Four Friday Apple AnecdotesFour Friday Apple Anecdotes

HTC's Defense

HTC and Apple have already traded lawsuits with one another over the alleged violation of mobile-related patents. HTC has filed its first defensive volley with the U.S. District Court in Delaware addressing Apple's allegations.

HTC says that it has no "knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations contained in Paragraph 10 and on that basis den[ies] them." Paragraph 10 in the Apple lawsuit says that HTC violated its patents.

HTC also claims that some of Apple's patents are invalid, stating that they fail to "comply with one or more of the conditions for patentability set forth in Title 35 of the United States Code."

More is surely to come.

Apple No Longer Using SurfaceInk

According to The New York Times, Apple has ended its business relationship with a design firm called SurfaceInk. Why? It turns out SurfaceInk developed its own prototype tablet computer, and Apple feels there's a bit of a conflict in interest brewing.

Looking at the picture of the SurfaceInk-made tablet, it's easy to understand Apple's ire. The real question is, will a lawsuit follow the breakup?

Verizon iPhone

Earlier this week, Qualcomm published a job posting. The job was specifically for an iPhone Developer Guru. A portion of the job bulletin read, "The iPhone has no secret for you? Well, that's what you think... join us and develop the most challenging product of your life!"

Of course, that's all the Verizon-iPhone hopeful need to hear to be foaming at the mouth. You see, Qualcomm makes the CDMA chips used in Verizon Wireless' cell phones. Were Apple to make a Verizon iPhone, it would likely need Qualcomm chips. In theory, Qualcomm would only need an iPhone Developer Guru if it was actively planning to support the iPhone in one way, shape or form.

How Many iOS Facebookers Are There?

Earlier this week, Facebook erroneously implied that 104 million people were accessing Facebook through Apple iOS devices, such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Turns out, the real number isn't quite that big.

In fact, about 44 million people access Facebook regularly (the key differentiator) via iOS devices. Out of the total 150 million mobile Facebook users, that accounts for about 29%. Either way you look at it, that's a significant percentage, considering that Facebook can also be accessed by Android, BlackBerry, Windows, Palm, Symbian and other OSes.

The original number of 104 million actually exceeded the estimated total worldwide figure for all iOS devices, which is about 100 million.