No 4K Video Streaming Support for Upcoming Apple TV Set-Top Box
Following up on last month’s claim that Apple is planning to show off a revamped Apple TV set-top box with App Store and Siri support at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, BuzzFeed now reports that the new box will not include support for 4K video streaming even though several services like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube offer content in the high-resolution format.
“4K is great, but it’s still in its infancy,” said one source familiar with Apple’s thinking.
Enabling 4K video support in Apple’s first major overhaul of Apple TV in three years might seem like a smart bit of future-proofing — particularly given reports that the A8 chip in the guts of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is 4K-capable. But it’s arguably an unnecessary one at this point.
The report points out that 4K streaming is expensive for content providers given the bandwidth required, and the vast majority of Americans do not even have Internet connectivity at fast enough speeds to support such streaming. Still, those who do currently stream 4K content or hope to in the relatively near future are likely to be disappointed by Apple’s decision to forgo support in the next Apple TV.
Beyond existing Apple TV services and new third-party apps, the revamped Apple TV is also expected to support a package of streaming television channels if Apple can manage to reach agreements with the necessary content providers. Apple is reportedly in talks with ABC, Fox, and Disney, as well as Discovery and Viacom, to try to put together a “skinny” TV package of select channels that would reportedly cost consumers somewhere in the range of $25 to $40 per month. Apple is said to be aiming to announce the service at WWDC in June and launch it in the September timeframe.
Samsung patent battle may help Apple avoid $533 million judgment
In what may be one of the most unusual legal twists witnessed in recent memory, a move by Samsung to have some patents invalidated may end up helping Apple avoid a $533 million judgment. This curious result is because both Apple and Samsung have been sued by the same company, Smartflash LLC, over the same set of patents. A win by either of the tech giants in their respective lawsuits will end up helping the other, even though Apple and Samsung have been huge rivals in recent years carrying on their own patent legal battles against each other.
Samsung recently convinced U.S. regulators to conduct a review of two of the Smartflash patents to determine whether they should have been issued. Samsung has already achieved a major step in their efforts to have the patents invalidated as a USPTO review board has issued preliminary findings indicating the patents cover abstract ideas and are not eligible for legal protection.
Sources indicate Smartflash’s odds of prevailing are poor at this time as history shows 100% of patents reviewed that were found to be based on abstract ideas ultimately get tossed. Smartflash’s attorney is not yielding though, claiming the issue has already be fought already during the trial and the district judge ruled in their favor. Since that ruling though, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly scaled back legal protections available for software inventions.
The bad news for Apple, which has a court ruling pending against it in the amount of $533 million based at least in part on the same patent, is that a ruling by a review panel in Samsung’s case probably will not occur until about a year from now. Apple is trying to convince the court to delay payment of the judgment until the patent office completes all reviews of the patents at issue in the case. That includes not only the patents Samsung has successfully challenged, but also the other patents involved in the case which have been challenged by Apple themselves.
source: Bloomberg
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Microsoft may have completed its 18,000 job cuts with latest layoffs
A new report says Microsoft laid off ‘hundreds’ of employees this week. They are all part of the company’s previously announced plans to cut 18,000 team members from its work force and could be the last ones Microsoft makes as part of those plans.
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