MacRumors

The Loop reports that Apple is facing a new patent lawsuit from NetAirus Technologies over the iPhone. While Apple is routinely the target of such actions, this particular lawsuit is interesting if only because it appears to be targeting the entire concept of the iPhone rather than a minor aspect of its features or technology.

Filed in the Central District of California Western Division, NetAirus claims that Apple's iPhone infringes '380 patent. The patent issued on September 5, 2006 and held by NetAirus describes a "Wireless Handset Communication System."

The suit targets all three versions of the iPhone released so far and seeks cash damages and a halt to iPhone production.

Little is known about NetAirus, although it appears that this patent's inventor, Richard J. Ditzik, holds a number of patents related to flat panel display technology. Barron's notes that he has filed patent lawsuits against several other companies over the past few years, including Panasonic and Samsung. Ditzik appears to have filed the lawsuits using different company names over the years, suggesting that he may be a one-man operation setting up a various corporate entities to pursue patent complaints against larger corporations.

In a report covering a potential antitrust inquiry for Apple regarding its exclusion of cross-platform compilers for applications submitted to the App Store, The Wall Street Journal notes that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also been looking into iAd mobile advertising platform. The investigations come as the FTC is scrutinizing Google's attempt to acquire mobile ad firm AdMob, with rumors suggesting that the agency may formally oppose the deal.

Separate from its much-publicized change to its developer agreement regarding cross-compilers that has seen a flare-up in the Apple-Adobe relationship, Apple made another change that appears to be designed to prevent other ad agencies from gathering the analytics necessary to offer viable ad platforms on the iPhone OS.

One wireless-advertising executive said he was contacted a few weeks ago by an official from the FTC who wanted to talk about how the mobile-ad industry works, the Apple developer agreement and how it could affect the executive's business.

The FTC has also taken an interest in iAd in the context of the agency's investigation of Google Inc.'s $750 million purchase of mobile-ad company AdMob Inc. Several developers said they have been contacted by the FTC about the Google-AdMob probe, with two saying they were told that the agency was also looking into the iAd service.

For their part, Google and AdMob have been drawing attention to Apple's moves in the mobile advertising space as they work to convince regulators that the industry offers sufficient competition that should permit Google's acquisition of AdMob to proceed.

Earlier today, we noted that ABC had updated its ABC Player application for the iPad to support video streaming over 3G networks and that the new version had been submitted to Apple for review.

Apple certainly didn't take long to look it over, however, as the updated version is now live in the App Store. In addition to 3G streaming, the new version brings a number of other improvements, notably including support for landscape orientation in all screens within the application.

This update includes improvements that you have asked for including:

- 3G streaming (requires a 3G capable device)
- Landscape orientation support for all screens
- Support for the iPad's orientation lock
- Updated player controls that are more responsive
- Improved display of parental ratings
- Numerous other bug fixes and stability enhancements

In order to support 3G streaming, ABC appears to have been required to add a lower-quality video stream for the system to default to when network performance demands it. In general, iPad users are experiencing lower quality video when streaming via 3G than via Wi-Fi, with different applications offering varying amounts of visible degradation on cellular networks. YouTube in particular has been cited as offering much poorer quality streams over 3G.

MacRumors is pleased to announce the MacRumors Blood Drive during the months of May and June 2010. We encourage our readers to donate blood at any collection center, then let us know so we can offer well-deserved congratulations. Our goal is to increase the number of blood donations by people in the Mac community.

Most blood drives are specific to a physical organization at a particular location. Ours is online and worldwide. We call on our forum members and site visitors to help people in need of blood in their own communities. If you are eligible to donate blood you can go to any blood collection center (hospital, community center, Red Cross location, etc.) near you. Our effort is not related to a particular event; donated blood is needed every second, all year, by people recovering from accidents or illness, and only the generosity of others can provide it. Specific eligibility requirements for blood donation vary by country. The minimum age is 16, 17, or 18 depending on where you live.

Please join us in showing the spirit of the Mac Community. Details are in the MacRumors Blood Drive discussion thread.

MacRumors has not made a community service effort like this before and we hope we are successful in getting more people in the habit of donating blood. Our grassroots effort depends on you to give one hour of your time for a very good cause.

Apple's health and relief efforts over the years have included donations for 9/11 workers in 2001, the Songs for Sudan effort in 2004, (PRODUCT) RED iPods since 2006, and help for Haitian earthquake victims this past January.

Over the weekend, a new jailbreaking tool known as "Spirit" was released, offering users the ability modify their iPhone OS devices to run third-party applications not approved or distributed by Apple. Notably, Spirit is compatible with all three iPhone OS devices: iPhone, iPod touch, and now Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G iPad models. Spirit also offers an untethered jailbreaking solution, allowing users to restart their jailbroken devices as necessary without the need for a computer to assist with the booting process.

In addition to the usual jailbreaking caveats regarding Apple's disapproval of the process and the possibility of unexpected behavior requiring the user to restore his or her device, Spirit's author notes that the iPad jailbreak remains in beta form and that certain application packages can cause problems for users' devices.

Spirit is a jailbreaking tool only, and does not unlock locked iPhones for use on other carriers than those officially supported by Apple. It does, however, install Cydia, the popular application store where users can obtain apps for jailbroken devices.

Bloomberg takes a look at Apple's spate of corporate acquisitions over the past six months, which has seen the company reverse a long-standing policy of making very infrequent deals with its recent purchases of Quattro Wireless, Lala Media, Intrinsity, and Siri. In particular, the report points to the growing rivalry between Apple and Google, stoked in large part on the acquisitions front by Google reportedly swooping in to snatch mobile advertising firm AdMob just as Apple was looking to finalize a deal to do so.

"The pace has really picked up, there seems to be a strategic shift," said Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. "It looks like there's an acquisition frenzy going on between Google and Apple in the sense that there's an increasing urgency on Apple's part to stay even if not ahead of Google in the phone space and apps space.

One interesting tidbit included in the report is evidence that Apple has sometimes moved very quickly when looking to make an acquisition, even giving targets as little as three hours to agree to a deal.

To avoid publicity and possible rival bids, Apple in some cases has offered a target only a three-hour period in which to accept the terms of a sale, according to one executive with knowledge of the situation.

Apple's increased interest in corporate acquisitions was noted earlier this year, with the company's hiring of its first dedicated mergers and acquisitions specialist last year possibly signaling the priority shift.

"They learned a good lesson with AdMob" because they had to settle for "second-fiddle Quattro," said Brian Marshall, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech in San Francisco. "They've got the resources. They have the team to do acquisitions now. It's a technology land grab right now."

Apple has traditionally shied away from such acquisitions, preferring to develop its technology in-house with its own culture and only occasionally engaging in purchases of much smaller companies. Even then, Apple has been tight-lipped about its plans for those companies, sometimes pursuing specific technologies or intellectual property and other times primarily looking to acquire talented individuals for its own projects.

One of the early notes on the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G was the observation that several video streaming applications for the iPad such as Netflix and YouTube offer lower-resolution video over 3G than they do over Wi-Fi. Others, such as ABC's popular ABC Player application, refused to stream over 3G at all, restricting viewers to Wi-Fi networks only.

Despite some confusion over the reasons for ABC's lack of 3G capability, with AT&T directing questions to Apple and speculation about digital rights or technical considerations being bandied about, AppAdvice noted over the weekend that Apple requires application looking to use HTTP Live Streaming over 3G networks to offer lower quality stream options that can be used when network conditions limit the amount of available bandwidth. ABC apparently chose not to include such functionality it its iPad application, resulting in the Wi-Fi-only limitation.

Fortunately, Silicon Alley Insider now reports that ABC has already submitted a revised version of its iPad application, offering streaming via 3G, to Apple for inclusion in the App Store.

Good news, iPad 3G owners: ABC's iPad app will support 3G video streaming in a new update to the app, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The app has already been submitted to Apple, and pending approval -- which ABC should get -- it will be available for download.

ABC had previously indicated to Silicon Alley Insider that the application would be Wi-Fi-only due to "a variety of business and technical considerations." It appears, however, that ABC has changed its mind and has resolved any issues it had with allowing 3G streaming to the iPad.

The New York Post reports that Apple may be facing a federal antitrust inquiry over a change made to its iPhone developer agreement last month prohibiting developers from using cross-compilers to create their applications. The move, which effectively bans developers from using Adobe's new Packager for iPhone feature in Flash Professional CS5 for App Store submission, has escalated an ongoing dispute between Apple and Adobe over Flash.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are locked in negotiations over which of the watchdogs will begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple's new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple's programming tools.

Regulators, this person said, are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry. It will focus on whether the policy, which took effect last month, kills competition by forcing programmers to choose between developing apps that can run only on Apple gizmos or come up with apps that are platform neutral, and can be used on a variety of operating systems, such as those from rivals Google, Microsoft and Research In Motion.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has become increasingly vocal over his company's views on Flash, arguing that the future of Web content delivery lies in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and not in Flash. Jobs claims that Flash offers a substandard user experience with reliability and security issues, as well as not being suitable for mobile device platforms for a number of reasons.

With respect to the compiler issue, Jobs' argument rests on the claim that adding a middle layer between the iPhone OS and applications would result in an unsatisfactory user experience and hamper developments due to reliance on those third parties for rolling out new features and other changes. Apple prefers that developers "stand directly on the shoulders" of iPhone OS, as it aims to deliver "the most advanced and innovative platform" to assist them with their app creation.

Update: Reuters is corroborating the claim that an inquiry is under consideration.

Apple today announced that it has reached one million iPads sold in the 28 days since the launch of Wi-Fi models in early April. iPad users have also downloaded over 12 million apps and over 1.5 million eBooks during that time.

"One million iPads in 28 days -- that's less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Demand continues to exceed supply and we're working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers."

Apple offered no indication in its press release of sales of Wi-Fi + 3G iPad models, which went on sale in the U.S. last Friday.

Apple previously announced that it had sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of sales of Wi-Fi-only models. Less than a week after that launch, Jobs noted at the company's iPhone OS 4 media event that it had passed 450,000 in iPad sales.

Tracking site Chikita estimated last week that Apple had sold its one millionth iPad even before the 3G-capable models went on sale.

This weekend BumpTop announced that they had been acquired by Google.

More than three years ago, we set out to completely change the way people use their desktops. We're very grateful for all your support over that time -- not just financially but also through all the encouraging messages from people who found BumpTop inspiring, useful, and just downright fun.

Today, we have a big announcement to make: we're excited to announce that we've been acquired by Google!

This puts an end to their Windows and Mac product which was offered as a free download with paid upgrade. We had previously covered the Mac release when it was launched in January.

BumpTop is physics-based 3D desktop environment which allows users new features for organizing their desktops. BumpTop offers users multiple surfaces on which to store files, allowing users to alter the sizes of individual items and take advantage of several organizational features such as piles. BumpTop also supports Multi-Touch gestures in Windows 7 to manipulate files. See this video showing off its features:

The company is still offering the free version to download for the next week. It's not known what plans Google has for the technology.

Apple has also been researching 3d desktop environments with some similar features to BumpTop. Apple has also been heavily investing in multi-touch technologies that are found in the iPhone and iPad.

iLounge posts some preliminary findings between the iPad Wi-fi and iPad 3G models. The 3G model was just released on Friday and includes 3G cellular data capabilities as well as GPS functionality.

Data services over 3G cellular tend to draw more power than on Wi-Fi alone. Apple's official specs show a 10% hit when using 3G vs. Wi-fi. Apple claims 10 hours of continous web usage on Wi-Fi, and 9 hours of usage on 3G with a single charge. iLounge's early tests show that these numbers seem reasonably accurate:

Our prior iPad with Wi-Fi battery tests found that Apple was generally at least a little conservative in its estimates; for instance, we put the Wi-Fi model through a web torture test with repeated 1-minute refreshes of a large, completely loaded page for 10 hours and 21 minutes on 50% brightness over 802.11n. Repeating the exact same test on the Wi-Fi + 3G model with 3G turned on and Wi-Fi turned off, the iPad achieved 8 hours and 38 minutes of continuous reloading and displaying -- 22 minutes shy of Apples estimate.

The iPad 3G was delivered to customers on Friday, about a month after the launch of the Wi-Fi iPad. The main differences between the units are the inclusion of a 3G data module as well as GPS functionality in the newer model. iFixit has already performed a teardown of the new unit, though few surprises were found.

Some additional notes of interest:

- Gizmodo notes that Netflix works over 3G but with down sampled video. ABC's app, however, refuses to play over 3G and is Wi-Fi only.
- Dan Frommer suggests ABC's 3G limitation is due to content licensing issues rather than a technical limitation imposed by either Apple or AT&T. When questioned, AT&T deferred to Apple for specifics.
- Gizmodo also describes a comparison of GPS functionality between the iPad and the Phone 3GS. According to their tests, the iPhone 3GS locked onto the GPS signal faster, but the iPad was more accurate and consistent.
- A few MacRumors forum members noted similar improvements in GPS, finding the Navigon app to work much better on the iPad:

With the iPhone navigon would jump me around and tell me to get on the freeway when I was already on the freeway. With the iPad 3G ... It updated my position in real time while I was pulling out of my driveway ... 40 ft.

- iFixit's teardown shows the iPad uses a different GPS chip (Broadcom BCM4750UBG Single-Chip AGPS Solution) compared to the iPhone 3GS, explaining the improvement.
- TUAW notes that Skype over 3G connections failed (as expected. They report that 3rd party SIM cards worked properly in the iPad.

With today's news that Apple is planning a May 31st shutdown for Lala Media, the streaming music service it acquired last December, speculation has arisen that Apple may be on the verge of launching its own cloud-based version of iTunes. MediaMemo reports, however, that industry sources are indicating that such a move would have to occur a bit further down the road.

Sources tell me that in the past few weeks, Apple has started signaling to the labels that it's interested in a Web-based version of iTunes, its dominant music retail platform. But those conversations are preliminary at best.

The music industry has reportedly rejected Apple's earlier proposals for a cloud-based iTunes, claiming that offering users the ability to stream a single purchased track to multiple devices should require the labels to receive greater revenue than they do under the current system, a position Apple and its customers would generally not be likely to accept.

The report notes that Apple could try to argue that users have the legal right to stream their purchased content to their own devices as they see fit, but such a move would antagonize the record labels and also likely hamper Apple's efforts to expand its content deals in other media segments such as television networks.

Stepping into the Flash debate just hours after Apple CEO Steve Jobs issued his "Thoughts on Flash" letter discussing why Apple has elected not to include support for Adobe's Flash on its iPhone OS devices, Microsoft general manager for Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch noted this his company is throwing its weight behind the H.264 standard promoted by Apple for future HTML5 video content.

The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.

Hachamovitch goes on to acknowledge that video on the web today is primarily Flash-based, and while Microsoft continues to work with Adobe on Flash, he also notes that it carries some issues related to reliability, security, and performance.

Hachamovitch's comments suggest that while Microsoft recognizes the dominant role played by Flash, it is also looking ahead to the future, where it sees a much more prominent role for HTML5 and H.264, a view shared and being pushed forward by Apple in its decisions and communications.