New Apple Siri ads feature John Malkovich

After helping Samuel Jackson get dinner ready for a date and Zooey Deschanel slack off on a rainy day, Apple's Siri personal assistant is shown in a series of ads keeping John Malkovich company. The two adverts, Life and Joke are a bit odd, strange like a Far Side comic strip. Notice that iPhone is only mentioned once and that the ads focus on Siri's capabilities and her eloquence. These ads are not likely to be shown in Canada as some of the location-based features and commands (i.e. where can I get poutine in Toronto?) aren't yet enabled outside of the USA. Personally, I am waiting for the Betty White meets Siri commercial.

The Apple Beat: Jonathan Ive gets Knighted in Buckingham Palace

Sir Jonathan Ive: His team's best work is yet to come

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Award winning industrial designer and Executive Vice President of Apple Design, Jonathan Ive received his knighthood recently in Buckingham Palace. Ive is credited for being Apple's resident design genius, the man whose string of successful designs like the iMac, iBook, iPod, iPhone, MacBook Air, iPad and AppleTV are considered iconic products widely copied by Apple's competitors.

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Apple and Samsung drop various patent claims against each other

The most popular frenemies in tech, Apple Inc. and Samsung have been ordered by a U.S. district court judge's order to scale down the number patent claims against each other in their monster intellectual-property lawsuit focused on smartphones and tablets.

Paring down the number of patent disputes between the two companies streamlines the trial and what the court has to work with.

Apple noted that, "while the parties have been readying the case for trial Samsung has vaulted into first place in worldwide sales of smartphones, with massive sales of its copycat products." 

Apple, who uses various Samsung components such as displays, memory and processors in its popular mobile and computer products and is one of Samsung's bigglest clients added, "to preserve the July 30 trial date, Apple is willing to narrow the case on its patents for jury trial to four utility patent claims and a small set of design-related claims."

Samsung dropped two patents from the lawsuit, reducing the total number of claims based on those patents. However, it still wants to proceed to trial on 15 claims from seven patents.

"With these reductions, Samsung has narrowed its case from twelve patents to seven, dropping 42% of its affirmative counterclaims. From a total of 75 claims identified by Samsung's experts as infringed by Apple's products, Samsung will drop 60 and only proceed on 15 -- a reduction in total claims of 80%," Samsung's representative said.

Apple took Samsung to court a year ago for violations on various Apple patents and trademarks pertaining to the iPhone and the iPad and even managed to temporarily stop sales of competing Samsung tablets in certain markets.  Samsung has countered with its own series of patent lawsuits.

Hostilities resume in court on July 30th when the trial begins.

iWork.com Beta to be discontinued on July 31

Apple will discontinue the iWork.com beta so users of that service will need to move their documents to iCloud before July 31.  Hit jump for Apple's announcement.

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