If you’re a New York Times subscriber, you’ll be pleased to know that you can now enjoy full access your favorite content via Flipboard, one of the best news readers available on iOS. Even those who don’t subscribe still get a little treat: free access to the publication’s “Top News” section.
The New York Times published a story recently that attacks Apple for avoiding billions of tax dollars every year, but does it matter in the court of public perception? A new study says that Apple’s reputation score in the aftermath of the report remains relatively unscathed. Compare this to General Electric (GE), a company also reported to be avoiding paying their fair share of taxes. GE’s score dropped considerably in the same amount of time after a similar New York Times story on them last month.
Compared to GE? Apple’s Teflon.
Earlier in this day, we reported on a New York Times piece in which the paper claimed that Apple was using a variety of measure to avoid paying U.S. income tax. It turns out that the Times based key pieces of its information on a study that had been discredited two weeks prior.
The data used by the Times included a report by the Greenlining Institute, which made errors in computing Apple’s supposed tax rate at 9.8% for the 2011. The data used by the report effectively compared Apple’s 2011 profit with taxes paid by the company for profits in 2010 and drew unfounded conclusions as a result.
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran another in its series of exposes about Apple. This one focused on Apple’s complex mix of offices and subsidiaries located throughout the world and the U.S. that allow the company to keep large portions of its more than $100 billion in low-tax states and countries.
The report comes after the paper’s expose on working conditions within Foxconn, the contractor that Apple uses to assemble most of its products and calls by politicians and members of the media for Apple to move more of its manufacturing and money to American soil.
Over the last few weeks, third-party iOS developers received a lot of heavy venom from the Internet after reports surfaced that apps are accessing users’ address book information without users’ permission. It appears that the situation is worse than first thought and that apps can access more than just address books without notifying users. Photos on iOS devices are also susceptible to apps once a user has granted an app permission to their location information.
A Brazil-made iPad has been in the offing since July 2011. However, plans by Taiwan’s Foxconn to build the tablet in South America were held up by negotiations surrounding taxes that could double the cost of Apple’s tablet. Now comes word the government has exempted the iPad, freeing Foxconn to begin churning out iPads stamped “Made in Brazil.”
We thought we’d put this Apple television business to rest as a pipe-dream, but then Steve Jobs’s biography came out, where he claimed he had finally “cracked” the TV problem. Now the rumor mill has started itself up again with renewed vigor, and the latest report from Nick Bilton over at The New York Times: his sources tell him that Jobs thought that the “industry was totally broken” a real Apple-branded television set “isn’t a matter of if, but when,” a “guaranteed product.”
For those in the NYC area, staying on top of Hurricane Irene-related developments on an iDevice just became a little easier as the two major NYC newspapers, the New York Times and Long Island’s Newsday, have dropped their paywalls for Irene-related news.
The New York Times has issued an update to its iOS apps today that now allows users to subscribe to paid content through in-app purchases. The change comes a day later than the June 30 deadline Apple imposed on subscription apps that must now provide a way for users to sign up without being redirected to a website.
If you’ve run up against the New York Times‘ new paywall, here is the simplest way to continue reading — guaranteed. This isn’t just a Mac tip: it works on Windows too.
News.me is a social news experience from bit.ly unlike any other currently in the App Store. Not only does it provide you with a list of content your friends are sharing like applications such as Flipboard and Zite, but it also allows you to view the content they are reading. It claims to offer a “seamless interface for immersive reading” that uses “science to find the most relevant content in every user’s stream.”
The News.me iPad app just hit the App Store, but made news before its release thanks to its backing from the New York Times, and the publishers and websites that are also on board; such as AOL, Forbes, Gawker, Business Insider, Gigaom, Mashable, Venturebeat and the Associated Press.
Will you pay to read the New York Times on your iPad under its new subscription plans?
Or will you try to game the system, getting free access through Twitter, Facebook or Google?
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The news of Steve Jobs’ latest medical leave is the top story on the New York Times‘ website right now. The Times‘ top slot is usually reserved for big international news stories, indicting the importance of Apple’s news to the business and technology world. It has pushed out news about Tunisia’s new government and a fresh Wikileaks scandal about offshore banks and alleged tax cheats.
It’s doubtful as to whether any online apps will be able to match the gadgetry the pundits have on television to interpret election results, but one elegant graphic on the New York Times’ web site has been optimized for the iPad, and looks worthy of a bookmark.
New York City is full of characters — that’s one of the biggest attractions of living there.
Freelance radio producer and artist/animator Eric Molinsky spends his commuting time on the city’s subway system capturing the visual aspects of those characters using Autodesk’s SketchBook Mobile application, as the New York Times notes in a blog post profiling Molinsky on Friday.
The results are available for all to see on Molinsky’s iPhone Sketchbook Drawing blog.
From the beaky-nosed, middle-aged woman in a blue hat to other characters whose faces are artfully-shaded, each of these portraits manages to capture the spirit or mood of a person, a bit like a Richard Avedon portrait. In my mind, the pictures look as if they should be in an edition of the New Yorker magazine illustrating some story, or in the Times‘ “Metropolitan Diary” section illustrating some anecdote.
There’s something utterly romantic and wonderful about bringing the timeless art of sketching to a device like the iPhone — in my experience, it’s actually cool functionality like this that seems to have converted a lot of my older technophobe friends into iPhone and iPAD devotees.
As you’ll see from the comments on the Times blog post, it turns out that Molinsky’s hobby isn’t that unusual: a lot of other people have been using apps like Brushes to do sketches too.
Above: A subway rider on the 3 train August 9, 2010, sketch by Eric Molinsky.
