Apple Wins Extension on Samsung Tablet Ban in Australia

The recently overturned ban of Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 tablet sales in Australia has been extended one week, new court date set to deliberate whether Apple will be allowed to appeal.

Australian High Court Justice Dyson Heydon on Thursday announced the nationwide ban of Samsung's tablet will remain in effect until Dec. 9, when the court will decide whether Apple can appeal a recent lower court decision to lift the embargo, according to Blomberg.

The preliminary injunction that barred Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been in effect since Oct. 12, though the South Korean company won a reversal on Tuesday that overturned the initial ruling. Apple immediately said it would appeal the latest ruling with the High Court, and was subsequently granted a request to keep the injunction intact until the appeal was filed.

The Australian case is part of an ongoing worldwide patent dispute between the two tech giants, originally started in April when Apple sued Samsung, claiming the company copied the iPad and iPhone's look and feel. 

Since the initial suit, Samsung has fired back with its own counter claims pertaining to Apple's use of so-called FRAND patents, however the pursuit has been unsuccessful thus far. 

Most recently, the South Korean company's litigation strategy was reportedly under investigation by the European Commission to determine whether it violates anti-competition laws.

Tablet demand soars 130% on back of Apple's iPad, new Amazon Kindle Fire

• Get a brand new late-2010 MacBook Air for $775 : Mac Price Guide updated November 20th. s iPad and the newly launched Amazon Kindle Fire, tablet sales in North America are set to reach record heights, rising 130 percent during the holidays of 2011. the Kindle Fire was found by ChangeWave Research to have strong initial demand among consumers in North America. The results of a new survey of 3,043 consumers, released on Monday, indicate that the Kindle Fire is poised to become the No. s iPad. s iPad, while 22 percent will opt for an Amazon Kindle Fire. Beyond Samsung, no other tablet manufacturer has more than 1 percent of future tablet demand among consumers in North America. The latest survey from ChangeWave represents the first time since the launch of the first-generation iPad that there is a double-digit contender for the No. 2 tablet spot, with the Kindle Fire set to leapfrog the competition. but also acknowledge that the more immediate impact of the new touchscreen tablet from Amazon is on the rest of the competition, including Samsung, Motorola, Research in Motion, and Dell. ChangeWave wrote. somewhat likely." The launch of the Kindle Fire helped to push overall tablet demand to 14 percent indicating they plan to buy in the next 90 days, 8 points higher than a similar survey in August, and more than triple the level of a year ago. s $199 device. ChangeWave revealed. In fact, ChangeWave found that the customer satisfaction rating for the iPad is well beyond competing tablets. with their device, compared to just 49 percent of all other tablet manufacturers combined. s iPad. s in-depth review. 11. 6-inch 1. 4GHz/2GB/64GB $999. 00 $775. 99 $223. 01 11. 6-inch 1. 4GHz/2GB/128GB $1,199. 00 $853. 59* $245. 41 13. 3-inch 1. 86GHz/2GB/256GB $1,299. 00 $872. 99* $326. 01 13. -inch 1. 86GHz/2GB/256GB $1,599. 00 $1,066. 99* $532. 01 13. 3-inch 2. 13GHz/4GB/256GB $1,599. 00 $1,115. 49* $683. s new Kindle Fire tablet: an in depth... George Clooney, Noah Wyle battling to play... s new Kindle Fire tablet: an in depth..Galaxy Nexus web benchmarks outpace iPhone 4S... Major PC makers plan to concede tablet market...  Combined Mac, iPad sales to make Apple top... s MacBook Air with new...  Apple rumored to issue iOS 5. 0. 2 for battery... egocentric... s ultra-thin 15-inch MacBook rumored for... s iTunes with its own... Google Music announced, tightly integrated... s iPad,...  Dividend seen bringing $4B additional... s iOS lost smartphone share to..

iPhone 4[S] Gets C Spire Network on November 11th

C Spire released to the press that they would be getting the iPhone 4[S] this month. They are keeping the current prices. C Spire caters to the Southeastern United States. Those who don't want to pay for a data plan can pay 1 cent per 5 kilobyte usage. Even though they offer unlimited data on plan 1 and 2 they only allow 30 minutes of video streaming per month (look for a Cydia tweak for that) Their plan data is below:

Apple Launches GarageBand iOS App

Yesterday, Apple launched a GarageBand iOS app that supports many instruments plus vocals. It is $4.99 in the App Store. It is already version 1.1 and is about 500 MB of strage on an iPod touch or iPhone. It is an iPhone and iPad app.

DigiTimes: If You Want Retina Displays on iPad 3 You Gotta Have New Dual LED Light Bars

If the iPad 3 has a Retina display, DigiTimes reports that it requires more LED light power because the current LCD bars aren't bright enough to light a 2048 by 1536 display. Apple is apparently playing around with two types of new LED bars. The first solution is to put just one LED bar but put two LED chips in it. The more likely to be made solution would be to just plainly put two LED bars, one on each side performance upgrade (new A6 processor, new cameras, etc.) and one to include a performance upgrade and a Retina display. Just to inform you, DigiTimes is pretty sketch with their reports (often they are wrong)...keep that in mind.

Apple security chief pays price for lost iPhone

Against a backdrop of lost, unreleased devices and allegations that security employees impersonated policemen, Apple's chief of security operations was forced by the company into retirement, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

John Theriault, a former FBI agent who came to Apple from Pfizer in 2007, was the man in charge of Apple's security unit during a span that saw the secretive company embarrassed when important trade secrets were exposed.
The most recent high-profile security goof occurred in July, when two of Apple's investigators went searching for an unreleased handset in San Francisco. The search failed to turn up the errant phone and now the actions of Apple's security team could draw the company into litigation. All Rights Reserved. Once reported, our staff will be notified and the comment will be reviewed.

Apple CEO Tim Cook: Early clues to his leadership

• Cook restructured the company's education division to better fit it into Apple's organization of its business units. The WSJ says that the educational division now has its sales and marketing teams split up, then attached to the products they represented. That move reshuffled the company's corporate structure; Apple's VP of education now reports to SVP of marketing Phil Schiller instead of Cook, and boosted the role of John Brandon, an Apple vice president who joined the company in 2001, the Journal said.
• The promotion of Eddy Cue to senior VP of Internet software and services, which put him in charge of Apple's iTunes Store, iCloud, iAd, and the company's iBookstore platform. The promotion took place a little more than a week after Cook took his spot as CEO, with Cue having worked at Apple for 22 years.
• The charitable matching program the company began in early September, which matched donations made by employees up to $10,000 a year. The Journal notes that Jobs "was opposed to giving money away," citing an unnamed source who attended one of the company's off-site meeting in 2010.
• Cook communicates more. That includes company-wide e-mails, the Journal says. Several of those e-mails have leaked out since Cook took office, including the one announcing the aforementioned charitable matching program, Cue's promotion, and details about when the company planned to hold a celebration of Jobs' life at its Cupertino, Calif. headquarters.
• The piece also offers conjecture that Cook might treat Apple's $81.6 billion cash pile differently from Jobs, who used it sparingly for acquisitions during his tenure, including recent buys like Siri and Quattro Wireless.

Cook has been under a microscope since taking over as CEO of Apple. Despite the fact that he filled in for Jobs during medical absences, the company had hedged things by saying that Jobs would still be involved in strategic decision making.

Cook's first public showing in the new role was at the unveiling of the iPhone 4S, a performance critics panned as bland. But that was quickly overshadowed by the passing of Jobs the next day.