The goal: to manage computers and other devices with gestures rather than pointing and clicking a mouse or touching a display directly. Backers believe that the approach can make it not only easier to carry out many existing chores but also take on trickier tasks such as creating 3-D models, verifying whether clothes fit, training athletes and browsing medical imagery during surgery without touching anything.

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The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

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Judge Mark Pierce in the Superior Court of the State of California in Santa Clara County on May 4 approved Apple’s motion to dismiss the suit, which was first filed in February. The order wasn’t previously disclosed.

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A growing number of start-ups are providing easy ways to share videos taken from a smartphone, enabling people to add music and text and to share the results on Facebook or another social network.

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Officials at some of Apple’s suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has shown them screen designs for a new device with a screen size of around 8 inches, and said it is qualifying suppliers for it. Apple’s latest tablet, the iPad 2, comes with a 9.7-inch screen. It was launched last year.

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Apple announced Tuesday that John Browett, who has been chief executive of Dixons Retail PLC since 2007, would join the company as a senior vice president in charge of the technology giant’s retail operations and expansion in April.

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According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Rosner — Apple’s vice president for productivity applications, in charge of its iWork document, spreadsheet and presentation software — is closely involved in developing the new digital-textbook service. Apple last week said it was holding an event in New York City on Thursday for an announcement, which people familiar with the matter have said will be around digital textbooks.

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The list of 156 companies came along with a major report — one of the company’s largest ever — divulging the results of its recent factory inspections.

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Mobile-software developers have long complained about Apple’s limits on them. Chief among their gripes is Apple’s rule that developers registered through its standard developer program cap testing of their app to 100 devices before the software is sold in the app store. Developers say the rule curtails the amount of feedback they receive to improve their apps.

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In recent weeks, Apple executives have discussed their vision for the future of TV with media executives at several large companies, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple is also working on its own television that relies on wireless streaming technology to access shows, movies and other content, according to people briefed on the project.

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Facing challenges winning over customers for its iAd mobile advertising service, Apple is softening its approach as it loses ground to Google Inc. in the fast-growing mobile-ad market.

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Ventures that teach computer programming, design and other once-nerdy skills to the masses are surfacing nationwide and drawing interest from Bay Area investors. Many of the investors want to cash in on a technology-driven sea change in learning that will allow consumers to cultivate a broad array of skills online and help ease Silicon Valley’s talent crunch.

Treehouse Island Inc. launched last month with $600,000 from West Coast investors including Greylock Partners and Social+Capital Partnership.

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In recent weeks, Apple has been looking to recruit senior-level executives with backgrounds in Web-based software, according to people familiar with the matter. It has approached at least one prominent Internet entrepreneur since at least earlier this year about a possible position, according to these people, who say the details of the possible job were unclear. The company has also discussed its needs with recruiters, one of the people said.

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Now, more small tech companies in the Bay Area are prioritizing patenting their own inventions as a defense and seeking patent services from law firms and businesses that help defend patent suits.

Mike DeSanctis, a patent attorney in Lakewood, Colo., said he has roughly 90 small tech companies as patent clients, up about 20 percent from last year. The majority of his business comes from the Bay Area, he said.

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But the low-key Mr. Cook has already put his operational mark on Apple in ways that suggest the company won’t be entirely the same as under its intense and tempestuous co-founder.

In recent weeks, Mr. Cook has tended to administrative matters that never interested Mr. Jobs, such as promotions and corporate reporting structures, according to people familiar with the matter. The new chief executive, 50 years old, has also been more communicative with employees than his predecessor, sending a variety of company-wide emails while addressing Apple employees as “Team,” people close to the company said.

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Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took the CEO reins from Mr. Jobs as his health worsened in August, spoke at the memorial along with board member Bill Campbell, Mr. Jobs’s longtime friend and former colleague who is chairman of Intuit Inc., according to a person familiar with the matter.

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Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Apple’s senior vice president for industrial design Jonathan Ive also spoke, these people said.

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Guests, many of whom were wearing black, arrived amid intense security with guards stationed near the main gate of the university’s campus.

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The event will be held at Stanford University’s campus Sunday evening, according to the invitation. It follows a small private funeral held for the Apple co-founder and chief executive last week.

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Dish Network Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. remain in the mix but have all proposed different arrangements, the people said. Yahoo Inc., which made the initial approach to Hulu that kicked off a full sale process, has withdrawn from the process, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The offers reflect the potential buyers’ estimates of the value of the service, which is based on the duration of Hulu’s contracts with its owners for providing television programming online, as well as the video site’s technology, the people said.

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Its parent company, IAC/InterActiveCorp., is launching a new comedy site, Jest.com, that aims to broaden CollegeHumor’s humor to appeal to 18- to 49-year-olds.

The Jest site will feature some original Web video produced by Jest, which will be added every other day or so. The bulk of it will be tens of thousands of funny videos — including episodes of TV shows like ABC’s “Modern Family” — aggregated from across the Web through partnerships with sites like Hulu LLC and Google Inc.’s YouTube.

Typical of Jest’s humor is an original video about a room at furniture store Ikea where bickering couples can go to break-up, a riff on how stressful furniture shopping can be for couples. The site went live Sunday.

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The biggest broadcast and cable-television channels are racing to launch tablet apps linked to their broadcasts and used simultaneously with the TV shows. The hope is that viewers will tune in live and interact.

The offerings include apps from NBCUniversal’s Bravo and News Corp.’s Fox that present material such as photos, quotes, polls or background about particular scenes as a show plays. Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. have apps that display updates about shows from Twitter or Facebook in real time.

USA Network’s TV comedy-mystery series “Psych” has an app that asks users to enter keywords that flash during the show’s graphics to unlock content like behind-the-scenes footage and games.

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Youngest son James, 38 years old, has been groomed as heir apparent. But people close to the company say his future has been clouded by questions about his role in the scandal, which has shaken the media giant’s U.K. newspaper unit and led to the closure of the 168-year-old tabloid News of the World.

A U.K. parliamentary panel said Tuesday it has asked him to come back for a second round of testimony over events at News of the World, where voice mails were intercepted in the pursuit of scoops. His earlier appearance in July set off a crossfire of conflicting accounts over what he was told and when.

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As Web traffic explodes, Internet companies are struggling to profit off ads shown next to the articles, videos and other content offered to viewers.

It’s a simple rule of any market. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. And despite attempts to woo spending with bigger, bolder and more targeted ads, services that help consumers navigate that content, namely search, remain the big money makers online.

“People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all,” says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA. “Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content.”

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The question now: Is his successor, Tim Cook, aggressive enough to muscle Apple into new turf like TV and publishing where the company hasn’t yet established a dominant foothold?

The real test for Mr. Cook will come when he is no longer benefiting from Mr. Jobs’s triumphs and must conquer new markets on his own. Executives in media companies, for instance, are reluctant to give up control of their products and fear Apple will end up eating away at their profits. Mr. Cook must win them over.

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