Apple being sued over long-standing iMessage issue

A former iPhone user has filed a lawsuit against Apple over a long-standing iMessage issue. The complaint was filed yesterday in San Jose, California by Adrienne Moore, who says the company’s messaging system is interfering with text messaging on her new Android phone.

This issue has affected a number of former iPhone owners, who have switched to Android or another device. The problem is that when a person switches handsets, other iPhones still associate that phone number with iMessage, thus hampering their ability to text message…

Bloomberg has the report:

A former iPhone user sued Apple Inc. (AAPL) claiming the company’s messaging system interfered with delivery of texts after she switched to an Android-based smartphone.

Apple’s iMessage retains text messages sent from other users of Apple devices and won’t deliver them to her Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) phone running on Google Inc.’s Android operating system, Adrienne Moore said in the complaint filed yesterday in San Jose, California.

People who replace their Apple devices with non-Apple wireless phones and tablets are “penalized and unable to obtain the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts,” according to the complaint.

Earlier this week, former Lifehacker editor-in-chief Adam Pash penned a blog post on the matter that garnered quite a bit of attention. Mr. Pash wrote that he recently switched from an iPhone to an Android device, and since the change, no one with an iPhone can text him.

Apparently Apple is aware of the problem, and has engineers working on it, but right now they are clueless on how to fix it. Pash says that he has received several solutions from folks who claim they have resolved the issue, but he hasn’t seen any success. So for now, he’s stuck.

In the meantime, Apple has completely hijacked my text messaging and my phone number portability (portability between devices, not networks). No one can fix this but Apple because it’s a problem at the device level, which means people in my position have no recourse but to wait for Apple to figure out what the problem is. But Apple isn’t offering any public support on the issue that I’ve been able to find (and it’s worth repeating that proper support is behind a $20 paywall for most people who’ve switched devices, who would also be the most commonly affected by this problem).

Perhaps the fact that it’s now being sued will force Apple to focus more resources on the iMessage bug to get it resolved. There’s no word on what kind of damages Moore is asking for in the case, but she’s seeking class action status, which would allow other users to join the suit.

Foursquare updated ahead of Swarm app launch

Foursquare, the popular location-based social platform, is set to release a brand new Swarm app today which will “help people keep up and meet up with their friends”.

As a result, the existing free iOS client has just been updated with some changes you should know about. Announced two weeks ago, Swarm combines new mayorships, introduces stickers, offers detailed insights about your life and much more.

If you have Swarm installed, the new Foursquare 7.0.8 update includes a peek at some of the upcoming changes to Foursquare ahead of a major search-focused revamp due this summer…

iTunes release notes for Foursquare 7.0.8 mention no other changes aside from the aforementioned “upcoming changes to Foursquare” ahead of Swarm launch. If you haven’t installed Swarm yet, this Foursquare update will not detail the changes.

Specifically, there are no more ousting of mayors in the Foursquare app although it will continue to show the mayor as of today, frozen in place. Your profile will still display the list of proud mayorships you hold but, again, ousting of mayors will no longer be possible.

Swarm introduces a Mayors 2.0 feature based on the same 60-day historical window like the Foursquare app. If you’re mayor of a place where you and your friends go now, you’ll also be mayor amongst your friends in the Swarm app. As for your earned badges, they’re still available in your Foursquare trophy case.

The Swarm app is depicted on the screenshots throughout this article.

In a nutshell, Foursquare wants its main mobile app to focus on check-ins minus the gamification that has often been associated with the software. “We never set out to make a ‘game’,” a blog post says. “We wanted to make people’s experiences more fun and playful.”

Now that Foursquare is 50 million users strong, the team is moving these gamified features such us points (a measure of how exciting your outings were), badges (a sense of accomplishment) and mayorships (competing with your friends) to a dedicated Swarm app.

The app focuses on your nearby friends so there’s no invite list and you can “leave it as open-ended as you want.” The app centers around your activities, visible to all your friends in your city.

Speaking of which, your friends in Swarm can see if you’re in their neighborhood and how close you are. To enable or disable this neighborhood sharing feature, simply swipe right at the top of any screen, like this.

Another powerful Swarm feature: location history search.

When you tap over to your profile, the search field pops up allowing you to search for just about anything, be it a city, a person or a type of place – Swarm will analyze your old check-ins to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Swarm highlights:

Insights about your life
You guys have told us you love the little nuggets of insight we serve up after each check-in, like “Your 4th week in a row at your gym,” or “Your first time hanging out with Jason in 3 months.” These will continue to be an important part of Swarm.

Stickers
In the new Swarm, we built a bunch of stickers you can attach to your check-ins to quickly express how you feel or what you’re doing. (Don’t worry, they’re all free!) We’ll give you a few to start off with and, as you go out and explore the world, you’ll unlock more based on the places you visit. (Hint: try checking in at lots of different types of places to unlock new ones!)

Mayors 2.0
We wanted to get back to a fun way to compete with your friends instead of all 50,000,000 people who are on Foursquare. With these new mayorships, if you and a couple friends have been checking in to a place, the person who has been there the most lately gets a crown sticker.

So you and your friends can compete for the mayorship of your favorite bar, without having to worry about the guy who is there every. single. day. Mayors 2.0 means that places can have many different mayors, one for each circle of friends, instead of just a single mayor at each place.

New kinds of badges
In the new Foursquare (coming this summer), we’ve also built the spiritual successor to badges. Badges were always meant to recognize and reward people who would seek out and find awesome things in the real world, and we found a great new way to do that.

More about the Swarm app can be found at the official website.

The decision to create Swarm while rethinking the main Foursquare app may have had something to do with heightened competition in this space.

Although Microsoft recently bought a stake in Foursquare worth fifteen million dollars, the startup is about to lose an important client as Facebook-owned Instagram has been testing location integration with Facebook Places.

Therefore, Foursquare will lose (or already has lost) a significant revenue stream as Instagram stops using its location services. Curiously enough, Microsoft is also a minority investor in Facebook and is its search provider.

Foursquare’s bet here is that the new Swarm app will boost engagement by focusing on gamification because people love to brag about their achievements. The good news is that Foursquare’s main database of check-ins remains unmatched by rivals (Facebook Places is a joke).

At any rate, it’ll be fun seeing how things unfold for Foursquare.

Download Foursquare for free from the App Store.

The app is universal and iOS 7.0 or later is required.

Apple engineer explains how the iPhone was designed for ‘normal people’

The Samsung trial marched on today, with Apple’s Greg Christie taking the stand. You might remember Christie, the senior software engineer, from this WSJ article last month, where he detailed some of the early stages of original iPhone development. And this afternoon, he did the same thing in court.

More specifically, Christie shared some new details on the development of the iPhone’s ‘Slide to Unlock,’ which is one of the patents that Apple’s accusing  Samsung of infringing. He said initially, his team wanted the handset’s display to be always on, but they quickly discovered it needed a locked mode…

Recode and CNET have more from Christie’s testimony:

We couldn’t meet our power requirements if we had that active a state,” Apple human-interface head Greg Christie said on Friday, testifying at the Apple-Samsung patent trial. “We had to resort to a power button.” The company was also worried about the phone sending inadvertent emails or “pocket dialing.”

“We knew we had to have a locked mode, or a locked state, where it wouldn’t let you do most things, except you could unlock it.” Christie and his team then worked on a solution, eventually settling on the slide-to-unlock mechanism that shipped on the iPhone and is among the patented features at issue in the case.

Christie also reiterated that developing the iPhone was a serious risk for the company, as it was new territory—something Apple has brought up many times. He said creating the phone took three years, and it went through hundreds of design tweaks to ensure it worked in a way ‘anyone’ could understand.

One of the biggest challenges is that we need to sell products to people who don’t do what we do for a living,” Christie, one of the inventors of the slide-to-unlock iPhone feature, said. When designing products, Apple keeps in mind that it wants “normal people – people with better things to do with their lives than learn how a computer might work – to use the product as well as we can.” [...]

Christie, the second witness to testify for Apple in this trial, after marketing chief Phil Schiller, walked the jury on Friday through the process of developing the first iPhone in the mid-2000s. Much of his time on the stand was spent emphasizing Apple’s efforts to make the device easy to use. According to various surveys Apple conducted — and that were made available as court exhibits — ease of use is the most important factor for smartphone buyers. 

As a whole, Apple is trying to make the case that the inventions it’s suing Samsung over are extremely valuable to its business and worth a significant amount of money. The company is asking for some $2 billion in damages from the Korean handset maker for infringing on 5 of its software utility patents.

Steve Jobs email reveals past Apple TV ideas: apps, ‘magic wand’ remote and more

We’re only a few days in, but we’ve already learned a lot from the Apple-Samsung patent trial. With it being a legal proceeding, the public is given access to information it wasn’t previously privi’ed to by way of executive testimonies, corporate emails and other evidence.

In fact, earlier today a particularly interesting email surfaced from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The document, which was submitted as evidence in the case, features a list of things Jobs wanted to discuss at the company’s 2010 ‘top 100′ meeting, including the Apple TV…

First of all, what is a ‘Top 100′ meeting? According to former Apple employees, the company hosts a meeting every year featuring its top 100 executives, managers and other staffers. These meetings are extremely secretive, and often include discussion of new products.

Now, about that email. The Verge has posted the entire thing here, in PDF form, but we’re going to be specifically looking at the Apple TV section. Jobs outlined a total of 11 talking points in the message, each with a few bullet points, and the Apple TV is item number 8.

Apple has mentioned the ‘magic wand’ several times in previous patent applications. We’ve covered two filings that specifically talk about it here and here, and both describe the wand as a Wii-like TV remote with built in fingerprint sensors for loading custom user profiles.

So is this so-called ‘wand’ still bouncing around Apple’s R&D labs? It’s tough to say. The company is believed to be working on new TV hardware with support for gaming, and a device like this seems like it’d be perfect. But there has been no mention of it in recent reports.

We’re likely to see a lot more of these kinds of documents come to light—oh, and some $2 billion in damages hangs in the balance. The trial is expected run for the next 3-4 weeks.

Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf is Apple’s new Free App of the Week

Today’s obviously the day a new Apple-curated app goes temporarily free for a week. Released by publisher Bulkypix, Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf is a half gamebook and half action role-playing game based on the works of Joe Dever.

The author himself was involved in this game from the get-go, working with the studio to adapt the storyline so it fits with the original continuity. In addition to a brand-new story, Lone Wolf features great graphics, a new combat system, non-linear gameplay, lock-picking mini games, the dynamic turn-based combat system and lots more.

Lone Wolf is available free until next Thursday so best thing you grab it now before it goes back up again to its normal asking price of five bucks a pop…

Lone Wolf is laden with beautifully hand-drawn illustrations, 3D locations and the powerful enemies and characters that’ll be instantly familiar to the fans of the series.

You can “write your own story” by making different choices and exploring new paths and fighting styles, which adds up to the game’s replay value. The combat system is real-time. Lock-picking mini games and puzzle mechanics add an extra layer of skill and strategy.

Check out the screenshots below.

How about that awesome graphics?

The game is comprised of four acts in total.

Act 2 called Forrest Hunt became available in yesterday’s update.

The story continues in the Sunken Forest, with meaningful choices, alternative paths, brand-new 3D locations and a magical minigame that will put your wits to the test!

Last but not least, “Forest Hunt” features one of the most iconic and fearsome enemies you could face in Lone Wolf’s world: are you ready to face the fearsome Gourgaz?

Here’s the official trailer.

And this is your short and sweet Act 2 teaser.

You can unlock Act 2 in the in-game shop or pre-purchase all episodes with the Season Pass, available as a one-time $12.99 in-app purchase.

“If you have already purchased the Season Pass, Act 2 will be launched automatically when you finish Act 1 or when you load a proper game save,” noted Bulkypix.

Download Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf free in the App Store.

The universal download comes in at 799MB and requires iOS 5.1 or later.

Expedia now giving away free travel-related iOS apps, starting with Over

If you’re the type who enjoys seeing new places and meeting new and interesting people, chances are you’re using Expedia to plan your trips.

Originally started by the Windows giant Microsoft, the online travel service was later spun off as a separate entity because it was “no longer about software intensive technology” and they were “concerned that they would not do their best at this.”

Since then, Expedia’s been doing great: it’s grown into a multi-billion dollar business and is now the world’s largest full-service online travel company. Expedia.com is ranked the 138th website in the United States by the web traffic reporting service Alexa.

They have a decent iOS application and now Expedia is offering free iPhone and iPad apps related to traveling as part of its new ‘Media Lounge’ service.

Expedia Hotels & Flights for iOS has been bumped to version 3.6 and can now be downloaded free from the App Store. Hit the break for more info…

Media Lounge, now part of the freshly updated Expedia iOS app, permits you to download premium travel-related iPhone and iPad software from within the app.

To get started, fire up the app and tap on Trips to enter your personal travel profile. Next, tap on Extras and then check out what’s new in the Media Lounge and find the right app for your trip-planning needs, including free ones. The app also sports a new selection of both free and paid travel apps, curated by Expedia’s editors.

John Kim, Expedia’s Senior Vice President, remarked:

Here at Expedia, we believe that technology should deliver a delightfully relevant experience at every stage: from booking to check-in, and beyond.

With the introduction of Media Lounge, we’re taking the next step in providing a more complete experience for our users that are traveling with their iPhone or iPod touch.

The first app they’re giving away: Over, a photo-editing software that lets travelers personalize photos by adding text and artwork. Normally priced at $1.99 in the App Store, Over is now available for free through Expedia’s Media Lounge for a limited time.

Other key features of the Expedia app:

• Save big on hotel rooms
  • Save up to 40 percent with Expedia Mobile Exclusive hotel deals
  • Default to your current location for fast, on-the-go booking
  • See reviews from actual hotel customers
  • Sort by price, deals, or reviews — instantly
  • Get cheap hotel rooms or 5-star luxury suites
• Find the perfect flight
  • Book a flight to anywhere in the world
  • Sort by price, duration, or time instantly
  • Search by airport name, city, or code
• Book in a flash
  • Already signed in? Book in under 30 seconds
  • Earn Expedia Rewards points for mobile bookings 
  • Slide to purchase and away you go
• View your itinerary
  • View upcoming trips that you book in the app and on the web
  • Open the app when you’re about to travel and immediately see your trip
  • Get notifications for flight delays, gate changes and much more
  • It looks awesome, too!

Expedia was recently revamped with iOS 7 styling.

Planning trips to far-flung places is fun with Expedia so here’s a behind the scenes look at how the service performs millions of calculations and computations every millisecond to provide world travelers with a way to easily book their trips.

Download Expedia for iOS free in the App Store.

The app is universal and iOS 7.0 or later is required.

It’s available in 25 countries and customized to each of their primary languages.