MacRumors

Last December, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in response to a challenge preliminarily invalidated the so-called "Steve Jobs patent", a massive 364-page patent with 293 pages of drawings dating back to September 2006 and covering many details of the original iPhone. Steve Jobs is listed as the first of over two dozen inventors on the patent, and it is considered perhaps the most famous of his over 300 credited patents.

But as noted by FOSS Patents, the USPTO has now completed its reexamination of the patent and ruled that all twenty claims have been confirmed as patentable, significantly strengthening a patent that has been used against several of Apple's competitors in court.

As we speak, the Steve Jobs patent is even stronger than it was before someone (presumably Samsung and Google) challenged it anonymously. On September 4, 2013, the USPTO issued a reexamination certificate confirming the patentability of all 20 claims because the prior art neither anticipated this invention nor renders it obvious.

A number of Apple's key patents have been challenged for reexamination as its competitors have sought to derail Apple's claims against them in various court battles. While the USPTO has issued preliminary "first office actions" invalidating those patents in some cases, Apple has been successful in arguing its case and ultimately restoring the validity of at least the most important claims of those patents. In an example from earlier this year, a key claim of Apple's "rubber banding" patent used against Samsung was confirmed after having been preliminary invalidated last year.

Verizon today became the first of the major U.S mobile carriers to report financial results for the third quarter for 2013, giving the first piece of data to help shed light on Apple's early iPhone 5s and 5c sales other than an Apple press release announcing nine million units sold on the launch weekend.

The carrier revealed during its conference call that it activated approximately 3.9 million iPhones during the quarter, representing just over half of Verizon's 7.6 million total smartphone activations during the quarter, and up from 3.1 million iPhone activations in the year-ago quarter. Verizon also noted in the call that it encountered iPhone supply constraints in September, which will also result in some carryover in sales to the fourth quarter.

Verizon also reported that it has now covered "over 99% of its 3G footprint" with LTE, as the network is now in over 500 markets with more small towns being added in the coming months. Overall, the carrier stated that there were 6.8 million 4G LTE device activations on its network in the quarter, up 21.1% when compared to the year-ago quarter.

Finally, Verizon announced that smartphones now account for more than 67% of the Verizon Wireless retail postpaid customer phone base, up from 64% at the end of the second-quarter in 2013.

Apple will announce its quarterly earnings on October 28.

First introduced at WWDC, Anki's iOS-controlled AI-based racing game is set to debut later this month. Unlike standard racing toys, Anki Drive is largely self-operating and is described by the company as a "video game in the real world." The concept is similar to slot car racing, with added enhancements that include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and smartphone-based controls.

The Anki cars are placed on a specially designed vinyl track and connect to an iPhone with Bluetooth-LE. Using software and tiny cameras, the cars calibrate their positions on the track and handle steering on their own. Players control the gas and the guns using an iPhone and the Anki Drive app, shooting at other cars on the track to score the highest number of hits.

Hits translate to points, and points can be used to both upgrade cars and weapons. Each of the Anki Drive cars has its own unique name, personality, and statistics, with some offering greater acceleration speeds while others have more energy. Engadget went hands-on with the Anki Drive and has a description of the gameplay:

As soon as you're done, you can simply set the cars on the track and away they'll zoom; there's no need for you to hit an accelerate button at all. Indeed, the cars will even know just where to turn. We wanted to see if we could mess it up, so we picked up a car and turned it the other way around to see what would happen. The answer: It just flipped around and went back on the right direction.

So if the cars can drive themselves, what do they need you for? Well, you can affect the race by tilting the phone either left or right to force it to make a wider or sharper turn. There are also special weapons you can deploy if you’re in a competition – a couple of starter ones include a tractor beam to slow down an opponent and a gun that you can use to mow them down afterward.

Anki Drive has several different gameplay modes, including a multiplayer mode that allows several players to compete against one another and a single player mode where one of the cars is controlled through AI. Each of the Anki Drive cars has its own name, personality, and statistics, with some offering greater acceleration speeds while others have more energy. No car can be fully upgraded to match the others, which makes each one unique.

Anki Drive will be available in the United States and Canada on Apple’s website and in retail stores beginning on October 23. Each bundle, which includes two cars, chargers, and a race track, retails for $199. Two additional cars can be purchased for $69 each.

The Anki Drive app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Back in August, T-Mobile CEO John Legere hinted in an interview that T-Mobile would soon be carrying a "whole array of Apple products", with the company expanding their offerings of devices from Apple.

Today, in a tweet linking to a story about Apple's upcoming media event on October 22, T-Mobile CEO John Legere writes:

What has two thumbs and is excited for October 22? #thisguy

The tweet may be the CEO's cryptic way of hinting that next-generation cellular iPads may soon be available from Apple and T-Mobile stores preloaded with T-Mobile SIM cards and optimized for the carrier's LTE bands.

Of course, T-Mobile customers have long been able to put SIM cards from the carrier into iPads as Apple's cellular-equipped tablets are not carrier-locked, but being able to purchase them with a T-Mobile SIM already installed will be an added convenience.

AT&T, Sprint and Verizon already offer cellular-equipped iPads at their retail stores and Apple's various retail outlets.

Former EPA chief Lisa Jackson, hired earlier this year to head up Apple's environmental efforts, told a sustainability conference that she plans to get Apple to use energy more efficiently and with cleaner power in the company's data centers and other buildings.

According to GigaOm, Jackson said "Tim Cook didn't hire Lisa Jackson to be quiet and keep the status quo. We understand our responsibility and we do care."

Jackson talked about the challenges of pushing and developing sustainability projects within Apple. One of them is the challenge of collecting solid data and being able to measure projects and their success rates. This includes Apple’s method to calculate the energy use and carbon footprint of its operation and products, the manufacturing of its devices and the supply chain and customers’ use of the products. Jackson pointed to the life cycle analysis that Steve Jobs publicized back in 2009 in an effort to change the company’s image, as an example of Apple’s attention to creating sustainability metrics and data.

GigaOm says Jackson's team currently counts 17 people and she is responsible for recruiting more environmentally conscious employees from within the company to help with Apple's sustainability projects, including getting feedback on how to cut wasteful energy use.

On a related note, DataCenterKnowledge writes about Apple continuing to grow its new Prineville, Oregon data center, constructing a new power substation to go with new buildings going in. Apple's new data center is close to a new center from Facebook.

Earlier this year, Apple said its data centers were running on 100 percent renewable energy -- solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal power -- while the company's corporate facilities are running on 75 percent renewable, up from 35 percent two years ago.

Intel yesterday confirmed that it is delaying the production of its next-generation Broadwell processors on account of a manufacturing issue. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced the news during Intel's earnings call, stating that production on the chips will begin during the first quarter of 2014 (via PCWorld).

Intel's Broadwell chips are designed to be the successor to its existing Haswell chips, manufactured on a 14-nanometer process as opposed to Haswell's current 22-nanometer process.

Intel ran into some problems with the 14-nanometer process used to manufacture the chips and will have to fix them before it can resume production, CEO Brian Krzanich said during Intel’s earnings call on Tuesday.

Intel normally releases new chips like clockwork on an annual basis, and the manufacturing problems are a rare misstep for the company. Krzanich said there were problems with the "yield"—or the number of good chips the company gets per silicon wafer.

The Broadwell chips, which will eventually find their way into Apple's line of MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros, are said to be 30 percent faster and more power-efficient than Haswell, leading to even greater increases in battery life and performance. The inclusion of Haswell chips in Apple's MacBook Air boosted battery life to 12 hours on the 13-inch version and nine hours on the 11-inch version.

Based on Intel's prospective timeline with production beginning during the first quarter of 2014, Broadwell MacBooks could make an appearance at next year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which is where the Haswell MacBook Airs debuted.

It is unclear whether Apple had planned to introduce Broadwell updates earlier, and whether Intel's delay will affect its future release plans. Apple's scheduled desktop updates, for its iMacs, will not be affected as they will incorporate updated Haswell architecture rather than Broadwell chips.

Apple has yet to release a Haswell Retina MacBook Pro, which is expected to come before the end of 2013 and should bring significant improvements to battery life.

According to Intel, the delay of Broadwell will not affect the company's next line of processors, Skylake, as the chips are based on new architecture. Broadwell, however, will have a shorter lifespan due to Intel’s manufacturing issues.

A new supplier for the accelerometer part in the iPhone 5s could be causing incorrect level and compass measurements in the new device, an issue that was first noticed earlier this month.

RealityCap CEO Eagle Jones read into the Chipworks teardown of the iPhone 5s (via Gizmodo) and noticed that the phone uses the Bosch Sensortech BMA220 as its accelerometer. The iPhone 5, for example, used an accelerometer from STMicroelectronics.

Both devices have similar consistency in measurement, but the Bosch device has a larger measurement 'bias'. The end result, as Jones notes, is that the new accelerometer has a different 'zero-g offset' which would need to be compensated for in software.

The second key spec for accelerometers is the zero-g offset, or bias. This indicates the range for a roughly constant offset that will be added to every output sample of data due to manufacturing variance. This can also change over time due to mechanical stress or temperature variation. This is where we find the problem: the typical bias for the ST part is +/- 20mg, while the Bosch part lists +/-95mg. This almost 5x greater offset range is confirmed by our measurements, and is absolutely consistent with the failures being reported by users and the media. Specifically, a +/- 20mg offset range would translate to around a +/-1 degree accuracy range in tilt detection, and a +/-95mg offset translates to +/-5 degrees in tilt.

He goes on to note that developers can compensate for the increased offset because it is unlikely to change significantly from one measurement to another, though Apple could do a system-wide fix at the OS level to ensure accurate measurements in the future.

Apple's Touch ID fingerprint sensor, one of the core features of the iPhone 5s, has received universally positive reviews due to its simplicity, its speed, and its position as a feature that is far from gimmicky, unlike some competing products.

The fingerprint sensor technology came from AuthenTec, a small semiconductor company based in Melbourne, Florida, acquired by Apple in July of 2012. AuthenTec co-founder F. Scott Moody detailed both the company's acquisition and the technology behind Touch ID during a presentation that took place on at North Carolina State University on Tuesday, which AppleInsider attended.

[Moody] explained to the students that it’s AuthenTec’s technology behind an 8-millimeter by 8-millimeter sensor found beneath the iPhone 5s home button.

"We're looking at pores, structures of ridges and valleys, and instantaneously tell who you are," Moody said. "Every time you use it, it learns more about you. Because it knows, 'This is Alex,' every time you use it gets easier and easier."

Before Apple’s Touch ID, AuthenTec worked on the FingerLoc, a product that originally attracted Apple’s attention. FingerLoc was a bulky solution housed in a box much larger than an iPhone, which connected via ribbon cable to another, larger box.

Like the existing Touch ID fingerprint sensor, the FingerLoc incorporated a metal ring that functioned as a capacitor. According to Moody, AuthenTec teamed up with several dermatologists in order to perfect the capacitor, which is designed to send a signal through the outer layer of skin. "With other sensors, your ridges would collapse into the valleys," said Moody. "Ours doesn't."

Over the course of several years, AuthenTec revised and improved the FingerLoc, shrinking the size of the sensor and lowering the price point until it came up with a final product that interested several technology companies, namely Apple.

When AuthenTec came out with their final product, the company generated interest from a number of customers, including Apple, Motorola and Fujitsu. Apple, in particular, “ate it up,” Moody said, and eventually bought the entire company in 2012 for $356 million.

"We had a great team of engineers — which I think is highlighted by the fact that Apple kept the engineering team," he said.

According to Apple, AuthenTec’s Touch ID sensor captures a high-resolution image of a fingerprint, which it then analyzes to provide accurate readings. Though fears have been raised the fingerprint storage process and the security of the system, Apple has assured users that the iPhone 5s stores only fingerprint data, publishing an extensive knowledge base article detailing Touch ID.

Influential ratings and review magazine Consumer Reports has reviewed Apple's new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models, giving them high scores but calling the 4-inch Retina display and 8-10 hour battery life "no match" for Motorola's latest Droid smartphones. The full mobile phone ratings are behind the magazine's paywall, but the summary blog post outlines the magazine's thinking on the issue.

The iPhone 5s tops the already great iPhone 5 with a surprisingly reliable fingerprint reader, a faster processor, and better-than-ever camera. And the affordable iPhone 5c is a compelling offering for budget-minded buyers. Consumer Reports testers found both phones delivered better performances than the iPhones they succeed—they even have longer talk times (a tad less than 7 hours). [...]

Yet, battery life was still notably shorter than on other phones in our tests, including three of the latest Droids from Motorola, which ran for as long as 24 hours. Also, their small screens, while sharp and bright, can't beat the larger, sharper displays that adorn flagship models from Samsung, LG, and HTC.

Many Android device manufacturers have been increasing the size of their devices and displays, pushing into so-called "phablet" territory, but Apple has so far kept to smaller displays facilitating one-handed operation. In a minor change, Apple increased the height of the iPhone's display with the iPhone 5 last year, but the 4-inch display now standard on Apple's latest iPhone and iPod touch models remains much smaller than seen on many competing devices.

Apple has reportedly been testing prototype iPhone designs with larger displays measuring between 4.8 and 6 inches diagonally, with a particular focus on 4.8-inch models. Apple does, however, routinely test a variety of different prototype designs and it is unclear if the company is planning to launch the larger-screen designs with the next iPhone hardware update presumably scheduled for next year.

Apple has notified two of its major iPhone 5c suppliers that it is reducing orders of the smartphone for the fourth quarter, reports The Wall Street Journal. Taiwanese assemblers Pegatron and Foxconn (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.) were given notice by Apple that fourth quarter production of the device would be slowed, with the former being told orders would be cut by less than 20% and the latter being told that orders would be cut by one-third of the original production. A report by Reuters corroborates the claim of production cuts at Pegatron.

Apple told its Taiwanese assemblers Pegatron Corp. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. that shipments of the iPhone 5C in the fourth quarter would be cut, the people said. Pegatron, which analysts say assembles two thirds of the iPhone 5Cs, was told orders would be cut by less than 20%, said a person familiar with the matter. Hon Hai, which assembles the remaining low-cost iPhones, was told orders would be cut by a third, said two people familiar with the matter.

One component supplier was notified of a 50% cut in orders for iPhone 5C parts, which analysts say could suggest a slowdown in device shipments next year, or mean an inventory reduction by assemblers.

Reflecting continued tight supplies of the higher-priced iPhone 5s, sources at Foxconn have also indicated that Apple has requested an increase in production for those models.

Apple's notice to suppliers comes after various reports about the iPhone 5C's market demand and production over the past month, with one report stating last week that Apple was cutting iPhone 5c production from 300,000 units to 150,000 units per day, as the iPhone 5c seeing much greater availability compared to the iPhone 5s. New data from the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners last week also stated that the iPhone 5s has been outselling the iPhone 5c by more than a two-to-one margin since the launch of both devices last month.

It remains difficult to say, however, whether Apple's cuts are a result of lower than expected demand or perhaps simply part of a planned scaling back following an initial surge to ensure that distribution channels are adequately filled heading into the holiday season. With strong availability of the iPhone 5c continuing, a number of third-party retailers have been discounting the device in order to entice customers.

Apple announced last month that the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c had sold a record nine million units during their launch weekend, but the company did not break down the sales distribution between the two models. However, a report from earlier this month stated that the iPhone 5c finished second in sales during the month of September at US carriers AT&T and Sprint, and finished within the top three in sales at all four major carriers, which suggests that the lower-cost iPhone is at least selling fairly well.