Bryan Chaffin

China is digging deep in its efforts to use Apple as a political and economic pawn, demonstrating that merely apologizing for mistakes and then correcting them won't keep the company out of the Chinese government's crosshairs. Bryan Chaffin discusses the issues.

Apple has won a trademark infringement suit from Black Tower Press over the use of "iBooks." GigaOM reported that Judge Denise Cote granted summary judgement in Apple's favor, ruling that there was no chance of consumer confusion over Apple's iBooks service for iOS and Black Towers' "iBooks imprint."

The developers of Hike, an instant message app, have launched a brilliant promotion, offering US$100,000 in additional prizes to the winner of Apple's 50 billionth app download contest if the winning app is Hike.

Apple released Thunderbolt Firmware Update v1.2, an update that, "provides stability fixes for Thunderbolt and Target Disk Mode." The update is for Macs equipped with Thunderbolt, Apple's next generation I/O interface.

New Zealand's parliament is considering a bill that rethinks software patents. The bill, while not explicitly banning software patents per se, instead declares software alone as not eligible for patent protection because there is no "inventive step" involved. Bryan Chaffin looks at the implications.

Apple and Samsung combined to claim 100 percent of hardware profits in the smartphone industry, according to a new report from Cannacord Genuity. While Apple still claimed most of those profits, Samsung has reached up to take more profits home to Korea.

A German court has invalidated eight clauses in Apple's user privacy agreement, highlighting the importance of privacy in that country. While Apple goes further than most tech ompanies to protect our data, the German ruling shows there is even more room for improvement.