Light Start – Apple vs. varsity, OK Google, Nintendo NX, BB Priv, and Microsoft Edge
Brett Venter
Court rules that Apple owes University of Wisconsin-Madison $234 million for patent infringement
Late last week a judge ordered Apple to pay the University of Wisconsin-Madison a large sum of money for infringing a patent related to the processors used in the iPhone and iPad. The sum Apple was ordered to pay was mighty enough, a solid $234 million, but it could have been worse. UWM was looking for $400 million for the infringement, or around $2.74 per device involved – Apple was willing to pay 7 cents per device, just for the record. The judge’s ruling is somewhere in the middle of things (but closer to the university’s side). That being said, it’s not over yet. Apple plans to appeal the ruling, because of course they are. You would too.
Google removes ‘OK Google’ listening functions from desktop Chrome – because you didn’t even know it was there
Did you know that your Chrome browser on your desktop and notebook computer was listening, waiting for you to say some special words? Not ‘I love you’, though that would have been cute. If you were using a microphone-equipped PC, you could have said ‘OK Google’ and initiated a search using the power of your voice. You’ve probably noticed that this is all written in the past tense. That’s because Chrome is no longer listening, because nobody was talking to Google’s browser – so the company has killed the feature off. You can still use your voice to search but you need to manually initiate it, by clicking the microphone icon in the Google search-bar. At that point though, you might as well just type in what you’re after.
Nintendo’s nebulous new console has software dev kits shipping out in advance of a release
We know that there’s a new console coming from Nintendo, one that is set to replace the Wii U. We know that it’s codenamed the NX and we know that there’s going to be a Dragon Quest game for the hardware. Beyond that… we’re a bit clueless. But so is everyone else, so that’s okay. But the leaks are about to begin, something we know thanks to a Wall Street Journal report claiming that software development kits are going out to developers. Games for the console should be in the works soon and the reports claim that we might see the hardware as soon as next year. We’re not that optimistic, expecting a 2017 release for the Nintendo NX at the soonest – simply because it takes at least two years to make a decent console game.
Here’s BlackBerry’s Priv – and it’s not a leak, for a change
A BlackBerry smartphone with a full keyboard that we’re actually excited about? What is this, 2007? No it’s still 2015 but the Priv, which is being billed as the first BlackBerry Secure Smartphone, is Android running BlackBerry hardware and the first official video, rather than footage that fell off the back of a truck, looks glorious. And that’s a word we didn’t think we’d ever use about a BlackBerry slide phone in the second decade of the 21st century. The BlackBerry Hub working side-by-side with Google’s services? This could be surprisingly good.
Microsoft really, really wants you to keep using the Edge browser
We get the hard sell quite often. Companies want us to like their stuff, PR outfits want us fawn over products, waiters want us to buy that extra slice of cheesecake… but we didn’t expect the hard sell from an operating system. But that’s what you’ll get with Windows 10 if you attempt to make another web browser like Chrome or Firefox your default instead of Edge. Windows gets extremely needy if you try that, explaining the advantages of Edge and giving you a shiny new button to click that essentially says “Don’t go, try me for a while longer instead.” Other default Microsoft services are exhibiting similar behaviour in a leaked Windows 10 build, trying to guilt you into sticking around for a while longer. Are they breaking any laws? Nope. Will it work? Depends on your resistance to peer pressure, we guess.
