An initiative to standardize the way touch enabled devices interact with web content has had a wrench thrown into the works, at least temporarily, by Apple.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Events Working Group was created last year and tasked with standardizing the way touch devices, from smartphones and tablets to drawing pads and spatial sensors, interact with web applications. One of the specifications they have been working on is called 'Touch Events.'

  As part of the standard development process, the working group sent out multiple requests for patent exclusions. In layman's terms, these are requests for disclosure of any existing or pending patents which might be required to implement a standard.

  Responding to the third of three calls for exclusions this year, Apple provided the group with a list of four patents, one of which has already been approved, two which are pending approval, and a fourth which is in the early stage of application, which they say are related to the Touch Events specification.

  A developer for the Opera browser who blogs under the name Haavard is crying foul on Apple's move, and says they are simply trying to impede the creation of the Touch Events spec. He points to similar occurences in 2009 and 2010, when Apple made exclusion claims with respect to the W3C Widgets specification.

  Of the three patents listed in those claims, two were found to be nonessential, while the third was deemed both nonessential and invalid due to prior art.

  When a patent exclusion claim is made to a W3C working group, the organization must appoint a team to examine the patents in question to determine whether they are, in fact, necessary to the spec in its current state. This means delaying finalization until the determination is reached.

  Perhaps the key technology which Apple has used as a cornerstone for their multitude of patent lawsuits against handset and tablet makers around the world are is the touch screen. Simply put, Apple wants to use patents to restrict other companies' touch implementations.

  Of course that's despite the fact their touch screen technology isn't necessarily as revolutionary or original as their patents suggest. In some cases they cover technology which was in production by other companies before the Apple patent application was even filed.

  It's also notable that Apple decided not to participate in the Touch Events working group. One possible reason was that they don't really want standardization in that area. But according to Haavard, the additional benefit was it allowed them to wait until the last minute to disclose the patents they say are required for the specification.

  The advantage in this would be delaying the adoption of any kind of standard by at least a few months. Work on the standard will essentially grind to a halt while Apple's claims are examined. Given the ever increasing number of devices on the market with touch screen interfaces, that's not really good for anyone - not even Apple.  

VIA: Techdrift.com, Opera.com

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  In keeping with its strategy for world domination in consumer electronics, Apple has inconspicuously transferred a dozen patents that it previously "owned" to a non-existent corporate entity called Cliff Island LLC.

 Tech crunch have done a little digging and it appears that Cliff Island is a shell company, sharing a physical address with Altitude Capital, the main investor behind patent trolling company Digitude Innovations (ironic name, n'est pas?).

  Cliff Island then "transferred" those same patents to Digitude who have now filed a suit with the ITC (International Trade Commission) in the US against basically all the smartphone and tablet makers selling in America (RIM, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, and Nokia (note that Apple is not on this list). How mysterious.

  Digitude was founded in 2010 and raised $50 million from Altitude Capital Partners, with aims to “acquire, aggregate, and license key technology areas within the consumer electronics and related technology fields in a patent consortium” — in other words, it buys up patents and then sues other companies until they settle and agree to pay licensing fees, because it’s generally less expensive than actually going to court.

  So what we're seeing here is Apple suing its competitors out of the market, yet again, for patent law suites it already lost, but this time by proxy. And it's interesting that the patent transfers have taken place under some sneaky back-room sleight of hand. For new readers this might seem unethical even for Apple - what we know, is only the tip of the ice berg, unfortunately.

The USPTO Apple exhibit - shows just how biased an

Unided States institution can be 

   Meanwhile, let me remind you this is all made possible thanks to a jerk with a very high function in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). You have probably heard of the web site PatentlyApple.com which publishes all Apple patents as soon as they are submitted to the USPTO.It is no wonder that Apple can get approved patents for products like the SmartCover which in fact steal InCase's design. It doesn't matter if somebody else made it first or if the patent already exists, Apple will get their's approved without a sweat.

  The whole article and its links to a Forbes piece on Digitude can be read at the Tech Crunch site. It's worth a look at just how out of control Apple has become, and the folks at TC deserve the clicks for their excellent effort in bringing this to light.

This seems to be a case where the US DOJ may yet be involved. Interesting times. 

VIA: AndroidNZ, Tech Crunch

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   Australian airline reports case of burning iPhone on flight. Regional Express, Australia's largest independent regional airline, issued a press release on an incident shortly after a flight landed late last week. Flight ZL319 had just landed when a passenger's mobile phone started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, and started glowing red.

   A flight attendant extinguished the burning phone immediately and no passengers or crew were harmed. Regional Express reported the incident to the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

   The mobile phone in question is identified as an Apple iPhone, which shows a significant amount of damage to the rear of the phone. Reports online indicate that the iPhone shows evidence that the burning came from the battery, which would explain the red glow and the release of smoke.

Below are some of the few samples that made the news of incinerated cars, burnt people, molten connectors or even exploding devices. This is not an isolated incident among iPhones or iPhone 4 devices!

Perhaps issues like these wouldn't happen so often if Apple wouldn't pay people to "shut it" or sites like Gizmodo to turn a serious threat into a joke. It's all fun and games and we all enjoy Apple's hefty profits, made by exploiting the user and picking the cheapest possible components. I suggest you see what an exploding Li-Po can do before taking an apologetic attitude and preferably before somebody gets seriously injured.



[UPDATE]

Not 24 hours have passed and due to an amazing coinci a shorted Galaxy device has appeared on XDA. A user with almost no activity on XDA suddenly droped such a post out of the blue. The amazing thing is that there's no damage to the battery body, only to the contacts. Would you as a fanboy be desperate enough to damage a new device or is it an Apple rep? Check the pics yourself to see the difference between foul play and the above (or how actual li-po damage looks like).



VIA: Afterdawn.com

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How do we define fragmentation?



This is what fragmentation (frgmn-tshn) actually means:

The scattering of parts of a computer file across different regions of a disk. Fragmentation occurs when the operating system breaks up the file and stores it in locations left vacant by previously deleted files. The more fragmented the file, the slower it is to retrieve, since each piece of the file must be identified and located on the disk.



Below we will try to explain the FUD term propagated by Steve Jobs and spread by Apple fans that also have a very vague idea of it's meaning.

• the inability to update the OS because of the manufacturer?


• the user's choice not to update?


• the coexistence of multiple app stores?


• exclusive apps?


• different hardware configurations?

So let's start with updates

    If we are to consider updates as the sole factor in fragmentation, we would certainly be wrong. Both Android and iOS can run the same Apps. Forcing partial updates like iOS 4 on iPhone 3G and 3GS has lowered the device performance considerably while still not bringing the same features iPhone 4 had. Apple might have reduced fragmentation in statistics, but it has decreased user experience by making 3G and 3GS laggy devices.

So how are iPhone updates doing in 2011?

According to statistics, not too well. So far iOS 5 is only on 38% of all iPhones:



"According to Chitika Insights, one month after release, the new OS is on 38 percent of iPhones, 30 percent of iPads and 12 percent of iPod Touch.

iOS5 distribution in 2011

 The firm uses mobile ad network impressions to analyze traffic."



In comparison, Android's latest major distribution for Phones 2.x.x is spread across 95% of the devices, and the latest subversion, Gingerbread or 2.3.x is spread across 38.2% of the devices.



We should also mention that Android has a market share or 52.5% while Apple has a market of ~15%. Given the fact that there are 443 unique Android devices released and only 7 iPhones, I'd say Apple's closed eco-system idea is doing a lot worse in the real world than it did on paper.





Apps and AppStores

    In a recent discussion, with a fellow blogger, Prasad, on GSMArena, we tackled the fragmentation issue by app availability and app stores. He wasn't pleased about the existence of multiple stores for Android and the fact that, specifically Amazon, is holding up exclusive offers on a lot of countries where it isn't yet available.

    Well how is the Apple Appstore doing, in this type of "fragmentation" compared to android?

• Apple's AppStore was only accessible to US and a few European countries at launch


• Apple's AppStore just got accessible to 33 new countries this year.


• Cydia - a user made AppStore with no guaranteed security, made for apps rejected by Apple - only available for those who jailbreak


• Carriers. Vodafone has their own 360 People Sync and navigation app - only available to Vodafone users

   So is there such a big difference in App availability on iOS and Android? Should we even note the fact that Cydia will never make it's way onto iPhones that aren't jail broken? Let's give Amazon a chance, I'm sure it will make it's way in all countries as did Apple's App store and the Google Market.

   For me, on iOS, it's certainly a big deal if jailbreaks are late. I have to chose between updating and losing access to Cydia and possibly some of my favorite apps. Apple's own strict policy seems to be one of the very reasons for fragmentation.

   How about exclusive updates? iPhone 3G will never get multi-tasking, GameCenter, iPhone 3GS and 4 will never get SIRI. Besides questioning the status of the update (how can you call it iOS4 or 5 when it doesn't have the same features?), what happens to apps that depend on GameCenter or multi-tasking? What happens to Apps that depend on SIRI?

Devices and configurations

Some users think fragmentation means different hardware. I think different hardware means variety, and variety is a good thing.

• Windows 7 PC runs right now on few billion different configurations. Variety doesn't mean fragmentation.


• Out of 400 Android configurations at least a few dozen are identical.


• Out of 7 iPhone models I can't find 2 devices with the same hardware.

    And then there’s the display. Making a universal binary of a game that we want to work on the iPad, the iPhone 3GS, and of course the iPhone 4. All three devices have different resolutions. The same thing happens on Android with the mini devices (240 x 320), the regular smartphones (800x480) and tablets. There's very little code necessary to make apps compatible on both platforms, but as there's a lower number for iPad apps than iPhone, that code is still necessary.

   Apps should be the same on both device types. Having two app types means fragmentation to start with. Android has actually taken a step forward in this regard, as since 3.2 it's possibly to dynamically scale an app, particularly useful for tablets 7"-10".

   Then there's users that complain that their Android device is slow and laggy. Can you expect the same user-experience for a $100 device as you can from a $700 one? If you believe that, please try an iPhone 2G, 3G or 3GS.

   As a conclusion I'd like to reinforce my first statement. Fragmentation is indeed a FUD term spread by Apple that had no idea it would backfire on them even in the tightly controlled "OS developer/manufacturer -> user" ecosystem. The truth is, that as bad as it sounds, even with iOS's partial updates and different markets it's still not a thing to worry about. Even so the device experience is mainly the same on all devices.

Who is least affected by fragmentation? Android or iOS? I'll let you be the judge of that. In my opinion, Windows Phone 7 is the least affected, but with more devices and OS versions their turn will come ;)

Sources: MattMaroon.com, Business Insider, Afterdawn.com, Phonedog.com

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