It could be taken as a sign that the rumored iWatch is inching closer to reality, or that future iPhones (and iPads) will have a sapphire display. Either way, the use of sapphire crystals for watch faces has been around for a long time and is very useful. I personally hope that it makes its way to tablets and phones, possibly eliminating the need for screen protection film.

Why Apple Bought $578M Worth Of Sapphire In Advance

“First, this material must be extremely strategic, says Creative Strategies Analyst and Techpinions columnist Ben Bajarin. “It is necessary for Touch ID because it is extremely scratch-resistant. If a scratch got on your thumb scanner it wouldn’t work. So then the question becomes what else may they want or need to use a scratch resistant screen for. This is where the wearables idea or watch comes in.”

There has been a lot of chatter about Apple and wearables, and it is indeed working on something in that arena. Apple’s M7 motion coprocessor likely has something to do with it, and there are some indications that it’s being worked on by both Bob Mansfield and ex-Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.

Watches, a popular wrist-mounted wearable you may have heard of, often use sapphire for their face covers because of their durability. They simply get knocked around more than phones do.

Apple’s support document regarding iWork for Mac.

In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis.

Good to know that they have not ditched these features. I believe it is a step backwards on the OS X front for iWork so that the suite can move forward together with iOS and iCloud versions of the apps.

I will gladly bite the bullet now and look forward to a future where the apps are compatible and transferable across platforms.

Apple has left the older version of the apps available because they know that people will still want the features and made sure that users had a choice which version of the apps they want to use.

In the meanwhile, you can continue to use these features by accessing the previous versions of the iWork applications which remain installed on your Mac. The previous versions can be found in Applications > iWork ’09.

The Globe and Mail reports on the Canadian government’s rejection of Lenovo’s plan to acquire BlackBerry.

Beijing-based computer manufacturer Lenovo Group Ltd. actively considered a bid for BlackBerry Ltd., but the Canadian government told the smartphone company it would not accept a Chinese takeover because of national security concerns, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Ottawa made it clear in high-level discussions with BlackBerry that it would not approve a Chinese company buying a company deeply tied into Canada’s telecom infrastructure, sources said. The government made its position known over the last one to two months. Because Ottawa made it clear such a transaction would not fly, it never formally received a proposal from BlackBerry that envisioned Lenovo acquiring a stake, sources said.

It was perhaps a blessing in disguise for Lenovo.

Business Insider reports on comments made by analyst Rick Sherlund on Microsoft.

For the past few years, Microsoft reported the revenue and operating losses of Entertainment and Devices, which was the group that housed Xbox, Windows Phone, and those Android royalty payments.

That group always seemed to be profitable, but Sherlund says it’s largely because of the Android money.

Sherlund says that if you back out the Android profits, Microsoft is probably losing $2.5 billion on Skype, Xbox, and Windows Phone. Of that,$2 billion in losses are attributable to the Xbox platform.

It is interesting to note that Google does not charge licensing fees for Android but Microsoft ends up making big earnings purely through patents.

And of course, do note that these claims are not official figures.

Apple has updated the Mail app for OS X Mavericks with a few fixes.

• Fixes an issue that prevents deleting, moving, and archiving messages for users with custom Gmail settings
• Addresses an issue that may cause unread counts to be inaccurate
• Includes additional fixes that improve the compatibility and stability of Mail

Previously I reported on problems using Gmail with the Mail app on Mavericks and some people are even ditching Gmail due to the issues with Mail app.

With the U.S., and its NSA in particular, increasingly in the spotlight over ignoring privacy issues, many companies and individuals are beginning to look to other countries for alternatives. Germany has always been an option, though it’s best to know the differences of each country before diving in.

Apple just revealed Germany’s conflicted attitude to privacy

The fact remains that Germany has built up a solid reputation as a vanguard for its citizens’ privacy. It has some of the harshest data protection rules in the world and was the first to go after Google for picking up Wi-Fi data while collecting imagery for its Street View project. Less well known is that the fine was lowered after Google shared the data with the government.

Switzerland is another country that is well known for its stance on privacy, but even with those measures in place, once your data crosses borders, the rules will change.

Swisscom builds ‘Swiss Cloud’ as spying storm rages

Yet while Swiss privacy laws will govern data stored locally in Switzerland, Swisscom says it is hard to guarantee the security of data that crosses borders, such as information exchanged by employees working in different countries.