Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee tomorrow morning to talk about Apple’s off-shore cash that’s now worth over $100 billion. Last week, Cook stated that his company believes the entire U.S. corporate tax system needs to be overhauled to encourage companies like Apple to bring earnings from overseas back to the U.S.

This afternoon Apple published its testimony before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, that contained a wish-list for the type of comprehensive corporate tax reform it thinks would be best for the U.S. tax system. Following the company’s ethos to believe in the simple, not the complex, Apple’s tax-wish list would dramatically simplify the U.S. corporate tax system.

In its testimony, Apple states that the comprehensive reform should have the following traits:

It was just last Fall that Apple announced the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display but Apple is already facing some competition from the likes of Google’s  Chromebook Pixel and now Samsung is getting in on the game.

This morning Samsung announced that it is manufacturing a 13.3-inch display that will have higher pixel densities than both the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and the Chromebook Pixel.

Not only are Apple Stores some of the most popular retail stores on the planet, they’re also the most successful. This year Apple Stores have continued to outpace the entire industry, and as a result Apple is now making more money per visitor than ever before.

According to some analysis by Horace Dediu at Asymco, last quarter the number of Apple Store visitors grew 7%, and as a result Apple earned a record of $57.60 in revenue from each visitor.

Turkey’s tablet loving Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been going on a tour of the U.S.  in pursuit of the greatest tablet marker in the world to arm his students with. The prime minister visited Silicon Valley on May 18th to be briefed by the world’s best technology companies on their latest endeavors.

Erdoğan is looking to buy 10.6 million iPads for his country’s education new education project Faith. So far, Erdoğan was first greeted by Microsoft CEO, Steve Balmer, and then he paid visits to both Apple, Google.

Regarding his visit to the U.S., Erdoğan said:

There’s a lot of talk these days about Google Glass, Google’s new futuristic wearable computer that functions like a set of cyborg glasses, overlaying a HUD of Google products and search services over your life.

It certainly sounds impressive, and early reviews from the usual techno-nerds are positive. But what would Steve Jobs have thought of Google Glass?

He would have thought you were a dork for wearing one, and you needed to get laid.

Looking for an easy way to capture 360 degree video on your iPhone 4/4S when you’re out experiencing the world? Well…look no further.

Cult of Mac is offering the Dot – a product that raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter and is now in full force changing the way you see the world…one video camera at a time. We’ve got the Dot for only $27.99 for a limited time.

(Note: This promotion is available only to Continental USA customers – including shipping – and all sales are final.)

Capturing video on the iPhone is a regular use case, and now thanks to the Dot from Kogeto you can take amazingly awesome 360 degree video with the click of a button. It’s that simple. Not only is the video quality great, but the interactive 360 views are unreal.

Here are the highlights of the Dot:

Apple is well-known for its love of the so-called golden ratio, an “extreme and mean” mathematical ratio that designers as far back as the third-century B.C. identified as most likely to lead to harmonious design. The iCloud logo, for example, is designed with the golden ratio in mind … and it’s widely believed that the iconic Apple logo is also designed using the golden ratio.

It’s a nice thought, isn’t it? That Apple’s logo is constructed out of mathematically perfect circles and partial circles? Unfortunately, not only is it not true, but Apple has different logos it uses even in its own official materials: the Apple icon etched into the back of your iPad is very different than, say, the official  Unicode symbol.

If you jailbreak your iOS devices, there usually comes a point where you get stuck on an older firmware because the latest one hasn’t yet been hacked by the jailbreak community. When this time comes, it’s almost impossible to restore your device and start with a clean OS without losing your jailbreak.

But not anymore. A new app called Semi-Restore provides you with a clean install of your current firmware without updating your device and killing your jailbreak.

A fifteen year old boy has been gruesomely killed in Las Vegas while being robbed for his iPad.

Apple doesn’t like OLED displays. Across the board, Apple uses LCD IPS displays in its devices, which have better color accuracy than OLED. Theoretically, though, OLED is better than LCD when it comes to power consumption, though… which is why a new report is floating the possibility that Apple might switch to OLED for the iWatch… and that Foxconn is already building test runs.

Apple’s fifth-generation iPad, which is set to feature an all-new design much like the iPad mini’s, will enter production in July ahead of its September release, according to supply chain sources. Trial production of the device will reportedly begin soon and will ramp up to 2-3 million units this fall.

Samsung has a problem. It controled 33.1% of the global smartphone marketshare last quarter — Apple was only 17.9% — yet that’s almost entirely in the low-end of the market.

What’s keeping Samsung from conquering the high-end of the market, where all the profit is and which Apple continues to dominate? Software: there is a wide-spread impression amongst consumers that Samsung’s apps just aren’t as good as Apple’s.

That’s a problem Samsung is eager to solve. That’s why they are ponying up $800,000 to developers willing to make great, Galaxy-specific apps.

“Intel Inside.” It’s been called one of the best campaigns to ever come out of Silicon Valley’s Mad Men, and it turned a relatively unknown maker of microprocessors into a $100 billion dollar company, and a household name. All this, thanks to a blue sticker slapped on every Intel PC or laptop.

Every Intel PC or laptop except Apple’s, that is. Even when Cupertino transitioned to Intel processors in 2006, Apple refused to put ‘Intel Inside’ stickers on their new Macs and MacBooks. And with characteristic bluntness, Steve Jobs had no problem explaining why when asked about it back in August 2007, right after the first aluminum iMac was introduced. For the latest updates and insights, check out Intel news today.

How much should Apple have to pay Sony if they use a song on iRadio, but a listener hates it so much that they immediately skip to the next track? A common sense answer would be ‘nothing’ but in the high stakes world of music industry legal mumbo jumbo, common sense doesn’t apply… and Apple and Sony Music’s disagreement over the matter might delay iRadio from launching with iOS 7.

Earlier this month, a hacked carrier update for the T-Mobile iPhone 5 that brought increased data speeds was released by Joe Brown and Sky Zangas, two developers behind iTweakiOS. Now the duo have released a similar hack for AT&T devices, only this time, it’s not just for the iPhone.

The hacked carrier update also supports the iPad and promises to improve data performance on both LTE and HSPA+.

Game Center, now on OS X as well as iOS, is Apple’s online leader board and game matching system. It lets you challenge your friends for both real-time as well as asynchronous multiplayer gaming, as well as give you bragging rights each time you beat out your frenemy’s high score on a Mac game you both play.

Did you know, however, that Game Center also lets you challenge your buddies on iOS, as well? With Two Towers, you can issue your challenge from your Mac, and your friend will be able to accept that challenge on their iPhone or iPad. You can then both play together, cross-platform. Cool, right? Here’s how to make it work.

Yahoo! has this morning announced that it has reached a deal to acquire popular blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The company promises “not to screw it up,” and says that Tumblr will continue to operate as a separate business, with David Karp remaining CEO.

When you’re watching the game, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could replay key moments from any camera angle you choose?

With the latest Sky Sports update for iPad, you can. Launching just in time for the upcoming UEFA Champions League final, Sky Sports 360 is a brand new feature that lets viewers select and replay exciting moments from over 20 different camera angles.

Choosing what to buy when you’re trying to be an ethical consumer is tricky. In a world where hippie holdout Ben and Jerry’s is now a corporate sellout owned by Unilever, how can we know who owns what, and which products we should boycott?

Luckily (and you knew this was coming), There’s An App For That™. It’s called Buycott, and by just scanning a barcode, you can find out which scheming ne’erdowells are behind the brand.

Last seen wrapping the iPhone in chopped-up fire hoses, the folks at Station Supply Co have expanded (pun most definitely intended) into recycled airliner life rafts. That’s right: now you can cover your iPhone or iPad with a swatch snipped from a genuine 1970s-era PanAm life raft.

There are probably more slick-looking weahter apps in the app stoire than there are gimmicky to-do list managers, but if you want a meteorological powerhouse in your pocket then there’s only one option: WeatherPro. In it’s paid form it will give forecasts for up to two weeks, along with all the radar and satellite animations you could need, plus detailed yet easily-read weather info.

Now, if you own a backyard weather station from Netatmo, you can view its data right there in the familiar WeatherPro interface.

Question: Do you associate complexity with value? That is, do you think that an object is worth more if it uses more parts in its construction? No? That’s absurd, right? But try this: the No.002 bag from Clean Everything is made from a single sheet of leather, cleverly cut and folded to form a bag. The price? €289, or $385.

The Atrio case, a Kickstarter project from Craftwerk USA, is an aluminum bumper that’ll cost you a crazy $90 (less for early-bird pitchers). But the clever twist here is that the box it comes in doublers as a stylish – and matching – iPhone stand.

One of the coolest features of Photoshop for iOS is the "Scribble Select" tool. You draw a fat green line around any object you want to keep, and scribble some red into the parts you want to delete. Hit "OK" and a few moments later you have your subject, neatly cut out from the background, better than you could have managed on even the best desktop machine of a few years back.

But what if you aren’t near your iPhone or iPad when you need to do some quick ‘shipping? You need the browser-based Clipping Magic.

I used to mock Apple years ago because they advertised Apple as the fun alternative to stodgy, boring Windows.

The idea that Apple was fun and Microsoft was not was a misdirection at best. Windows was the biggest games platform and Xbox was the best console game (in my opinion). Apple had no games to speak of.

Five years ago, all that changed: Apple launched the iOS App Store, and it quickly became the biggest games platform ever, now making twice the money as portable game consoles. Apple’s App Store hit right when the casual and mobile games market was ready to take off in a big way.

The Android market is no slouch in the gaming arena, either, and will soon overtake the portable game console market as well.

But the mobile gaming market is still in its infancy. The Android gaming scene is about yesterday’s games — isolated, causal time-killing games, for the most part. So to take it to the next level, Google this week announced Google Play Games Services.

There are two gigantic opportunities that are potentially unique to Google: multi-device gaming and gaming as a mainstream spectator sport.