Business

Apple was awarded a patent outlining public transit navigation tools

Apple might finally be adding a long-awaited public transit navigation tool in Apple Maps, the company’s mapping service heavily criticized for its direction problems when it launched in 2012.

Apple filed a patent called “Location Based-Features for Commute Assistant,” a function providing directions on buses, subways and trains, according to a patent it was awarded Thursday. The patent describes basic features closely resembling those offered by Google Maps, along with the ability for users to pinpoint specific spots for the route to include.

Still, Apple’s filing doesn’t mean such a feature is definitely coming to Apple Maps — companies routinely file for patents without incorporating the included ideas in any of their products.

Apple’s new patent arrives after the company acquired Embark and Hotspot last year, two popular services offering mass transportation directions. Apple bought both companies shortly before filing for the public transit direction patent in November 2013.

While Apple Maps initially suffered from faulty driving directions — paths allegedly included airport taxiways, for example — the service managed a strong rebound from its initial flop. In June, there were 42 million American adults using Apple Maps, compared to 64.5 million using Google Maps, according to comScore, numbers likely helped by Apple Maps’ status as the default map app in iOS.

The Berkshire Hathaway CEO donated $25,000 in the third quarter to a pro-Hillary Super PAC

Warren Buffett is putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to Hillary Clinton.

In October, at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit, Buffett predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the next president of the United States. “Hillary Clinton is going to run, and she’s going to win,” Buffett said on stage.

Apparently, the prediction was more than just talk. According to Bloomberg, Buffett donated $25,000 in the third quarter to Ready for Hillary, a political organization that says it is laying the groundwork for a Clinton presidential run in 2016. That is the maximum the organization allows from a single donor. Overall, the group has raised $11 million.

Bloomberg says the donation was somewhat surprising because Buffett has criticized political action committees, like Ready for Hillary, in the past, and that he is known as a “political tightwad.” But Buffett has long been a supporter of Hillary Clinton. The Berkshire Hathaway CEO also backed Clinton’s 2008 election campaign and held fundraisers in her honor.

At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s conference, he added that he was willing to bet on a Hillary presidency. And now he has.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Prime members will be able to get Amazon-branded diapers and baby wipes

Amazon is now offering a new perk exclusively to its Prime members: Amazon-label baby wipes and diapers.

The baby products are the first part of a new lineup of consumer goods that the e-commerce giant announced on Dec. 4 called Amazon Elements. Elements, Amazon says, will feature labels that customers can scan on the company’s mobile shopping app to find where and when they were made, and where the ingredients were sourced from, among other information.

“The two things customers told us they want are premium products that meet their high standards, and access to information so they can make informed decisions, Amazon Elements offers both,” said Sunny Jain, Amazon.com consumables vice president in a statement.

Amazon also sells Pampers diapers, produced by Procter and Gamble, and Huggies, a Kimberly Clark product, so the new product line sets the online retailer up as a competitor with its suppliers. Amazon.com acquired Quidsi, Inc., which operates Diapers.com and Soap.com, for $550 million in 2010.

Elements products are made by third-party manufacturers, Amazon said, with the diapers manufactured in Canada and baby wipes in Indiana.

An Amazon spokesperson said there’s demand among Prime customers for products including diapers, as well as information about where products are sourced.

Elements is the latest feature offered to Amazon Prime members, a $99-per-year subscription for customers that includes discounts on shipping, as well as free music, video and book downloads.

Keurig is making moves to protect its pod design

Buying a coffee maker for the holidays? Make sure you get the right coffee pods.

The Keurig 2.0 coffee brewer, made by popular coffee brand Keurig, includes a scanner to ensure the coffee pods it brews are actually made by the company. In other words, your $200 machine won’t work unless you’re using the company’s own K-cups.

The home brewer, released in August, is a move that makes your coffee more like your music files, which in some cases — mostly with older files — are packed with software that prevents you from playing them across multiple devices. Such Digital Rights Management (DRM) code was popular with record labels, which feared non-DRMed songs would be widely pirated. Apple, meanwhile, included DRM in music files purchased on iTunes until 2009, and its defense of that system contributed to landing the company in legal hot water this week.

DRM has fallen out of favor in the music world as fewer people choose to buy and download physical files, opting instead to listen to their tunes on streaming services like Pandora and Spotify. But it seems the concept is getting new life in the coffee industry, thanks to Keurig.

The issue of coffee pods’ digital rights management came into the national spotlight earlier this year when Keurig announced the Keurig 2.0 would have “proprietary interactive capabilities to identify the Keurig pack.” It’s a way for Keurig to protect its coffee pod sales as several private-label pod makers have shook the market ever since several of Keurig’s patents on its pod design expired in 2012.

Keurig’s move, of course, hasn’t come without the company’s fair share of class-action antitrust lawsuits — but none yet have succeeded in stopping the company from using coffee DRM. So if Keurig’s is correct in predicting that its Keurig 2.0 will be a hit this holiday season, then its K-cups will be, too.

It's a barrel of a deal

If you were waiting to buy Breaking Bad, now’s probably the time to pull the trigger.

The collector’s edition Blue-ray ‘barrel’ is being sold on Amazon for an all-time low price of $120. The package includes all 62 episodes as well as bonuses like 55 hours of special features, a replica money barrel, a commemorative challenge coin, and some other stuff to eventually put in your basement for a while and then forget about.

The standard edition complete Blu-ray set is being sold for $86, if you don’t want the extra knick-knacks, and the DVD version is $60. According to Kinja Deals, that’s the cheapest it’s ever been offered for on Amazon.

[Amazon]

Something fishy's happening at the fast food chain

It’s not a Krabby Patty, exactly, but McDonald’s is releasing a crab-filled burger in Japan. According to Kotaku, the new burger will feature a croquette filled with snow crab and mushrooms and use lettuce and tomato sauce as additional toppings. Even though it’s seafood, McDonald’s Japan is marketing the dish as a burger.

Those hungry for an actual Krabby Patty will have to venture to Palestine, where a restaurant owner has built a replica of the Krusty Krab that, judging by the location’s Facebook page, has yet to be shut down by Nickelodeon’s lawyers.

[ModelPress]

Apple CEO Tim Cook "honored" to lend his name to the bill

Alabama lawmakers plan to name an anti-discrimination bill after Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, who disclosed in a magazine essay last October that he was gay.

The ‘Tim Cook’ bill will bar discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender state employees, including school teachers, Reuters reports.

Alabama’s only openly gay state lawmaker, Patricia Todd, told Reuters that she originally posed the name in jest, but it gained traction in the media and eventually reached Apple’s executive suite. A statement from Apple confirmed that Cook was “honored” to have his name attached to the bill.

The statement came after a company official reportedly called Todd to express reservations, a position that was later reversed by Apple’s general counsel.

“I never in a million years would have expected it,” Todd said.

Read more at Reuters.