For a time, Apple used U.K.-based company IP Application Development to keep the transaction from receiving public attention, but soon it became clear to Proview that Apple was the company that had purchased the rights and failed to do the same in China.

The end result? Proview of China has brought a huge lawsuit against them and is now even looking to get the courts in the Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Huizhou to stop sales of the Apple tablet altogether until the matter is resolved.

Apple attempted to counter-sue arguing that it rightfully owned the iPad name, but the case was lost. They have since appealed and Xicheng district court says the matter is still under investigation. Honestly though, things don’t look good for Apple in China.

Proview has admitted its company is in fiscal trouble and the money used from this trademark suit will in fact help pull them out of it, but at least they are honest with their true intentions.

Apple could stand to lose as much as $38 million all the way up to $1.6 billion in compensation.

If Apple were to lose the lawsuits in the Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Huizhou, it would only cost them a small amount of changing considering the amount of human equity China has put towards Apple in to making it what it is today.  While this certainly won’t kill Apple, due to its strong presence it other major markets like North America and Europe, it certainly isn’t something they look forward to paying but can clearly afford to.

[ source ]

Photo: flickr/ell brown

Apple has just had their most profitable quarter ever and the company’s shareholders are celebrating this week. But it appears like some of that profit has come after the suffering of many thousands of people. According to the company’s former executives, Apple is culpable for not addressing poor working conditions at their supplier factories in China.

That’s according to a new comprehensive article on the New York Times. The report quotes Apple’s former executives as saying that the company has ignored “labor abuses” for years.

We know that reports about poor working environments at Apple’s supplier factories have come up earlier. But this is the very first time that the company’s former executives have come forward, although anonymously, against Apple’s policies.

According to one of them, “We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on. Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice”. But Apple won’t tell them as the company always demand perfect products and slim margins. And the company’s notorious secrecy influences everything.

An example which reveals Apple’s culpability is the case of the explosion which took place at a Foxconn factory caused by aluminum dust. If Apple had ordered consistent ventilation standards across all their supplier factories after that incident, the second explosion at a different factory would not have happened.

But Apple has conducted inspections at an increasing rate for the past few years. But it is not known whether they would drop major suppliers, such as Foxconn, if faults were found. As another Apple executive said, “Noncompliance is tolerated, as long as the suppliers promise to try harder next time. If we meant business, core violations would disappear“. And Foxconn has denied the accusations of labor abuses, as expected.

So, what do you think? Is Apple culpable? And what about the consumers, are they blameworthy as well for buying products and not demanding better labor policies from the companies?

Check out the NYT website to take a peek at their full article. It’s definitely worth the read.

Motorola Mobility has announced two new smartphones to launch this spring, the Motoluxe and Defy Mini. Both devices will be available in China, Europe and Latin America, with no word on U.S. launch. The larger Motoluxe will feature a 4-inch display, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1,400 mAh battery and a VGA front-facing camera. Branded by Motorola as being “life proof” DEFY MINI is water resistant, and dust and shock proof. This smaller, rugged device features a 3.2-inch display with a 3-megapixel rear camera, a 1,650 mAh battery and a VGA front-facing camera. Both devices will be on display at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) and will be running Android 2.3 with a variation of Motorola’s custom MotoBlur skin that apparently has got a new monicker: “MotoSwitch”.  MotoSwitch is focused on a user’s social graph. The more frequently a user communicates with someone, the bigger their icon becomes on the homescreen widget.

‘No matter what device you choose, Motorola’s MotoSwitch user interface changes the way you manage your life. With MotoSwitch, your smartphone learns who you talk to and which apps you use and keeps all of that information front and center. The Social Graph feature gives you easy and fast access to the people who really matter. It learns who’s most important to you and uses that information to populate the home screen. The more frequently you communicate with someone, the bigger their icon becomes. The Activity Graph gives you quick and easy access to your favorite apps, automatically changing to reflect the apps you use the most.

Motoluxe also offers another interesting feature: a lanyard slot that has a lighting effect, such as you can see when you’ve missed a call, received a text or have an email waiting for you.

No pricing for these phones was disclosed just yet.

[Source]

However, outside appearances can be very deceiving. It doesn’t have the Apple logo on the back, but the design of the home button and bezel are certainly Apple-esque. As far as the rest of this iPad 2 clone goes, you’ll find that it has a similar 9.7-inch display as the iPad 2, but it gets its power from a 1.2GHz Cortex A8 processor instead.

Not surprisingly, it runs Android, but this isn’t Honeycomb. Instead, you’re stuck with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and it’s pretty safe to say this product isn’t officially sanctioned by Google. That means no Market access for you. Rounding out the specs are the 1GB RAM, 4GB storage, SD card reader, 3MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, HDMI-out, optional 3G, and 7600mAh battery. Grefu ain’t no Apple, but at least they’re trying to look the part.

These are just snippets, but they give you an idea of what to expect from the fuller book. For example, Jobs said that he was willing to “go thermonuclear war on” Android and its OEM partners. He said that he “will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

He said that Hewlett and Packard “built a great company… but now it’s being dismembered and destroyed.” Reflecting back to his side, he continued by saying that he hopes “I’ve left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple.” Similarly, in reflecting on his departure from Apple in the mid-1980s, he said the replacement execs were “corrupt people” with “corrupt values” and they only cared about making money “for themselves… rather than making great products.”

Jobs even comments on his meetings with President Obama, telling him that he’s “headed for a one-term presidency” and that he needed to be more business-friendly. He said that the “regulations and unnecessary costs” make it too difficult to build a factory in the United States, in stark contrast to the relative ease of doing the same in China.

The Steve Jobs biography is available for pre-order now with delivery expected on October 24.

What’s interesting is that the reason they’re being closed really has nothing to do with posing as real Apple Stores; it’s because they were operating without business licenses. The whole knocking off the store and passing themselves off as real Apple Stores has nothing to do with them closing their doors. That’s utterly fascinating.

What else is fascinating is that I’m hearing the products being sold at these fake Apple Stores — a few of them are still up and running in China — are not Apple knockoffs. They’re actually real MacBooks and real iPhones, gathered up from real authorized resellers. They were using the Apple logo without permission, but at least they were selling real Apple products.

And China isn’t the only place with fake Apple Stores either. There are reports of other knockoff stores in Croatia, Colombia, Burma, Venezuala, Slovenia, and Spain, as well as “a dozen locations right here in China.”

Why knock off just one product when you can Frankenstein them all together to make for a mega product? That seems to be the idea behind this nameless contraption from China, but the net result actually looks pretty darn promising.

Let’s start with the iPhone 3GS. This version doesn’t have the home button (as rumored for the iPhone 5), but it has a similar black frame surrounded by a light-colored bezel. However, instead of a 3.5-inch Retina Display, it has a 10-inch 1026×600 screen. But wait. There’s more.

Then, you get the slide-out and tilt keyboard. This kind of tablet form factor is not unlike the Eee Pad Slider or the Samsung Sliding PC 7 Series, but the propping mechanism on the back looks like it’s borrowing a page out of the Nokia N97 mini. And what’s this I see in the middle of a QWERTY keyboard? Could it be the iconic red IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint nubby cap thing for a mouse pointer?

We don’t get to see this thing turned on, but it is running on a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N455 processor. So, I’m assuming it’s some build of Windows, but I can’t say for sure. Other specs include 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, and a 3700mAh lithium-ion battery. It ain’t branded, but the sellers are aiming at just a $250 price point. Cheap knockoffs have to stay cheap, right?

[Cloned in China]

You know how Japan has that life-sized Gundam? Well, it’s not like China wants to be outdone in its front with oversized fighting robots, so some guy who calls himself Steel Legend decided to make a real life replica of Megatron, leader of the Decepticons.

Yes, it would have beeen slightly less evil to concoct up his take on Optimus Prime, but there’s just something so much cooler about siding with the bad guys. The Chinese designer took on the “tank” version of Megatron, as made famous in the Transformers 2 flick by Michael Bay. You have to admit that it’s pretty darn close.

I’d imagine that it doesn’t transform into a fighting robot like in the movie, but the Megatron Tank replica does tip the scales at over 5,000 kilograms. That’s over 11,000 pounds for those of you playing along at home. Is this China’s latest military advancement? Will Steel Legend bring Starscream to life so that it can rival Megatron for leadership of the Decepticons? And what does this have to do with IBM Watson and the rise of the robot apocalypse?

[MIC via Zcool]

Yup, they’re blocking Cydia. The land of knockoffs and pirated software is making it more difficult for you to get access to the forbidden fruit of Cydia’s unauthorized applications. If you try to download the Cydia package via the China Unicom 3G network you’ll get errors like “Host Unreachable” or “Refreshing Data.”

Thankfully, there’s a very easy fix and it’s quite the obvious one: Use Wi-Fi. China Unicom might block your cellular access, but they can’t block your Interwebz. That’s up to the Chinese government to do, you see.

[via MicGadget]

Instead of looking like a fairly standard rubberized case, the idea with the new-gen Apple Peel 520 is that it not only adds iPhone-esque functionality to your iPod touch; it also adds an iPhone 4-esque look to it. If the people around you don’t look too closely, they probably would mistake your Peel’d iPod touch for an iPhone 4.

You even get those two round buttons on the left side for volume. They’ve added in a couple more round buttons on the other side, apparently for call and end. The aesthetic is certainly improved over the original, but is the performance? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

[micGadget via Yoison]