Macgasm

Yesterday the news circulated faster than a bunk iPhone 5 rumor on a slow news day, Path, the sexy-popular social network for the iPhone, was automatically uploading your contacts to their servers. Today, Path CEO, Dave Morin, took to the web to post an apology and explain to the masses why things were happening the way they were. In the post, titled We are sorry, Morin states:

There’s doing it, and then there’s doing it right. It’s pretty clear that Dave Morin immediately realized Path’s misstep and took immediate action to clean up the security concerns that its users had with the company storing contacts. Starting today, in version 2.0.6, users are now being asked if they would like to upload contacts to the company’s servers. The process is now opt-in, not automagically uploaded behind your back. It’s a small win, but a win nonetheless for iPhone users.

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The Tapbots gang has rolled out version 2.0 of their popular Twitter client. Tweetbot has received a huge update today, including some new timeline features, support for readability so you can avoid advertisements and poor design on your favorite blogs, as well as all around design enhancements (DMs, image thumbnails, etc).

We’re going to let you discover the rest of the update goodness on your own.

The app update is free for anyone who has purchased the original Tweetbot, so you don’t have to worry about paying an additional couple of dollars to gain access to the update.

Tweetbot is easily my favorite Twitter app for the iPhone, and even more so now that Twitter decided to completely bastardize its own offerings earlier this year. Normally we’d suggest trying out a free alternative for Twitter, like the free Twitterific option, but Tweetbot is easily worth the $2.99 on the App Store. I paid the fee, and I haven’t made a switch yet, which is highly unusual for me when it comes to iOS apps.

Quick Look At Some Updated Features

Quick Update: Tweetbot is now available for the iPad too… we’re putting it through the paces and we’ll have an update here for you when it’s ready.

Miniature iPhone speaker company Motz has created a nifty little wooden Apple logo-inspired speaker for your favorite iDevice. The speaker is 100% hand crafted, and contains a rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery so you can get some extra juice out of your music while you’re on the go.

The speaker lasts between 5 – 10 hours depending on how you’re using it. The speaker will set you back $55.00 and you can buy it on the Austrailian website ModLifeOnline.

To be honest, this probably won’t last too long on the market once Apple’s lawyers find it, so make sure you pick it up as fast as possible if you want it.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably realized that there’s been a lot of lawsuits being thrown around in the mobile arena over unapproved patent usage. Apple’s been on both ends of these lawsuits, obviously. However, it seems that Apple has decided that it’s time to lobby the European Union’s Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to get guidelines set up for Fair, Resonable, And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing of some of these patents in the mobile space.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple has gone on the record stating that, “the telecommunications industry lacks consistent licensing schemes for the many patents necessary to make mobile devices, and offered suggestions for setting appropriate royalty rates that all members would follow.” Long story short, Apple wants a fair and open approach to licensing technology that has become standard in the mobile telecommunications industry. Currently, it could become very difficult for competing companies to gain access to the necessary patent licenses to release a mobile phone.

Apple wants the EU and ETSI to set clear rules about how patent licenses are negotiated, and to ensure that companies working on and developing standard-centric licenses agree to license patents under FRAND terms.

In the original article, it’s pretty clear that Apple, and more specifically Apple’s intellectual property head Bruce Watrous, is worried that the current system gives patent holders a huge advantage in negotiating patent licenses because competing products could be forced to remove products from the market place due to injunctions. Apple’s legal team wants injunctions to be abolished under FRAND terms.

The EU is currently investigating both Samsung and Motorola’s patent licensing practices for anti-competitive behaviour.

If you’re interested in reading up more on this topic, you can give the Wall Street Journal article a read, but sadly, it’s behind a paywall.

Sprint announced on Wednesday that it has sold 1.8 million iPhones during the first quarter in which the iPhone has been available on the network. Big news, but perhaps even bigger news is that 40 percent of all iPhone sales went to new customers on the Sprint network. That works out to being 720,000 new Sprint customers, just for carrying the iPhone on its network.

From the Washington Post:

If I was in the US, that unlimited data plan would be mighty enticing. It always blows my mind just how obvious it is that customers want the freedom of an unlimited plan, but carriers absolutely refuse to give it to them. I rarely use over 2GB on my data plan, and I’d still go for an unlimited option if it was available to me. The irony is that it’s not about the data being unlimited as much as it is about not wanting my carrier to clean out my bank account for going over once or twice a year.

If you’re interested in the ins and outs of the Sprint financial call, the company has posted a news release online for you to look through.

Just when you thought Apple rumors were getting out of hand, we’re now getting reports from major news outlets that Rogers, and Bell already have the rumoured Apple Television in their testing labs.

From The Globe and Mail:

That’s really the only new information in the entire article, which eventually goes on to rehash all the rumors we’ve heard around the Internet the last couple of months.

Curious about the veracity of the claims? We are too. If Apple is trying to get companies like Rogers and Bell to partner with the company to bring content to its new-age television viewing device, they would at some point have to get their hands on it. That being said, hands-on would be extremely limited, and only occur at the highests levels, making it unlikely that information would leak from Rogers or Bell. Apple sends out iPhone models to carriers before the phones are released on networks, but they’re extremely locked down, and provide very little detail about what the phones look like. The same would happen with these televisions, if they actually exist.

Rogers and Bell aren’t the first companies to be approached either. It was reported earlier this year that CBS’s CEO let it slip that Apple was approaching networks to get content locked up for the Apple Television. With all the chatter, it certainly sounds like Apple’s out there trying to make deals before an Apple Television gets released. It could be a while though; there’s no timeline or indication of when a product could ship.

Read Rogers, BCE vying for a bite of Apple’s iTV on The Globe and Mail

It looks like Apple’s now potentially in legal trouble in China due to trademark infringement claims by Proview Technology Shenzehen. According to the company, and a report in ChinaDaily, Proview Technology Shenzhen claims that Apple’s iPad violates trademarks owned by the company (the naming rights to iPad), and they’re looking to fine Apple $38 million dollars, as well as have the iPad removed from store shelves in China. Proview also wants an apology from Apple.

Apparently this isn’t the first punch thrown in this fight either. Last year Apple sued Proview Shenzhen to gain rights to the iPad name, but lost the lawsuit in court.

From China.org.cn:

We thought we’d seen it all, but it turns out we haven’t. The timing of the lawsuit is advantageous considering the explosion of Apple popularity in China recently.

In this week’s episode we sit down with N-Product co-founder Dom Coballe to talk about the Deckster iPod nano timepieces.

The iWatch case from N-Product is built with a variety of materials, and made by hand, and it’s entirely designed, produced, and assembled in North America. Some of the straps are designed using recycled material like bike tire rubber, inner tube rubber, as well as leather.

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