire." Samsung has yet to explain what's going on with the replacement devices.

Rumors have suggested Samsung's Note 7 problems began after the company rushed the device into production after realizing the iPhone 7 would not feature major design changes, seeing it as an opportunity to one up Apple. Suppliers were pushed to meet tighter deadlines for an earlier launch, leading to critical oversights.

The supplier official who revealed the manufacturing halt this morning described the production as "temporarily suspended", however it is difficult to imagine in what circumstances Samsung would resume production of the Galaxy Note 7, which many observers will now consider a toxic brand.

Early speculation that iPhone 7 could experience an uptick in sales because of Samsung's woes seem increasingly likely. Samsung accounted for 27.8 percent of all smartphones shipped in Q1 2016, almost double Apple's 14.4 percent share, but a big part of Samsung's jump ahead was the early release of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, while the much-anticipated Note 7 was Samsung's attempt to cater for the increasing popularity of larger-screen devices.

Update 1: Similar incidents of exploding replacement Note 7 phones have also been reported in Taiwan and South Korea.

Update 2: Samsung has said it is "temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note 7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters". The company said it hoped to provide an update within a month.

Three additional law firms have joined a class action lawsuit against Apple over an alleged defect that causes iPhone 6 Plus touchscreens to become unresponsive and fail.

Back in August, reports began appearing from iPhone 6 owners describing an apparently latent manufacturing issue that causes a flickering bar to appear at the top of the screen and the display to become unresponsive or less responsive to touch.

Yesterday, Motherboard reported that lawyers who filed the class action complaint earlier this fall have now signed on three additional law firms to support their case, while an additional class action lawsuit related to the issue has been filed against Apple in Utah.

Richard McCune, an attorney in the California case, said he has been contacted by 10,000 people asking to join the suit, which accuses Apple of violating the state's consumer fraud statutes, negligent misrepresentation, breach of implied warranty, unjust enrichment, and other consumer act violations.

The "touch disease" flaw is thought to be caused by the touchscreen controller chips soldered to the iPhone's logic board losing contact after a period of normal usage, because of Apple's failure to incorporate a metal shield. So far, Apple has refused to repair the out-of-warranty iPhones without charge when the defect manifests. Worse, replacement refurbished handsets costing owners $329 have reportedly shown symptoms of the same problem within days or weeks of being issued.

Motherboard claims five separate current and former Apple Geniuses have confirmed that Apple is aware of the problem but will not tell customers about it.

However, Apple's filed response to the most recent Utah complaint appears at least to signal a legal acknowledgement of the issue and the company's lawyers have requested an "extension of time to respond to the Complaint" and asked that the Utah and California cases be combined into one.

Given the similarity between the [Utah] and [California] actions, it would unnecessarily tax judicial resources if these actions were to proceed in separate class action lawsuits—especially where the [Utah] and [California] Plaintiffs purport to represent the same putative class of all consumers who purchased an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

On Friday, McCune filed an updated lawsuit against Apple that includes several new plaintiffs and formally adds the three separate law firms to the legal battle. "Each of the firms (who had their own clients) brings strength to the case, including Stephen Larson of Larson O'Brien, who is a former Federal Judge," McCune told Motherboard. "With these firms working with us, we believe it gives us the best chance of obtaining a positive result in the case for the owners of the phones."

AT&T is considering stopping all sales and replacements of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 due to ongoing safety issues, reports Bloomberg. Citing a person "familiar with the situation," Bloomberg says AT&T may halt sales as soon as today.

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint have all started allowing customers to exchange their Galaxy Note 7 devices for different smartphones such as the iPhone 7, but AT&T's full sales ban would go one step further, seeing the company cease offering "safe" replacement devices altogether.

Samsung first issued a recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in early September following dozens of reports of overheating, leading to batteries that explode and catch on fire. Many people who purchased a Galaxy Note 7 have reported injuries and property damage.

Earlier this week, a Southwest flight from Louisville to Baltimore was evacuated after a Galaxy Note 7 started smoking and caught fire, unusual because the device in question was a replacement smartphone that had been deemed safe by Samsung. Federal regulators are investigating the incident, which has reignited fears about Samsung devices.

According to rumors, Samsung rushed the Galaxy Note 7 into production in an effort to outshine Apple after hearing that the iPhone 7 would not feature major design changes. Suppliers were pushed to meet tighter deadlines for an earlier launch, which potentially led to critical oversights and has ended up costing Samsung millions in recall fees and replacements.

All customers who purchased a Galaxy Note 7 from one of the four major carriers can replace it with a different device, including those who have already exchanged their faulty Note 7 smartphones for versions that Samsung has declared safe.

Apple this week opened its first iOS Developer Center at the University of Naples Federico II's new San Giovanni a Teduccio campus, located in a coastal suburb east of Naples, Italy, and the company is already planning on expanding the initiative due to its popularity.

At an event celebrating the opening of the Developer Center that was documented by Italian site Maccitynet.it, Apple's vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives Lisa Jackson told gathered students about an upcoming iOS Foundation Program, designed to teach many more students about the fundamentals of iOS app development.

Jackson shared few details on the upcoming program, but said it is aimed at introducing students to the iOS ecosystem.

It's a great opportunity to magnify the wonderful beginning here. It's a great opportunity to work with students and teach across the region and advance our work and the work you're doing at the first academy in Europe.

With both the iOS Developer Center and the iOS Foundation Program, Apple is hoping to give students the skills and understanding they need to transition from the education they receive in school to actually developing an app. According to Jackson, it's important to Apple to "unlock the potential of young developers" and make sure the app economy is open to everyone by giving young people the "crucial skills and support" to get into app development.

Apple's first official iOS Developer Center opened to students yesterday, with 100 students able to attend starting this week and 100 additional students starting in three months. Apple had thousands of students apply for just 200 available spots, which is why the company is planning to team up with additional universities.

The nine month course will teach students how to write code and create apps for Apple's iOS devices. Thanks to scholarships created in partnership with the University of Naples, students will attend for free and will be provided with current-generation MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads.

While the iOS Developer Center and the iOS Foundation Program are limited to Italy at this time, it stands to reason that Apple could potentially expand the experience to additional countries should it prove successful. Apple has also recently introduced Swift Playgrounds, designed to help children and beginning coders learn to use the company's Swift programming language to develop apps.

A new case might lead the FBI and Apple into another fight over security and privacy on smartphones, following a confirmation yesterday by FBI special agent Rich Thorton that the FBI has the iPhone of Dahir Adan in its possession (via Wired).

Adan was the culprit behind the stabbing of 10 people in a Minnesota mall in mid-September, and was eventually shot and killed by police. After the event, terrorist organization ISIS claimed credit for the attack on social media, but "no evidence has emerged to suggest ISIS had a hand in planning or executing the attack."

During a press conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota yesterday, Thorton confirmed that the FBI has Adan's iPhone and that it is locked with a passcode. According to the special agent, the organization is "still trying to figure out how to gain access to the phone's contents." The issue currently is that the model and version of iOS running on the iPhone is known only to the FBI. Following the launch of iOS 8 in 2014, any iOS device running the software is encrypted to an extent that no malicious outsider -- or even Apple itself -- can get into the iPhone or iPad.

“Dahir Adan’s iPhone is locked,” Thornton told reporters, “We are in the process of assessing our legal and technical options to gain access to this device and the data it may contain.”

Because of this, the deciding factor on whether or not the new issue could lead to another San Bernardino-related debate between Apple and the FBI hinges on the software and model of his iPhone (iOS 8 can run on iPhone 4s and newer devices). For now, Thorton said that the FBI is simply "assessing" its "legal and technical options" for ways to enter the iPhone and extract any potentially helpful data it might contain.

The San Bernardino case began much the same way, with the FBI ordering Apple to provide assistance in opening up Syed Farook's iPhone 5c because the company had the "technical means" to do so. A long battle between the two organizations eventually led to the Justice Department dropping the case against Apple, reportedly due to an anonymous source providing the iPhone's password to authorities.

During the controversy, everyone from former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to President Obama chimed in on the issue. Throughout multiple interviews and quotes, Apple CEO Tim Cook remained adamant on the company's continuing stance for user privacy, calling the FBI's request for entering an iPhone "the software equivalent of cancer." Its implementation could lead to a slippery slope in terms of invasive technology in everyday smartphones, as pointed out by Apple executive Eddy Cue, and even a potential surveillance state.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.