Entrepreneurs in California have quietly launched dozens of small hardware companies, designing everything from smart wristwatches to digital thermostats. The typical business plan: raise enough money to create prototypes in the U.S. that can be manufactured in Asia and sold online.

These consumer-electronics makers are attracting new interest as some of the Internet frenzy abates following spotty performances by newly public Web companies like Facebook Inc. and Zynga Inc.

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The Cupertino, Calif.-based company proposes giving viewers the ability to start any show at any time through a digital-video recorder that would store TV shows on the Internet. Viewers even could start a show minutes after it has begun. Time Warner Cable Inc. offers a limited version of this feature called Start Over.

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The talks represent Apple’s most ambitious crack at infiltrating the living room after years of trying.

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John Quinn, a lawyer for Samsung who is managing partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, said in a filing Wednesday morning that the company emailed the exhibits — which Judge Koh had blocked from consideration by the jury — in response to requests from media and denied any wrongdoing. Samsung believes the exhibits show the iPhone was inspired by Sony Corp., among other things.

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People familiar with the matter said there are no current formal investment or acquisition discussions between the companies.

News of the investment talks was first reported by the New York Times.

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The new tool, which could be detailed in the coming weeks, aims to better protect user privacy than existing approaches, these people said.

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Apple last summer said it would stop allowing app makers to use a unique identifier embedded in iPhones and iPads to track users as they move from app to app, which is an important way for advertisers to position their ads for appropriate audiences.

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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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