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Apple is accused of illegally using another company's caller identification technology in its mobile device, the latest in a seemingly unending wave of patent lawsuits.

This time, the plaintiff is Cequint, a company that focuses on caller ID technology and is a unit of TNS, which itself provides data communications services to businesses.

Cequint has accused Apple of damaging its own business with the continued use of its technology, and warned that it would "be irreparably harmed" unless a court mandated a ban, Bloomberg reported today.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment to CNET.

Cequint's enhanced … Read more

Sound ID's latest Bluetooth headset is called the Six, and it promises to be the company's most advanced headset yet.

Sound ID stands out in the field of Bluetooth headset makers because the company was founded by an ear doctor from Stanford University, and the headsets are therefore designed with strong knowledge of the human ear. Sound ID headsets have usually prized comfort and audio clarity because of this. … Read more

Apple this morning released a new version of iTunes that adds the company's new scan-and-match service for music.

iTunes 10.5.1 includes iTunes Match, a feature that scans a user's library to find music that wasn't purchased from Apple. If it finds a match in Apple's own Music Store library, Apple provides a user with a cloud-based version at the same quality they'd find if they bought it off iTunes--at least so long as they're a paid subscriber to the matching service, which costs $24.99 a year.

The feature made its debut … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Sprint Nextel is working to take its flagship smartphones and eventually sell them to its prepaid and wholesale partners, according to product chief Fared Adib.

Sprint could eventually take a high-end handset such as the Samsung Electronics Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch and re-brand and sell it to different providers, Adib said during the company's developer conference here today.

The approach would mark a radical departure from conventional thinking in the wireless industry. The national carriers typically guard their flagship handsets with exclusive agreements, and consider them the "crown jewels" that allow them … Read more

Joey Kaminski joins the cast of The 404 today to talk about the next iPhone, Sprint's $20 billion deal with Apple, and whether or not the new video game Rage is worth the long wait.

If there's anyone who should know how to make legendary video games, it's got to be Id Software co-founder John Carmack. Largely responsible for classics such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake (basically the games that invented the first-person action shooter), there's no game maker, save for Nintendo's Miyamoto, who comes close in terms of influence or reputation. (See our E3 2011 interview with Carmack here.)

It's no surprise that Rage has received its fair share of hype. Now that we've had our hands on the final product, here's what we think:

Jeff:It's impossible to play Rage and not immediately think of games like Borderlands and Fallout 3. The game draws so many similarities to the former that veteran players may find things a bit redundant in not just atmosphere but gameplay as well. Both games are a looter's dream, but Rage succeeds at delivering a much more polished and complete package.

Rage places the player in the role of Ark member, a project designed to continue the human race in anticipation of a meteorite impact that will destroy most of if not all life on Earth. The game begins with the Ark member awakening some time after the collision. Of course the world is now a shell of its former self and, surprise, surprise, you're not exactly welcome in it.

Narratively speaking, Rage starts off with an impressive sequence, but never really is able to achieve the same sort of cinematic awe. Voice performances are strong and likable, highlighted by the instantly recognizable John Goodman.… Read more

NumberGuru is a free service that allows you to quickly look up who is calling you, in some cases even if they are calling you from a cell phone. The best part of the service, besides its speed, is the ability to reverse look up as many numbers as you want for free.

… Read more

As the chorus of complaints grows over Apple's unwillingness to merge Apple IDs, it appears the company might soon change its stance on the matter.

According to MacRumors, two of its readers have contacted Apple CEO Tim Cook to see if Apple will eventually allow users to merge their Apple IDs. Those readers, MacRumors says, received word from an Apple executive relations employee, who said that the company is planning to allow for that functionality.

Apple has long denied customer calls for merging IDs. However, with the launch earlier this year of automatic downloads, complaints about that policy started … Read more

Gateway laptops are funny products. Of the two mainstream lines available, the "budget" NV series and the "higher-end" ID series, neither one currently has a single model that tops $699. So, in that sense, both are budget lines. The Gateway ID is the slicker, more polished-looking product and a significantly thinner laptop with a 14-inch display, more closely matching what most people consider to be easily portable.

The $699 Gateway ID47H02u has a good set of specs for its price. An Intel Core i5-2410M processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive are considered mainstream specs nowadays, but no corners are cut on the processor, which matches equivalent $1,000-range laptops such as the Toshiba Satellite E305 and the Toshiba Portege R835. A sleek--for Gateway--design, a comfortable keyboard and touch pad, and a long-lasting battery complete the package. It's definitely a more attractive and slimmer notebook overall than you see in the Gateway NV line, which we recently reviewed in the form of the Gateway NV55S05u.… Read more