How Apple Apologized to Samsung With a Troll Face

There are a hundred and one ways to describe the Apple versus Samsung patent war but it all comes down to some Reddit users who used one word: childish.

While the rest of the tech world is busy making more gadgets to flood the markets for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, netizens at Reddit are busily analyzing Apple’s UK homepage. When Apple lost the U.K. court ruling to Samsung, the Cupertino-based tech company was forced to admit publicly that their Korean competitor had not copied the iPad (the judge said Galaxy tablets are simply not that “cool” anyway). The company had to put up the disclaimer on their website, as required by the British court that said Samsung did not copy their designs.

What Went On

Last month, Apple was reprimanded for posting only a link of the Samsung vs. Apple U.K. ruling on their website instead of publishing the whole statement. The tech giant appealed, claiming that the statement would ruin the website’s design. The company also said that they were not willing to advertise its competitor on its own web territory. That being said, the judges gave Apple a grace period of one month to figure out how to put the statement on their website.

And they did, though a bit grudgingly. The tech giant has posted a statement on their U.K. website. The statement (which you can view through this link) did specify that they were “inaccurate” in their previous statement which was reprimanded by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The statement also links to another page bearing a two paragraph official statement from the company as requested by the court.

What Really Is Going On

We’ll let pass the fact that both statements are nothing but formal nods to both parties involved. It’s probably enough that the big time American tech company has acknowledged their rival on their own website and was also subjected to releasing a public statement through other media platforms. But this kind of “sorry” still makes a lot of techie followers shake their heads in disbelief.

Some Reddit users even noticed that the tech giant had intentionally placed the statement on the most bottom part of the website. Above it is an ad about the iPad Mini with graphics that are so big, you’ll even see it growing bigger if you try to resize your browser’s window. Tech journalists have speculated that Apple deliberately programmed the statement to be almost unnoticeable for most browsers where you have to scroll down the page just to see it. In fact, you’ll notice that whatever your screen’s resolution is, you won’t be able to see the bottom of the page without scrolling down!

Aside from the statement that was supposedly “hidden” down the page, a lot of Reddit users also laughed at the fact that the tech giant even created a Javascript code that redirects to a uniquely bare page that contains the two paragraph statement that sounds so cold it could’ve frozen a turkey. Also, techie netizens noted that the said page was only available on the company’s U.K. site. And that, folks, is how tech giants say “sorry” these days.

As of press time, Apple versus Samsung patent lawsuits have been filed in different courts all over the world. Apple managed to win lawsuits filed in the United States while Samsung was favored in lawsuits filed in South Korea and Japan.

The 4 Reasons Why Bigger Screens Triumph Over iPhone

A lot of iPhone addicts say that the reason they stick to the Apple smartphone’s 3.5-inch (and now 4-inch) screen is because it’s one of the very few phones that still fit in your jeans pocket. Compared to Samsung’s gigantic (okay, maybe just huge) smartphones like the Galaxy S III and the Note II, the iPhone remains to be the leading smartphone in the market because of its size and form. With the amount of support the iPhone gets, is there really a need for the tech giant to move towards the “bigger picture”?

Indeed there is. I remember the time when I decided to sell my iPhone 3G for an iPhone 4S. The key factors that drove me to upgrade were the new features baked into the phone and not the phone itself per se. A year after, the tech giant released a taller iPhone with a bigger screen; thus cementing the idea that Apple has finally addressed the importance of having a bigger smartphone screen. But why is it so important that smartphones get a bigger display screen?

#1 A Bigger Canvass Is Everything

Apart from the usual calling and texting functions, smartphones also allow multimedia consumption and mobile Internet viewing. This is precisely why having a smartphone with such a small screen is quite pointless. With all the great features smartphones now have, not having a big canvass for users to have fun with would make any media junkie want to sell used iPhones. A big screen allows for better media viewing (because watching Two and a Half Men on a 3-inch rectangle is not very good for the eyes and the neck) as well as maximum productivity.

#2 A Bigger Display Is a Bookworm’s Dream

Not only is a bigger screen helpful for multimedia enthusiasts, it also gives bibliophiles a better reason to give their dog eared, hardbound novels a rest. EBook reading is much more enjoyable on a crisp and sharp screen that can display more content, just like an eBook reader. As an avid eBookworm, I can say that reading eBooks is bliss on a 5 to 7 inch smartphone (which Apple has with the iPad Mini though it’s not really a smartphone).

#3 A Bigger Screen Equals More Power

Another great thing about creating a big smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy Note II is that manufacturers are able to cram in bigger processors and more features. Because of their hand-breaking phones, Samsung was able to put in a quad core 1.6GHz processor that’s more than 20% faster and has two times more RAM than the iPhone 5! I wouldn’t mind selling my iPhone for that!

#4 A Bigger Smartphone Saves You Money 

What makes smartphones ‘smart’ is the fact that they supersede the need to buy more gadgets with different functions. A bigger smartphone screen could make you abandon your tablet PC, your Kindle or Nook, your mp3 player and even your laptop. All you’ll ever need from a device is on your mobile phone and thus, you save money and space from using just one device!

Old Sci-Fi Ideas That Are Now on Your iPhone

Decades ago, our grandparents dreamt of a future of flying cars, talking monkeys and time machines. They imagined a future where the world was such a different place that reading about it was the only way you could get there. This medium of transportation to the unknown future is what we geeks love to call ‘sci-fi’.

Now if you’re also a sci-fi fanatic who reveled in the world of space adventures and oppressive future societies and virtual reality, you’re probably aware by now that the world we read about, written decades ago, is the same world we are living in right now. More than just the settings these novels present, we are also using the same technologies our forefathers dreamt of years ago and it’s there, right in the palm of your hand! Years before we had the chance to sell used iPhones, some creative people dreamt of a little machine that would be able to so many great things like…


Digital Reading

 In Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel “Return From the Stars,” Hal (the protagonist) came back to a different Earth after being in space for 10 years (which was actually 127 years back on earth). Upon his arrival, he faced a civilization that was medically altered to avoid health risks and they had new technologies like touchscreen books. Oh wait, where have we heard of that before? In the novel, Lem predicts that 127 years in the future, people will be able to record a book’s content onto a digital device that does not necessarily scrap paperback books but does make reading easier. Well it’s been 51 years since the publication of the novel but we now have books stored on our iPhones for digital reading.

Video Chatting

 Hugo Gernsback had such an imaginative mind that in 1925, he was able to descriptively show people what the world would probably look like in 2660. In his novel “Ralph 124C 41+”, the protagonist was able to save the heroine by using different technologies that abound the future. Gernsback was able to foresee and describe video phone and video chatting and he called this Telephot. The Telephot is a telephone-like device that allows you to talk to someone instantaneously through a video. Today, smartphones like the iPhone have video chatting applications like Skype and FaceTime that allow people to easily talk in person through their mobile devices. What might make you sell your iPhone out of pure amazement is that while this novel was written back in the 1920’s, the first video calling machine was invented in 1964 (by AT&T called Picturephone) and the first webcam was not developed until 1991. If you think about it, Gernsback was able to predict Skype 78 years before it even existed!

There are so many more sci-fi ideas that were predicted years ago and are now on the iPhone that you’d probably not want to sell your iPhone 4 anymore. The Internet, for one thing, was first described by Mark Twain in 1898 which he called the Telectroscope in his short story “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904”. Ebook Readers like the iPad and Kindle were also predicted in Arthur Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Now look at your little iPhone. What other stories and cool things will it be able to do in the future?

Best 4-Inch iPhone Alternatives in the Smartphone Market

While Apple was busy planning new device categories for their mobile platform, the rest of the smartphone industry started the ball rolling for certain features that were not on the previous iPhone models. For one thing, while the tech giant was busy in their labs, Samsung managed to release a couple of smartphones with such big screens and high resolutions that the following quarter, Android smartphones dominated the market.

A lot of experts would say that the screen size doesn’t really matter. But true blooded smartphone enthusiasts would rather sell used iPhones with 3.5-inch screens. For a market dominated by mobile phones with no physical keypads, a big screen is enough to make people buy. Well, Apple did release a 4-inch smartphone this year! But still, better 4-inch displays out there came out first like…

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Although the iPhone 5 proved to be better in terms of processor specifications and storage capacity, the Nexus isn’t something you can brush off in terms of display and battery life. It’s got an advantage over the tech giant’s 4-inch screen size with its 4.6-inche screen. It also has better resolution at 1280x720 compared to the iPhone 5’s 1136x640. And though the iPhone 5’s LCD Retina Display packs 325 pixels per inch, Galaxy Nexus’s display still looked crisp and sharp at 315 pixels per inch on a Super AMOLED display. You’d probably also be delighted to sell your iPhone knowing that the Nexus’ battery life is longer for standby time at 12.1 days while the iPhone 5 can only last up to 9.4 days on standby.

LG Optimus G

Although the iPhone 5 and the Optimus G have a lot of similarities in specs and features, LG still managed to include some powerful advantages over Apple’s smartphone especially in terms of screen size. The Optimus G measures 4.7 inches with 1280x768 screen resolution. Though it packs fewer pixels per inch (371 ppi) compared to the iPhone 5’s (325 ppi), it’s still a big difference if you consider that specs-wise the Optimus G is above average while the iPhone 5 borders on average. Another advantage the Optimus G has over the latest iPhone is its 1.5 GHz quad core CPU with 2048 MB of RAM. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5 has 1.3 GHz dual core CPU with 1024 MB of RAM. LG’s new smartphone also promises 90 percent more talk time and 50 percent more standby time compared to the iPhone 5.

Nokia Lumia 920

It may seem that the Windows Phone OS isn’t something that would make you sell used iPhones but actually, this smartphone is almost as good as the iPhone 5 in terms of specs. Aside from the fact that it has better music capabilities and has NFC, the Nokia Lumia 920 also has a better display than the iPhone 5’s screen. The size measures up to 4.5 inches with 1280x768 screen resolution at 331 pixels per inch. And since both are LCD screens, the Lumia 920 obviously looks better than the iPhone 5’s Retina Display. Lumia 920 also features a slightly faster processor at 1.5 GHZ than the iPhone’s 1.3 GHz.