Reuters reported on Apple seeking an injunction against Samsung for patent infringement.

Samsung lawyer Kathleen Sullivan of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP said the South Korean company had all but stopped using the patents, so no injunction was needed.

So Samsung was using the patents.

Business insider reported on Samsung’s epic global defeat by Apple.

This rapid collapse points to one thing: Samsung has weak brand loyalty.

Consumers just want a high-end, large-screened smartphone, and for years Samsung was the only one sufficiently pushing the limits of screen size. Apple’s devices remained — until the launch of the 6 and 6 Plus — around the 4-inch mark. But now Apple is producing a larger-screened device, and consumers have decided there’s no longer any reason to buy a large Samsung smartphone.

Those who, sadly, are unable to grasp the reason behind Apple’s brand loyalty simply label loyal users as Apple fanboys and iSheep.

Ars Technica reported on Google backtracking from compulsory encryption for Android Lollipop devices.

Last year, Google made headlines when it revealed that its next version of Android would require full-disk encryption on all new phones. Older versions of Android had supported optional disk encryption, but Android 5.0 Lollipop would make it a standard feature.

But we’re starting to see new Lollipop phones from Google’s partners, and they aren’t encrypted by default, contradicting Google’s previous statements. At some point between the original announcement in September of 2014 and the publication of the Android 5.0 hardware requirements in January of 2015, Google apparently decided to relax the requirement, pushing it off to some future version of Android. Here’s the timeline of events.

So why the change of heart after the fanfare in announcing the feature?

Here’s what we think is most likely. Lollipop’s encryption requirement made headlines again in November, this time because it had a huge impact on the new Nexus 6’s performance. Our review of the Nexus 6 showed that the new phone could be slower than the old Nexus 5 in certain tasks, and AnandTech supplied additional numbers that showed just how severe the performance impact was.

Meanwhile, iOS users continue enjoy encryption with no impact on their phone performance.

Rurik Bradbury wrote on Trustev about Wall Street Journal’s misleading headline.

A hot and heavy headline at the Wall Street Journal, “Fraud Comes to Apple Pay,” gives the impression of some kind of security weakness in Apple’s new payment system, but it’s not justified.

What has happened is that Apple Pay itself is basically fraud-proof, so fraudsters have turned their attention to the next weakest link: credit cards before they’re added to an Apple Pay wallet.

This is classic fraud via social engineering. Criminals use stolen credit card details (which can easily and cheaply be bought for on sites like Rescator.cm) and then trick banks into allowing them to be loaded onto an iPhone. Once loaded onto a phone, they can make purchases until the card is canceled.

Shameful click-baiting headline to get the views.

Mashable raised questions about the security of Samsung Pay.

Samsung copied Apple Pay but needed a differentiating factor.

Samsung Pay incorporates LoopPay technology to allow its phones to work at magstrip readers. These are the types of credit card readers seen at most U.S. retailers — but Apple Pay doesn’t work with them. Apple’s mobile payments require NFC (or near-field communication) for transactions, which is still an up-and-coming technology.

This is perceived as an advantage over Apple Pay when rolling out Samsung Pay.

Some have already proclaimed that this gives Samsung an advantage in mobile payments. The U.S. has been slow in adopting more-secure chip or EMV payment technology. The idea is that people will be more prone to adopt Samsung Pay because it is more widely accepted by merchants.

But the use of magnetic stripe readers is a questionable move.

Even though the magstrip (or magstripe) compatibility could lead to wider adoption of Samsung Pay by both retailers and smartphone users, the problem with magnetic-strip cards is that they are very insecure.

“The data on the magstripe is the most dangerous data out there,” Gartner’s Litan said.

Magstripe transactions directly transmit your credit card’s information — card number, expiration date, etc. — to the sale terminal.

Samsung claims that the transaction would be tokenised, but refused to explain how it works. It is presumably integrating with Loop Pay, which it has acquired.

According to CNET, LoopPay uses the actual credit card number during transactions.

Is it a good idea to use legacy technology? Moreover, the industry is moving to update to the more secure microchip-cards. That would have an impact on the roll out of Samsung Pay, especially when credit cards with magnetic stripes will be phased out in October 2015.

Bloomberg reported on ex-GM CEO Dan Akerson saying building cars may not be worth it for Apple.

“I think somebody is kind of trying to cough up a hairball here,” Akerson said in a telephone interview. “If I were an Apple shareholder, I wouldn’t be very happy. I would be highly suspect of the long-term prospect of getting into a low-margin, heavy-manufacturing” business. The car industry, with regulatory and safety requirements, is harder than people realize, Akerson said. “A lot of people who don’t ever operate in it don’t understand and have a tendency to underestimate,” he said.

As John Gruber pointed out, this sounds familiar.

Back when rumours of Apple entering the phone market, then Palm CEO Ed Colligan scoffed at the idea:

Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”