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While the Apple v. Samsung trial in San Jose has been high on drama, it’s also given us the best look yet at Apple’s early designs for the iPhone and iPad.

Apple designer Christopher Stringer, the company’s first witness in the case, showed off the designs during his testimony yesterday, ultimately revealing around 40 different iOS device prototypes, The Verge reports. Stringer wasn’t shy with his comments while on the stand, saying that Samsung “ripped off” Apple’s designs.

With the early designs, we can see elements of features that would eventually show up on the iPhone product line, like the bulbous rear of the iPhone 3G(S), and the minimalist design of the iPhone 4. Stringer said that Apple created “hundreds” of different models while designing the iPhone.

It’s a good thing some of these designs never saw the light of day. One of the early iPad designs shows a thick curved bezel on all sides, which presumably would have made it easier to hold, but ultimately makes it look like a a children’s toy.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

While Apple is determined to prove that Samsung copied its designs in smartphones and tablets, Samsung has unearthed images and e-mails that prove Apple was similarly influenced by Sony’s design.

Unredacted court filings by Samsung yesterday, unearthed by The Verge, show that Apple designer Shin Nishibori was asked to create an iPhone mockup using Sony’s design elements. Many of the renders even sport a Sony logo, something that will be particularly damaging to Apple in court. The filing also notes that Apple was inspired by Sony’s aesthetic after former iPod head Tony Fadell circulated a memo internally from one of its designers.

Looking at the early designs, its easy to see how they eventually led to the iPhone 4. The front and rear of Nishibori’s design is a bit more complicated, but the basic flow of the design remains very similar. And the Sony-inspired design also sports a prominent metal band around the device — a design choice that would eventually lead to the reception disrupting Antennagate controversy with the iPhone 4.

Other court filings have also revealed some of Apple’s earliest iPad designs, which thankfully don’t resemble anything like the iPad that hit the market. Perhaps aware that its tablet would be difficult to stand up on desks, Apple explored building in a clunky-looking kickstand — a problem that it would eventually solve with its iPad Smart Covers.

A few weeks ago, we also caught a glimpse of some other early iPad designs, which showed a much heftier aesthetic.

Via The Verge

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

Anyone who’s ever driven in a city can attest to the fact that it’s an utter pain in the rear to find somewhere to park. New York in particular is a nightmare for skittish drivers (like myself), but mobile parking service Pango is poised to help ease the hassle of city cruising and parking.

After launching in Israel in 2007, their zeal for expansion has prompted Pango to take their first official step into the United States with the launch of their mobile app and their first so-called smart garage in New York City (on 77th and Lexington, to be more precise).

Here’s the onboarding process in a nutshell — after installing the app (available on iOS, Android, or BlackBerry), potential parkers are tasked with creating an account and will need to plug in their license plate number and credit card credentials in order to be properly tracked and charged.

After that process is over, users will be able to search for different Pango locations to park at, but for now users in NYC need only pull into the smart garage and press a button to summon a valet. Once users are done poking around the Guggenheim (or whatever it is people do in the Upper East Side), they can use the app to alert the garage that they’re on en route back to their car, so the vehicle can be prepared to go. The amount owed is charged directly to the card on file — the service doesn’t currently cost anything beyond the garage’s usual fees — so all that’s left is to hop in and speed off.

And this is just the beginning — Pango told TechCrunch that they’re targeting other major metro areas to expand into, as well as bringing their on-street and non-valeted garage parking models live over the next few months. In fact, they’re already made some progress on that front as they soft-launched their on-street mobile parking service in Latrobe, Pennsylvania of all places last month.

It’s a funky concept to be sure, but it’s one that certainly seems to be doing the company well. At last glance, the company has entered into app-friendly partnerships with parking garages in 50 cities across five countries — Israel, Poland, Germany, France, and the U.S. What’s more, the company handles more than 2 million parking transactions monthly, and make their money by splitting revenue with the garage proprietor or the owners of the areas where they plan to set up their Pango parking meters.

Now there’s no shortage of services looking to disrupt the odious process of parking — Panda and Disrupt Battlefield finalist KurbKarma immediately spring to mind — but what makes Pango such a compelling option is the lack of friction involved. Exchanging pleasantries with the valet aside, the entire process essentially consists of a few button presses. At this stage though they’re being outpaced by some of the competition (Panda is currently live in Baltimore and Washington D.C. with two more cities waiting in the wings), and while their momentum has seen them take hold in 50 cities in just under five years, only time will tell if they’re able to replicate that level of success in the States.

Amazon’s $79 Kindle may be the least flashy of the the bunch, but the Seattle company is starting to push out a new software update that adds some much-needed functionality to their cost-conscious e-reader.

One of the biggest additions to the mix is support for Kindle Format 8, Amazon’s relatively new e-book file format. The $79 Kindle seems to be bringing up the rear in that respect, as the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, and most of the Kindle mobile apps have already been updated to play well with those newer KF8 files.

It may sound like a minor enhancement, but it affords content creators and publishers (among other things) much finer control over the styling and layout of an e-book. As such, it also opens up the $79 Kindle to content like comic books that lean heavily on the Kindle Panel View feature, as well as children’s books that use fixed layouts and text popups.

If that wasn’t enough, the update also packs improved parental controls to keep the young ones out of the Kindle Store or the device’s experimental web browser. Also on board is a new, slightly crisper font that Amazon claims will make for a more “paper-like reading experience,” and a new grouping meant solely for dictionaries within the main book listing to help clean up some of the clutter.

All thrilling stuff, no? You can expect your Kindle to get the update via WiFi within a few weeks, but you can always download and install it yourself if you’re the impatient type.

Sales stats for the month of September have been propagated by the NPD Group, and the usual suspects are on there with no major upsets. The 360 is leading sales with 483,000 units sold, followed by the PS3 (estimated at ~370,000 units), with the Wii bringing up the rear with 240,000. Nintendo was happy to point out, however, that the DS has just crossed over the line of 50 million sold in the US, making it the best-selling game console ever in this country by their calculations (the PS2 is a very close second, if so). But with a quarter of a million DS units flying off the shelves every month, what does that mean for the 3DS?

You may remember that Nintendo made quite a big deal about essentially introducing the new handheld with a price that was just plain too high. After slashing the price and offering free games to early adopters as a consolation prize, they’ve seen sales improve… but the month saw only 150,000 being sold, not the kind of numbers Nintendo would like to see for their only new console in years. There was a surge right after the new pricing was announced, but that seems to have petered out.

Did they miss the boat?

Don’t forget that the DS is in its 7th year of sales. The 3DS is its true replacement (not the XL, or DSi), and the 3DS will be on sale for a long, long time. The gaming race isn’t a sprint, and a stumble at the start doesn’t mean Nintendo is out of the running. After all, the PS3 was a joke when it started out, and while it hasn’t dominated the 360 by any means, it has seen solid, increasing sales over the years. Nintendo is okay with putting a band-aid on this problem because they’re looking five years down the line.

Not to mention the DS is finishing off strong, with a big year of serious releases, while the 3DS doesn’t have two killer games to rub together. Give the 3DS some time: the price will drop, new versions will arrive, and must-have games will be announced. And hopefully no children will go blind.