IBM Outlaws Siri; Apple Patents iPen

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

Apple has been slapped with its latest lawsuit, this time by SightSound Technologies. The GE-owned company is suing for an undisclosed amount of damages, claiming that Apple infringed on three patents related to transmitting video and audio over the Internet. 

IBM employees, leave your iPhone 4S at home. The company has outlawed Siri over worries that spoken queries might be stored somewhere, such as Apple’s data center in Maiden, North Carolina. These concerns are shared by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who put a warning out against the personal assistant in March.

New Products
Apple has filed a patent application this week for the next iSomething. The iPen would be used for touch screen devices such as the iPhone or iPod Touch. Users would feel a vibration depending on how much pressure they applied to the pen, or whether it moved over a link on the screen.

Siri may not be migrating to Macs in the near future, but it’s likely a similar voice-controlled feature will. Dictation will allow users to type, rather than speak, in order to create text. In Mountain Lion, Apple’s upcoming operating system, users will be able to activate the function by pressing down both command buttons on their keyboards. 

Facebook launched an Instagram-style app for the iPhone this week. The software, “Facebook Camera”, allows users to post multiple photos quickly and simultaneously.

Business Deals and Developments

The TSA will be launching its next pilot program soon. No, not another way to pat you down at the airport, but rather purchasing up to $3 million of Apple hardware over the next three years, including 1,000 Macs and 1,000 mobile devices. They’re slated to be used for operations and programming in the TSA’s “Risk-Based Counter Terrorism Mission.”

It likely comes as no surprise that Apple has hung onto its title of the world's most valuable brand. In its 2012 BrandZ report, Millward Brown says the company saw its brand value grow 19 percent over the past year to $183 billion.