Ok, so if you’ve been paying attention to the gaming space today, you’ll know that Microsoft unveiled its new gaming console, the Xbox One. This next generation console is going to play video games, control your TV (sort of), and act as a DVD/Blue-Ray player. It’s got a Kinect motion sensor box on top, which can not be disconnected, and the console won’t play Xbox 360 discs.

This is all well and good, and represents a step forward in Microsoft’s quest to own the living room, even though a lot of us don’t have the time, space, or extra cash to spend on a huge entertainment hub these days, anyway. That’s really not what bothers me, though.

The Xbox One is just uglier than anything I could have imagined.

Heck, my ten year-old son, not a maven of design in any way, saw pictures of the new Xbox, and chuckled. “Why is it bigger than the Xbox 360?” he asked. “It looks the same, just more square.”

Which really made it all hit home for me: design matters. The case design of the Xbox One is firmly rooted in the past. Which makes a lot of sense if you consider the reveal today, full of the same games and the same brands with better graphics.

Walmart’s video on demand service, Vudu, just rolled out a new update for its iOS app. Version 2.0 of Vudu now lets you download videos from the service, and then watch them even if you’re offline. The player itself is streamlined, and Closed Captioning–already supported on the iPad version of the Vudu app–is now available on the iPhone, too.

Badger is a new jailbreak tweak that lets you access unread notifications from an app icon. Instead of opening Notification Center, swiping on a specific icon can reveal a list of notifications. From there, you can clear individual messages and even respond to texts.

Apple has published the opening statements read by CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer earlier today at the U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearing on corporate taxes. The hearing lasted several hours and was televised live on CSPAN.

Senators like Carl Levin, John McCain, and Rand Paul were present to lead the committee and hear from industry experts. Apple was called to the stand to explain why it stores a large percentage of its billions in cash overseas.

Today Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One at its Redmond, Washington campus. As the battle for the living room rages on, Microsoft has won a decisive victory that puts it well ahead of the competition.

The Xbox One is just as much for all-around entertainment as it is for gaming, perhaps even more so. It’s designed to be the one box that sits below your TV and does everything: games, movies, live TV, music, surfing the web, messaging, and even video calling. Minority Report-style gestures control the experience, it can recognize your face when you walk in the room, and you can talk to it like Siri on steroids.

Should Apple be worried? The answer is no, at least not yet.

Intel lost the opportunity to power the iPhone, but the company is hard at work to make sure they don’t get completely shut out of mobile hardware, and to do so they’re hiring some old Apple talent.

To lead the charge in its plans to build “smart devices” Intel has hired former Apple Vice President, Mike Bell, to head up Intel’s new Smart Devices Unit.

iBooks is not only a fantastic e-reading app on your iPhone or iPad, but it’s also a fantastic study tool. If you need to read books for class or your own learning objectives, you can use iBooks to highlight words or passages, search the text for specific words or phrases, and make notes that appear in the margins as little colored sticky notes.

Using these tools could help you become a much more organized studier, letting you go back to a passage in a book to remember the important things with a couple of taps. Here’s how, using iBooks 3.1, the latest version of iBooks.

I just got back from a week-long vacation. We were staying in Tel Aviv, Israel, which meant lots of walking and cycling (I took my Brompton), plus day trips. Which in turn meant traveling light.

The iPad is perfect traveling companion, and the iPad mini is even better. But if you want to take lots of photos with an actual camera, or – worse still – a camera that shoots huge RAW images, you need to plan ahead. And as I didn’t want to take a Mac with me, I needed a few tricks to help out.

This post isn’t about how I managed my photos on the trip (although I will mention that side of things a little in terms of the hardware I used). It’s about the gadgets and apps that help you work around the limitations of the iPad when you’re relying on it away from home.

This morning Microsoft unveiled  its newest console, the Xbox One. Unlike previous Xbox models though, Xbox One isn’t just about games, it’s about becoming the one system your living room needs, and it probably means trouble for the Apple TV.

Not only can Microsoft’s latest box play video games with the best of them, but Microsoft has added features to make it the only box your TV really needs by recognizing who you are, what you movies and shows you like, and allowing you to control it all with just your voice.

Once I started my review of the ScanSnap iX500 document scanner, the new model in Fujitsu’s hugely popular line of top-tier ScanSnap scanners, it didn’t take long to see this machine was going to earn its pedigree.

With a small footprint, dashing good-looks, scanning direct to an iOS device, and progressional-grade intake rollers, the iX500 actually makes digitizing papers easy, and dare I say, maybe a little sexy. Its included software suit also makes sense of doing something with all those scanned docs.

There’s a reason many consider Fujitsu’s ScanSnaps the finest scanners around, and the iX500 continues in that legacy with some useful new features.

The iPhone has become just as much a camera as a communication device. So if you love using your iPhone and want to take advantage of its ability to take great photos then Cult of Mac has a video course for you – and at the low price of only $19 for a limited time.

U.S. Senator Rob Portman from Ohio has just raised a fascinating point at today’s Senate Sub-Committee Hearing to Examine Offshore Profit Shifting and Tax Avoidance by Apple Inc.

The American corporate tax system is so broken that Apple is at a competitive disadvantage against Samsung when it comes to the taxes it pays globally, and how easily it moves its money around.

With WWDC less than a month away, we’ve seen a ton of designers come out with their visions for what iOS 7 might look like, but the next iPhone has been ignored.

Concept designers Uygar Kaya and Ran Avni have a new video for the iPhone 6 that gives it a slimmer profile, waterproof coating, wireless charging, a notification LED, and more. It’s one of the sleekest iPhone 6 concepts we’ve seen yet, but would Apple actually add those features? Guess we’ll have to wait till 2014 to find out.

Check out the concept video below:

Senator Claire McCaskill has just asked Apple CEO Tim Cook about the deal Apple forged with Ireland to pay only 2% taxes, and whether or not there will ever be a country that offers Apple such a great tax deal that they would pack up and move out of Cupertino to overseas.

After Oklahoma City was ravaged by a tornado yesterday where 91 souls lost their lives, AT&T has announced that it will be waving all voice, data, and text overage charges for victims of the tornado.

The tornado system was reported to be one mile wide as it ripped through parts of Oklahoma City Monday afternoon as it left a colossal amount of devastation in its wake.

John McCain ended his grilling of Apple CEO Tim Cook at today’s Senate Sub-Committee Hearing to Examine Offshore Profit Shifting and Tax Avoidance by Apple Inc. with a nice little joke.

“Sir, there’s only one thing I wanted to ask you today: why do I keep on having to update all the apps on my iPhone? Can’t you guys fix that already?”

“Sir,” Tim cook laughed. “We’re working on making our products better all the time.”

“Do you feel that you’ve been bullied or harassed by this committee?” Senator John McCain has just asked Tim Cook at the Senate Sub-Committee Hearing to Examine Offshore Profit Shifting and Tax Avoidance by Apple Inc.

“I feel good to be participating in this. I hope to help the process. I’d like comprehensive tax reform to be passed this year, and we will help in anyway we can.”

“I wasn’t dragged here, sir,” Tim Cook laughed.

“You’ve obviously taken advantage legally of a number of loopholes. Couldn’t you draw a conclusion that you have an unfair advantage over domestic companies?” asked McCain.

“No, it’s not the way I see it. Apple pays 30.5% of its profits in taxes on the United States. I would guess that’s high on the list of how it stacks up against other companies. We do have a low tax rate outside the U.S., but it’s for products we sell there, not within. So the way I look at this is there’s no shifting going on.”

Tim Cook is saying that because domestic companies operate only domestically, Apple has no advantage over them domestically: it only has an international advantage, which isn’t applicable in talking about “competitive advantage” in a U.S.-only context.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer are in Washington D.C. this morning to talk to a Senate subcommittee about Apple’s off-shore cash hoard. The Apple execs are expected to face a lot of heat surrounding Apple’s Irish subsidiary, through which Apple has funneled 64% of its earnings without paying any tax, yet has zero employees.

Before the hearing got underway though, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, issued a public statement which claimed Ireland isn’t to blame for Apple’s low tax bill, even though the country has become a tax haven for multinationals since the 1960s.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has just started his testimony in front of the Senate Sub-Committee Hearing to Examine Offshore Profit Shifting and Tax Avoidance by Apple Inc. in Washington, D.C.

“I am proud to represent Apple here. With Apple’s international revenues twice as large as domestic revenues, we are often asked ‘Does Apple still consider itself an American company? To that, I answer an emphatic yes. We are proud to be an
American company.”

Despite increasing competition from the likes of Samsung and Google, Apple continues to be the world’s most valuable brand, according to the latest annual BrandZ report from Millward Brown.

The Cupertino company was one of three technology firms in the top five, with Google and IBM placed in second and third respectively.

Tim doesn’t look too happy, does he? And no wonder: the Senate Sub-Committee Hearing to Examine Offshore Profit Shifting and Tax Avoidance by Apple Inc. is a hostile room, and the experts are being very clear about the why and how Apple is dodging its U.S. tax burden. And so far, the only person defending Apple in the room is Rand Paul.

Tim Cook is expected to testify before the Senate Sub-Committee sometime this morning. We’ll be covering it live.

Google Chrome’s app launcher, which lets Chrome users quickly find and launch their favorite web-based applications, is coming to Google Chrome for Mac OS X. Google has already begun work on porting the feature to Windows, but it’s also been found in the latest Chromium build for OS X.

As part of expert testimony at today’s Senate Sub-Committee Hearing to Examine Offshore Profit Shifting and Tax Avoidance by Apple Inc., Professor J. Richard Harvey has made a compelling case that the tax system Apple is taking advantage of needs to have its loopholes closed.

Harvey — a distinguished Professor of Practice at Villanova University’s School of Law — says that while what Apple has done is acceptable under current International tax law, it still widely uses tax tricks and gimmicks to avoid paying what it fully owes.

Apple executives are testifying before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee today on tax evasion practices, specifically on routing funds offshore to avoid the U.S. government’s 35% corporate tax rate. This is the highest single tax rate in the world, and Apple has avoided paying billions in U.S. taxes by storing more than two thirds of its $100+ billion cash hoard in countries like Ireland.

At the hearing, there are basically two camps: those attacking Apple for using “gimmicks” or loopholes that other multinational corporations take advantage of, and those defending Apple while pointing out the obvious need for reform in the corporate tax code.

While Michigan Senator Carl Levin and Arizona Senator John McCain fall in the first camp, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is clearly in the second. He said that the Senate should be apologizing to Apple during the hearing today, noting that “the committee needs to look in the mirror and see who created this mess.”

Senator John McCain just laid out his case against Apple in Washington D.C. in a Senate hearing about Apple’s tax rates, and he’s out for blood.

According to McCain, although 95% of Apple’s research and development happens in the USA, they funnel most of their profits through overseas entities that are not tax residents in any country in the world.

Ireland is a big target for McCain here. Ireland has long had liberal tax policies in an attempt to attract foreign companies, but McCain says that Apple paid less than $10 million in taxes on $22 billion in earnings in Ireland, a tax rate of less than 1.20th of 1%.