Apple Inc. - page 36

Ireland will apparently announce plans to phase out its “Double Irish” tax arrangement that has allowed companies like Apple and Google to save billions, according to a Reuters report citing sources familiar with the matter.

Over the past 18 months, the country has been criticized by both the United States and Europe for tax loopholes that let companies slash their overseas tax rate to single digits. Preliminary findings by the European Commission recently slammed a “sweetheart” tax deal on the part of Ireland that allowed Apple to avoid paying taxes by building up a massive offshore cash pile of $137.7 billion in the country.

GT Advanced Technologies is apparently getting out of the sapphire production game, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the start of this week.

As reported by Re/code and the Wall Street Journal, the beleaguered company is asking the court’s permission to “wind down” operations at its sapphire manufacturing plant in Arizona — and, yes, for those keep track, that does come less than one year after the company first announced its game-changing deal with Apple.

It’s that time of the week again — all of Cult of Mac’s best news stories and features, compiled in one place to peruse easily on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got heartfelt remembrances of Steve Jobs, some products we’d like to see updated along with the coming new iPads, a look at upcoming Twin Peaks in our modern era, and some hard lessons learned in running the top iPad magazine. Plus, some great new apps to look at and a reminder that the iPhone 6 continues to sell like, well, iPhones.

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine October 10 Edition, Free on iTunes

How GT Advanced Technologies could have filed for bankruptcy, despite Apple’s best efforts to prop it up, is still something of a mystery — and it’ll stay like that if the company gets its way.

According to a Reuters report, GT Advanced has requested that the New Hampshire bankruptcy court currently overseeing its case put the kibosh on releasing key documents related to a “third party,” claiming that this would allow it avoid paying damages thanks to confidentiality agreements.

Apple has retained its position as the world’s most valuable brand, according to the latest Interbrand’s Best Global Brands report. Last year Cupertino seized the No. 1 spot from Coca-Cola, a company 90 years older than Apple.

The report valued Apple’s brand at a whopping $118.9 billion, compared to the $100 billion it was valued at in 2013. In doing so it beat out Google, Coca-Cola, IBM and Microsoft, which filled out the remaining top five spots on the list.

Other tech companies which ranked highly on the top 100 list included Samsung (No. 7), Intel (No. 12), Cisco (No. 14), Amazon (No. 15) and Facebook (No. 29).

Before the iPhone 6 was officially announced, developers confirmed the higher resolution of the iPhone 6 by examining the beta for iOS 8, specifically in the way apps would prefer to load a 3x image over the 2x image on existing Retina Devices.

Now the iOS 8.1 beta is out, and developers are discovering that it will similarly call up 3x versions of many iPad UI assets, implying that the iPad could be seeing a resolution bump sometime soon.

In Apple’s invitation to the company’s October 16th Town Hall event at its Cupertino headquarters, the company’s tagline is: “It’s been way too long.”

This has prompted a lot of speculation. It hasn’t been too long since Apple’s last event, which was just a month ago. And there aren’t that many other Apple products that we haven’t seen updated in the last year, with the exception of Thunderbolt displays, which frankly aren’t important enough to reference in an Apple tagline that the whole world will scrutinize.

But here’s a good theory. What if the tagline doesn’t reference a single product, but a variation of product? What if we’re about to see the return of colored Macs?

Bullish activist-investor Carl Icahn is back again! In a tweet sent earlier today, Icahn noted that he plans to send Tim Cook an open letter tomorrow. The contents of this letter are unknown, but Icahn promises it will be “interesting,” to say the least.

New details have emerged about the surprise bankruptcy protection filing of GT Advanced Technologies, a.k.a. the company that was supplying Apple with its sapphire.

As per the Wall Street Journal, Apple agreed to lend GT Advanced a total of $578 million to help get its large sapphire factory in Arizona up and running, only for Cupertino to withhold the final $139 million payment it was due to make, for reasons which aren’t yet clear, but likely relate to the company’s failure to deliver sapphire to Apple’s satisfaction.

The iPhone 6 received rave reviews when Apple unveiled it at the Flint Center last month, but not many people have been eager to talk about it’s shortcomings, until now.

In today’s Cult of Mac video we breakdown the biggest disappointments iPhone 6 users have griped about since the device went on sale two weeks ago. What should Apple improve to make the phone better? Find out what the next generation iPhone still needs and more in this informative video.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV to catch all our latest videos.

ROSEVILLE, California – This is where your electronics go to die.

In a nondescript, 200,000-square-foot warehouse 20 miles northeast of Sacramento, box after box of discarded electronics and parts sit at Sims Recycling Solutions, awaiting their date with the “mega-shredder” at the end of the line. That’s where four rows of 22 hardened-steel blades will rip and grind the metal housings and circuit boards into tiny chunks.

“We recycle almost everything,” said Bill Vasquez, Sims’ vice president of U.S. operations, during Cult of Mac’s recent tour of the facility. He said more than 99 percent of the materials that pass through Sims’ doors gets recycled. “Our focus is to divert everything from landfill as much as possible.”

This Sunday will mark three years since the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs at the age of 56. Although many Apple employees will doubtless be working over the weekend, Tim Cook took today as the opportunity to send out a note to Apple employees, sharing some of his thoughts on Jobs’ legacy at Apple.

The note can be read in full below:

Apple is investigating touch-sensitive holographic displays for future Macs and iOS devices, according to a new patent published today.

As described, the patent would emulate the current touch-based interface for iPhones and tablets, only using near-field proximity in place of physical touch.

Having previously filed multi-million dollars suits against Chinese knockoff brands, Beats is now suing one of its own — or at least someone who claims to be one of its own.

In a lawsuit filed late last week, Beats filed false advertising and unfair competition lawsuit against inventor Steve Lamar. Lamar has been involved with ongoing lawsuits with Beats regarding whether or not he can claim ownership of the brand after first bringing the idea of celebrity musical artist-endorsed headphones to Iovine.

Preliminary findings by the European Commission have slammed Apple and Ireland for a so-called “sweetheart” tax deal which allowed Apple to avoid paying taxes by building up a massive offshore cash pile of $137.7bn in the country.

The deal dates back to 1991, and allowed Ireland to provide Apple with illegal state aid. Apple has had a base in the country since 1980.

In a statement, the European Commission said that “the Irish authorities confer an advantage on Apple,” and that this “advantage is obtained every year and ongoing.”

The infamous iPhone 6 “bending video” may have reached close to 47 million hits on YouTube, but Apple has seemingly escaped Bendgate without any lasting damage — just as it has with every “gate” incident before it.

In a new blog post entitled “The Joy of Apple Slamming,” former Apple ad exec Ken Segall (the man who named the iMac) explains how Jobs created a company able to withstand the kind of damaging rumors that would permanently damage lesser rivals.

The secret? Get people to really, really love you.

Regulators are set to break down the reason tax deals given to Apple in Ireland violate EU laws, according to people familiar with the matter.

The European Commission began formal investigations into the tax avoidance issue back in June, and plans to publish its findings as early as today — with the claim that tax deals between Apple and the Irish government could fall under the heading of illegal state aid.

While Apple has yet to make a comment on the matter, the Irish government has spoken up; describing its position as “confident” that the Apple deal represents “no breach of state-aid rules.” It claims that it has already submitted a formal response to the European Commission, in which it addresses in detail “the concerns and some misunderstandings.”

Bendgate is the latest in a long line of minor Apple problems that get blown out of proportion by the Internet’s echo chamber and the media jackals that inevitably swoop in and howl about the latest “crisis.”

The same sort of over-the-top backlash happened with the iPhone 4’s reception issue (Antennagate) and the iPad’s trickle-charge feature (Batterygate). It’s a familiar cycle: Apple’s fantastic new device captures the world’s attention, a glitch arises and suddenly the world is coming to an end — at least until it’s not.

“Apple’s ability to trigger consumer demand is probably without rival across the globe — that’s no small feat,” says Larry Barton, a pioneer in corporate crisis management who studies the causes of and responses to incidents like these. “Their core, loyal customer has proven to be forgiving across several minor incidents, and Bendgate is just that — a relatively minor snafu that’s not uncommon with a first-generation design.”

Unless you’re talking about critically endangered species, using up a sizable percentage of the world’s anything is an impressive benchmark. When that’s 25 percent of the world’s RAM, though — a critical component of every smartphone, tablet and ultrabook on Earth — only Apple is capable of placing those kinds of orders.

Five top Apple execs — including Tim Cook and Phil Schiller — unloaded $143 million AAPL shares as part of a 10b5-1 planned sale, according to a new report from Barron’s.

Cook sold 348,425 Apple shares for $35,250,297, while Schiller dropped 348,846 shares for $35,256,000.

Other Apple higher-ups who did the same include CFO Luca Maestri, who sold his entire direct holdings for $1,631,286; Jeffrey E. Williams, senior vice president of operations, who raked in $35,233,446; and Bruce D. Sewell, general counsel and senior vice president of legal and government affairs, who made $35,393,915 on the deal.

If you regularly use an iPhone or iPad app that uses a built-in browser, you could be vulnerable to a major vulnerability in iOS that allows unscrupulous app developers to spy on your typing.

Apple has cemented its place atop the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a sort of Michelin guide for customer service, for the eleventh straight year.

In a new report released by ACSI, Apple continued its lead over big name rivals such as Dell, Acer, Hewlett-Packard and the catch-all “All Others” when it comes to satisfaction with computing devices — including desktops, laptops and tablets. Scores are based on everything from pre-sale customer expectations, to perceived value and quality, customer complaint incidents and overall consumer loyalty.

Former Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash has praised U2’s poorly received iTunes album giveaway as a clever marketing strategy.

“There’s a lot less opportunities in the record business to get a deal and get a record out there, and there’s not a lot of radio play for it,” he told Ultimate Classic Rock magazine.

Describing the music business in 2014 as “like the wild, wild west,” he continued that this was “one of those kind of tactics that only U2 could really get away with doing.”

New figures released by app analytics firm App Annie show that mobile users are more likely than ever to pay for music services by way of in-app purchases.

Looking at figures from August, streaming music offerings from Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music were among the top earning apps in terms of revenue.