News - page 1245

Apple’s tax tactics in Ireland have landed the company in Congress’ hot seat this year, but another European nation has also helped Apple wiggle its way out of paying massive taxes on its iTunes revenues.

Apple reportedly took advantage of Luxembourg’s complex and corporation-friendly taxation system to get out of paying taxes on its iTunes revenue in Europe. The country has a 29% corporate tax rate, but after negotiating a deal, Apple paid only $25 million in taxes out of the $2.05 billion in iTunes revenue. Apple’s not the only American company exploiting Luxembourg’s tax laws either, with some companies paying less than 1% of revenue.

Here’s how Apple avoids paying nearly all taxes in Europe:

Apple is talking to Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba about bringing Apple Pay to China, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

“Right now, I think what we can say is that this is focused on the China market for Apple,” senior Alibaba executive Joseph Tsai is quoted as saying. “We are positive about the potential cooperation, but it depends on the details being worked out.”

The iPhone 6 is the best smartphone Apple’s ever created, but for those that think iOS is starting to look a little old and dated, a Chinese programmer has figured out how to install an entirely new operating system over iOS. Unfortunately, it’s Windows 95.

Chinese programmer xyq058775 posted the picture above as proof that he finagled Microsoft’s ancient OS onto the enormous display of the iPhone 6. To pull off the trick, the programmer used a tool called iDos, which simulates the 16-bit DOS environment.

Everything worked great, he says, except he discovered he couldn’t upgrade to Windows XP. If you’d like to take the plunge on your iPhone, you can grab the full instructions from his post (as long as you can read Chinese).

Via: Techcrunch

With working specimens of the original 1976 model routinely selling at auction for as much as $905,000, chances are, even the most die-hard Apple fans will never be able to own a vintage Apple 1 for themselves.

But don’t despair: If you have the know-how, you can build one yourself for a fraction of the cost.

Having written about the Apple Watch for months before it was announced, I’ll admit it was difficult to stop referring to the device as the “iWatch.” Even Tim Cook has slipped up and used that name in interviews, suggesting that this is the name Apple’s wearable debut had inside the company.

With that in mind, CollegeHumor has created a hilarious public service announcement video entitled, tactfully enough, “Apple: Call It the iWatch and We’ll Kill You.”

AirDrop on iOS makes it easier to share images and other files with the people around you than ever before, but it’s also a great way to troll innocent bystanders with space sloths. But there’s a way to protect yourself.

It was once thought that Japan disliked the iPhone so much that the Apple device couldn’t be given away for free. To paraphrase Dinah Washington, what a difference five years makes!

In October, the iPhone 6 held seven of the top eight smartphone positions (and nine out of the top 14). While sales figures are lacking, the data indicates the strength of the iPhone in Japan, according to a new report from Forbes.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has long been an unabashed believer that Cupertino should release a bigger iPhone. Around the time of the iPhone 5, he said Apple should have released two different models, one “regular” and one jumbo-size, to better compete with Android superphones

Now that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are here, Woz is glad. But he’s still being hard on Apple, saying they’re three years too late with the big phones. And he’s not too crazy about the Apple Watch either.

Tim Cook recently gave a rare public interview at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJD Live global technology conference. Discussing everything from the iPhone’s status as Apple’s cash cow and the battle over Apple Pay, to the reason the iPod classic was discontinued, it was another winning performance from Apple’s CEO.

While Cult of Mac ran down the main takeaways from the conference at the time, the Wall Street Journal has now uploaded the video of Cook’s lengthy interview, so readers can see for themselves.

Check it out after the jump:

Are you one of the many, many OS X Yosemite users who have been plagued with intermittent, seeming unsolvable problems with Wi-Fi dropping since upgrading from Mavericks? The end to your problems may very well be coming down the pipe.

Apple is preparing an unprecedented push into the world of enterprise, according to a new report from Reuters. After partnering with IBM in July to develop corporate software and services, Apple is building its own sales team to court clients.

Momentum is strong for Apple in a key market that executives have described as a long-term growth opportunity. New research shows that iOS market share gained in the enterprise sector last quarter while Android slipped.

Frequent Apple Store shoppers will love the company’s latest credit card partnership with Barclaycard and Visa. Like rewards cards from Amazon and others, you earn points when you spend that add up to free money.

“The Barclaycard Visa with Apple Rewards” card also offers special financing deals for new Apple product purchases.

Seriously, outside of an airplane, I don’t think I’ve ever traveled at 207 miles per hour (or 333 kilometers per hour, if you’re metric).

Swiss cyclist François Gissy, however, just set a speed record on a rocket-propelled bicycle designed by his buddy Arnold Neracher.

How’s that for fast? Check out the video of the record-breaking attempt below, but be sure to turn down your sound. Nothing sounds as silly as a rocket bike.

Few things on Instagram are more embarrassing than a horrific typo right in the middle of your caption, but starting today Instagram is finally going to let sloppy texters like myself go back and edit captions.

The new Instagram 6.2 update was announced by the company this morning and along with giving Grammers the ability to fix their blunders, the app also added some new features to the Explore page as well.

Less than a week after WireLurker shocked the iOS community with its vulnerability, a new malware threat has been discovered that could be even more dangerous.

The FireEye mobile security research team announced today that they’ve discovered a new iOS malware threat called Masque Attack that mimics and replaces the legitimate apps on your iPhone with decoy apps that steal your personal information.

Masque Attacks are so lethally, they can replace your banking and email apps without you realizing it. The attack works by prompting you to install a fake update to a popular app like Flappy Bird, while secretly replacing your Gmail or banking app with a trojan horse masquerading as the real deal, only it’s designed to suck away all the personal data you feed it.

Here’s a video demo of how the attack works:

I love animated GIFs. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the greatest gift God ever bestowed upon the Internet.

While most Mac users probably think making them requires Photoshop and some superior skills, creating GIFs can be dead-easy for your Mom to do, as long as you know which tools to use. 

In fact, iOS 8 has made communicating solely through GIFs easier than ever thanks to third-party keyboards. With just a couple apps and some browser extensions, you can become a GIFmaster in no time and blow your friends away with your arsenal of GIFs.

Here’s how to create your own GIFs in minutes on your Mac.

Apple manufacturer Pegatron is having to expand its production capacity to deal with the epic demand being heaped on it due to the success of the iPhone 6, according to a new report.

Earlier today, Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng told investors that his company has spent upwards of $200 million in 2014 in capital expenditure to help ramp up production, and that this figure is going to increase to a massive $300 million next year.

Although a slowdown in notebook demand meant that Pegatron’s overall revenue is down 6.8% versus the same quarter in 2013, revenue from the company’s communications products (which includes the iPhone 6) grew 10% year on year. Net profit meanwhile leaped an astonishing 92% in the July-to-September period.

For those keeping track at home, this is the same time Pegatron began shipping the iPhone 6.

Apple is set to open its first office in the UK’s innovation capital Cambridge in the next couple of weeks, according to a new report.

The address of the office — which will serve as an R&D lab — is the centrally-located 90 Hills Road, not far from the offices of streaming music rival Spotify. In addition to a healthy startup scene, other major tech companies with offices in Cambridge include leading microprocessor manufacturer ARM, Microsoft, and others.

Apple is being sued by China’s second biggest insurance company over claims that it allowed a “counterfeit app” to be sold in the iTunes App Store.

The app in question misleads users into thinking it is the official app of Lufax, the leading provider of wealth and financial assets management in China, and a subsidiary of the Ping insurance group.

Ping is arguing that users in China might download the counterfeit Lufax app instead of the legitimate one, and that the ensuing risk of fraud and potential loss for Lufax’s customers is significant.

One of the longstanding complaints about iMessage is how it can stay active even when you switch to an Android phone. The result is that texts often get sucked into some sort of purgatory where they never actually reach your contacts.

Today Apple released a new web tool that permanently deregisters phone numbers from iMessage. Anyone can enter their phone number and cut all ties with Apple’s messaging platform for good.

The iOS 8 Pangu jailbreak tool was made available on the Mac today after being on Windows only for the past few weeks.

This week: more rumored details of a 12-inch iPad Pro; 755 new emojis are coming soon to your iDevices; with Christian Bale out, we make our list of the actors that should definitely NOT replace him in the Sorkin-penned Jobs movie; and finally… nude or not? Do you keep your iDevices bare or covered up in a case? We ponder the pros and cons and ask the question: why are so many iPhone and iPad cases horrid pieces of garbage? We’ll share some of our faves, too.

Chuckle your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

Apple is working on a new pair of Beats headphones, according to leaked FCC documents. They work over Bluetooth and appear to be pretty much identical to the Solo2 headphones Beats released in May.

Remember the iPhone 6 “prototype” that was listed on eBay and almost sold for $100,000 before getting mysteriously pulled? It was relisted last week and just sold for $11,100.

The seller got what he thought was a brand new iPhone 6 from Verizon only to find what appeared to be an unfinished prototype running internal software. After he told us that he was excited to hear from Apple regarding the prototype, the listing was suddenly taken down.

Apple and its former sapphire supplier GT Advanced Technologies have stayed quiet about their disastrous relationship, but newly unsealed court documents reveal that the two companies never had a chance of making things work.

Judge Henry Boroff ordered the sealed documents to be opened on Tuesday, and one of the affidavits from GTAT CEO Daniel Squiller claims Apple used a “bait-and-switch” strategy that was massively one-sided. When GTAT balked at Apple’s terms, execs were told to stop trying to negotiate and “put on your big boy pants and accept the agreement.”