Racism Lawsuit Against Apple Withdrawn; Apple Partakes in 'Black Friday'

Every week, makes news with technology developments, business deals and, more often than not, controversies.

That’s where our weekly "Core Bytes" column on Apple comes in. We’ll relay the past week’s news highlights from our favorite backyard tech giant.

Controversies

French anti-racism groups dropped a lawsuit against Apple after withdrawal of an infamous ‘Jew or not Jew’ app from phones worldwide. Yet in a Nov. 17 hearing, Apple argued that the app was not intended to be anti-Semitic, and that its creator originally worried it would be perceived as too “pro-Jewish.”

The U.S. International Trade Commission had its final say: Apple did not infringe tech patents owned by T3 Graphics, as they said in a complaint filed in May 2010. The company claimed that Apple was in violation of four patents related to image rendering.

New Products

On Thanksgiving day, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a new patent application from Apple: a “Persistent Overlay system” to hold photos, tunes and documents in a fashion that allows them to be easily accessed during the week.

Business Deals and Developments

Apple approved its first game-subscription app this week. It also yanked it a few days later. Big Fish Games saw that Apple mysteriously took away their game subscription app for iPads sans an explanation. They have still not gotten to the root of the disappearance.

Like many major companies, Apple is getting on board with the Black Friday madness, cutting Mac prices by up to 10 percent. Its one-day sale reduced most Mac prices by $101. The least expensive Mac was the 11-inch MacBook Air, listed for $849.99 on Amazon.com.

Apple has its head in the clouds: Insiders say that it’s looking to put more of its digital content on the iCloud, where user content is stored remotely on all their mobile devices. To do so, it has been seeking out senior-level executives with strong backgrounds in web-based software in recent weeks. It is also in the process of building a cloud-computing center in North Carolina.