Apple accused of impersonating police during effort to recover lost iPhone 5 prototype

This whole lost iPhone 5 prototype story just got whole lot more interesting. According to SF Weekly, six investigators claiming to be members of the San Francisco police department descended upon one Bernal Heights, San Francisco man’s home in search of a lost iPhone 5 prototype that CNET originally reported had been left in a bar. The scary part? The SFPD confirmed the investigators weren’t police officers at all. Instead, it appears as though they may have actually been members of Apple’s security team allegedly impersonating police officers. Read on for more.

AT&T offers customers 1,000 free rollover minutes

AT&T sent text messages to its customers on Thursday offering 1,000 free rollover minutes. The message specifically said: “There’s no cost or obligation to you. It’s our way of saying thank you. To have your minutes added, reply “YES,” by 9/7/2011.” We received the SMS on an iPhone in the office and confirmed that we did indeed receive 1,000 free rollover minutes. An AT&T spokesperson did not immediately responded to a request for further details on why AT&T issued the offer.

BGR

Pauly D Has The Best Of Both Worlds With A Blackberry and an iPhone

iPhone and iPad competitors could benefit from Jobs’s resignation

Apple’s iPhone and iPad competitors could benefit with Steve Jobs out as CEO of Apple. “It’s going to give competitors a bit more of a lease of life to go out and compete harder,” Nomura International Plc. technology analyst Richard Windsor told Bloomberg, which noted that Sony and Nokia’s stock prices jumped after Jobs’ announcement. “It’s been thought about, talked about endlessly for the past several years that Tim Cook would probably take over so while you get an initial knee-jerk reaction on the downside, we would probably expect that not to last very long.” Apple will also need to maintain the momentum and market lead that Steve Jobs created as CEO. “If the new management team doesn’t sustain the level of innovation that Steve Jobs spearheaded, it’s going to be an opportunity for the competition in the long term,” Korea Investment Management Co. fund manager Lee Young Seog said. “Still, because of Tim Cook’s competence and the system at Apple, the competitive landscape isn’t likely to change anytime soon.” Steve Jobs announced his resignation from his CEO post on Wednesday and he will be replaced by Tim Cook, who has effectively been running the company while Jobs has been on leave. “Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it,” Jobs said in his resignation letter on Wednesday.

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via:BGR

HTC sues Apple for patent infringement… again [updated]

HTC filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court of Delaware alleging that Cupertino-based Apple Inc. is infringing on three of its patents. The patents are related to Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Mac computers, and HTC is seeking triple damages for willful infringement and compensatory damages. The two companies have been locked in legal battles for months, but we’re a little surprised at HTC’s move given the company recently said it was disappointed in “Apple’s constant attempts at litigations instead of competing fairly in the market.” Apple first sued HTC for patent infringement in March and a judge with the United States International Trade Commission found HTC guilty of infringing on two of Apple’s patents in July. HTC said that it will appeal the ITC ruling and has argued that it has a strong case against the iPhone maker.

UPDATE: HTC’s press release is now included after the break.

China uncovers 22 additional fake Apple Stores

Authorities with China’s Administration for Industry and Commerce have uncovered 22 additional fake Apple Store outlets in Kunming, the largest city in the Yunnan Province, Reuters reported on Thursday. Kunming is where a blog named BirdAbroad first revealed the existence of unofficial Apple Stores that posed as the real deal. In late July Chinese officials closed down two of the stores for lacking business licenses, but allowed others to remain open because they have licenses to trade and sell genuine Apple products. Now, the stores are being forced to remove Apple’s official logo after Apple China accused them of violating its trademark. The Administration for Industry and Commerce will setup a hotline in an effort to catch more illegal stores.

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BlackBerry users most important and influential according to Klout

So apparently BlackBerry users have more Klout than and Android users. If you’re wondering exactly what that means, you’re not alone. Klout is a new social networking service that measures individual users “influence” by gathering data from their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Foursquare activities.

Recently Klout pinned Android and iPhone users head-to-head (while completely dismissing BlackBerry users as a whole) and found that iPhone users edged out their Google counterparts. Upon request from many readers, Klout calculated BlackBerry users’ average influence and what did they find? BlackBerry users beat out both iPhone and Android devices alike. Klout called it “an upset.”

While many will quickly dismiss this statistic (and they may have some validity to do so), one thing that we can gather from this is that social networking on the BlackBerry platform has definitely improved within the last few weeks. With the release of new Facebook for BlackBerry and Twitter for Blackberry apps that are extremely solid, and a new Foursquare app that now integrates with BBM, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that BlackBerry users are having more influence than ever.

Research In Motion and BlackBerry’s “impending doom” has also lead BlackBerry users to be influential in social networking in the sense that most of us have to constantly be defending or justifying our loyalty to our BlackBerry devices. If you’re reading this, odds are you have at one point in time or another convinced someone to switch to or stay with BlackBerry. We are influential.What do you think about this latest report from Klout?

via:bbos

BlackBerry vs iPhone vs Android – it’s Klout Klobberin’ time!

Klout is the standard of influence, as it itself suggests. If you don’t know about Klout, then Klout doesn’t know you.In a nutshell is a well-known one stop shop for measuring your online social influence. It “uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability and Network Score”.

Klout recently pitted iPhone and Android against each other in a no holds barred Klout showdown. They compared the average Klout scores of both iPhone and Android influencers. After the smoke cleared, iPhone came out on top with a 42.0 to 40.6 win. So where does BlackBerry come into play? Klout was later asked to throw BlackBerry into the mix. From the onslaught rose a new champion…BlackBerry emerged with a Klout score of 43.6!! I guess the real movers and shakers are BlackBerry users- don’t doubt the Klout.

Source: The Official Klout blogvia: cb

UK adults prefer iPhone, teens pick BlackBerry

Research firm Ofcom recently released its annual Communications Market Report that surveyed 2,073 adults and 512 teenagers in the United Kingdom. The results revealed that 32% of adults preferred using the iPhone as their primary handset while 37% percent of teens chose to carry a BlackBerry smartphone. Ofcom didn’t reveal whether it was cost or feature sets that drove the preference, however. The firm also found that 37% of adults considered themselves “addicted” to their smartphones while 60% of teenagers admitted being addicted. What was the most visited website on a smartphone? Facebook clocked in 43 million hours of usage in December 2010 alone, according to the firm.

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BGR

AT&T to soon begin revoking unlimited data from jailbreak hotspot users

AT&T confirmed to BGR that it will soon begin revoking unlimited data plans from jailbroken iPhone users and other smartphone users who utilize unauthorized tethering and mobile hotspot solutions. Following reports from earlier this year, AT&T on Thursday confirmed that it will remove grandfathered unlimited data plans from accounts belonging to users who tether or use unsanctioned mobile hotspot apps without a tethering plan, which is expressly prohibited by AT&T according to its terms and conditions. “Earlier this year, we began sending letters, emails, and text messages to a small number of smartphone customers who use their devices for tethering but aren’t on our required tethering plan. Our goal here is fairness for all of our customers,” an AT&T spokesperson told BGR via email. The letter outlines three choices for customers who had been making use of unauthorized tethering solutions, one of which is “Do nothing and we’ll go ahead and add the tethering plan on their behalf — after the dated noted in their customer notification.” According to earlier reports, offending users will automatically be bumped to AT&T’s more recent tiered data plan, which affords 2GB of smartphone data and 2GB of tethering data for $45 each month compared to AT&T’s old unlimited smartphone data plan, which costs $30 each month but does not include tethering. A new report from 9to5 Mac claims that users will begin losing unlimited plans as soon as August 11th, but AT&T stated that the policy enforcement date varies depending on when the offending subscriber was sent the notification letter. AT&T’s full statement follows below.

 

Earlier this year, we began sending letters, emails, and text messages to a small number of smartphone customers who use their devices for tethering but aren’t on our required tethering plan. Our goal here is fairness for all of our customers. (This impacts a only small percentage of our smartphone customer base.)

The letters outline three choices:

1. Stop tethering and keep their current plan (including grandfathered unlimited plan)
2. Proactively call AT&T or visit our stores and move to the required tethering plan
3. Do nothing and we’ll go ahead and add the tethering plan on their behalf — after the dated noted in their customer notification

via: bgr