This week on AppleInsider: Samsung pays out, 4-inch iPhone rumors, World AIDS Day & more
The aftermath of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday kept news relatively quiet, but rumors of a new 4-inch iPhone persisted, and Samsung finally agreed to pay out $548 million to Apple -- with conditions.
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For the fourth year in a row, Apple turned the logos of Apple Stores red to reflect World AIDS Day -- an event created by the World Health Organization that's meant to bring awareness of HIV/AIDS and its casualties.
At the same time, Apple noted that its (Product)Red contributions have surpassed $100 million since 2006. Money from Apple's few Red-branded products go to the Global Fund, a charity devoted to fighting not just AIDS but malaria and tuberculosis.
Backing other rumors, including some of his own, connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that Apple is indeed working on a new 4-inch iPhone that should ship in early 2016. The device will allegedly have both an A9 processor and Apple Pay, bringing an option for people who want modern specs but not the size and cost of an iPhone 6s.
To date, Apple's "budget" iPhones have consisted largely of older models at reduced prices. Even the iPhone 5c was essentially an iPhone 5 with a plastic shell and some minor component tweaks.
As promised in June, Apple finally made Swift an open-source programming language, with Linux support. While developers have been coding in Swift for some time, until now the language was restricted to Apple platforms.
Making it open source could potentially greatly expand Swift's popularity, and bring it to new realms like cloud computing.
In an email notification, Apple warned Beats Music subscribers that they have until Jan. 19 to transfer their accounts to Apple Music or risk losing things like playlists and preferences. Beats Music's streams shut down at the end of November.
While Beats Music -- acquired in Apple's $3 billion takeover of Beats last year -- was the foundation for Apple Music, the services differ in their design. Apple Music, for instance, lacks "The Sentence," which was used to find tracks suited to a particular mood or event.
After years of legal battles and a loss at trial, Samsung on Thursday said it had "made arrangements" to pay Apple a $548,176,477 damage settlement for infringing on iPhone patents with its Android-based smartphones. Former Apple CEO infamously claimed that Android was "stolen" and threatened to go to "nuclear war" over the issue.
As a catch, Samsung claimed the right to reimbursement if Apple's pinch-to-zoom patent is found invalid, or if it can successfully argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
JCPenney prepares for Apple Pay in spring 2016
Long an official Apple Pay partner, JCPenney on Monday was revealed to be finally launching support for the service sometime this spring. This includes not just standard payments, but support for the retailer's store cards as well. U.S. merchant backing has been relatively weak with Apple Pay, making every new chain that much more important. Some other partners set to go live in the near future include Cinnabon, Chili's, Domino's, KFC, and Starbucks.Apple marks World AIDS Day
New 4-inch iPhone may come in early 2016 with A9 and Apple Pay
Swift goes open source
Beats Music data to be purged Jan. 19
Samsung agrees to $548M settlement with Apple
Comments
Agreed - but with so many other companies in contention for "slimiest" - it's hard to pick a #1.
Samsung: Steals technology from the leaders in every field. Denies it. Drags things out in court so they chia continue re-selling stolen technology until the technology is no longer relevant. Eventually pays only pennies on the dollar - if anything at all.
Mobile Phone service providers: Advertises 5 cents per kilobyte while roaming to make roaming sound deceptively inexpensive and then charges unsuspecting users and those that don't know how useless a kilobytes truly is - $35-$50 to upload a single vacation picture. (I know they are finally slowly improving - led by t-mobile - but this practice was heinous enough that it should be remembered a long time and AT&T, Rogers, etc should be punished.
Air Canada - had the nerve to demand $3000 to RETURN one segment on a 4 segment trip without changing anything else. No date change, time change or even seat change. The first segment was supposed to be Hamburg to Munich. I wanted to give that back, take the train to Munich and just pick up the rest of my trip from there - and they wouldn't let me do it unless I paid them $3000 extra dollars !!! A company that has the balls to pull that kind of scam definitely has to be in the running for one of the slimiest/sleaziest companies of all time.
I can't think of anyone worse than Samsung, the airlines and the mobile phone companies but I feel like I must have missed somebody.... Is there anyone I forgot?