MacRumors

Apple has been making efforts to offer deep social network integration in its mobile operating system, first offering Twitter integration in iOS 5 and then Facebook integration in iOS 6. According to 9to5Mac, Apple will expand its social network integration even further with iOS 7, including support for both photo sharing site Flickr and video sharing site Vimeo.

As with Facebook and Twitter integration, Vimeo and Flickr integration will allow users to be able to sign in to the social networks in the Settings menu. Those one-time sign-in credentials will be usable across iOS, providing comprehensive sharing options and easy integration with other downloaded apps.

With Flickr integration, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch customers will have the ability to share photos stored and/or taken on their devices to Flickr with a single tap from the system-wide share menu. Flickr has been integrated into the paid iPhoto iOS App Store app and OS X Mountain Lion since 2012, but iOS 7 will represent the first time in which the photo sharing service has been integrated deeply into the entire iOS operating system.

Flickr is a logical addition to iOS given Apple's existing relationship with Yahoo, and popular video hosting site Vimeo is also a logical choice for iOS 7 as Apple continues to move away from Google products. Apple stopped offering YouTube as a stock iOS app with iOS 6 and also introduced its own mapping app, discontinuing its use of Google Maps.

While Apple continues to allow direct video uploads to YouTube from its camera app, Vimeo integration will give iOS 7 users an additional option for video uploads. As with Yahoo, Apple has an existing relationship with Vimeo, having offered integration with the service in OS X Mountain Lion.

As noted by 9to5Mac's unnamed source, though Flickr and Vimeo integration is currently in the works, as with all beta software, there is a risk that it could be removed before the public release of iOS 7.

Apple's upcoming operating system is expected to feature a "flatter" design to modernize the look of iOS 7 while removing many of the skeuomorphic design elements that were introduced with iOS 6. Apple is expected to debut iOS 7 at its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in June with a release to follow in the fall, and MacRumors has noted a surge in traffic from devices running iOS 7 suggesting that a preview is imminent.

Microsoft today released details on its next generation console at an event hosted at its Redmond campus in Washington. Called the Xbox One, the new console is designed to be the ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system with a heavy focus on both gaming and interactive television watching.

The Xbox One recognizes individual users and presents a customized home screen filled with content like TV and movies, games, and music, along with a new Trending section that displays friend activity and a live TV system.

Xbox One utilizes voice commands, motion control via the Kinect, and a new feature called Instant Switching to allow Xbox users to switch from gaming to TV to other types of entertainment with quick commands that work as fast as swapping channels on the TV. Home screen sharing, called Snap Mode, allows users to display multiple items on the television screen. The Xbox One's comprehensive voice commands, such as "Watch CBS" or "Play Game" are what many imagined Siri integration with the Apple TV might look like.

The new Xbox sports 8GB of RAM, an 8-core CPU, a 500GB hard drive, USB 3.0 ports, and a slot-loading Blu-ray drive. It also comes equipped with a newly redesigned Kinect sensor that is far more robust for better motion sensing and an updated controller that has an updated d-pad, impulse triggers and a more ergonomic design, in addition to several other improvements.

Xbox's second-screen companion app SmartGlass, which was originally introduced last year, has been improved to allow smartphones and tablets like Apple's iPad and iPhone to connect seamlessly to the Xbox one. According to Marc Whitten, SmartGlass is "fully integrated" into the new console.

SmartGlass in its current form is designed to allow users to interact with the Xbox 360 in a number of ways, namely navigating through menus, controlling video, browsing the internet, and using the keyboard to type on the console.

A number of games were also revealed at the Xbox One event including Madden NFL 25, NBA Live 14, EA Sports UFC, FIFA 12, Forza Motorsport 5, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Quantum Break, a new game from Remedy that aims to blend television and gaming. 15 new games will be released during the first year that Xbox One is available, with eight of those being new franchises.

Though no exact release date was given, the Xbox One will launch around the world "later this year." More information about the console and its upcoming games will be available at E3 in June.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) has today released its annual rankings of customer satisfaction for mobile phones in the United States. While Apple had the highest customer satisfaction index score for the second year in a row, its score has fallen slightly while competitors like Motorola Mobility, Nokia, and Samsung have all gained in score.

Apple is still at the top of the list when it comes to smartphone satisfaction, but this year's ranking of 81 (out of 100) is two percent below its 2012 ranking of 83. Motorola phones came in second after Apple, hitting a ranking of 77 after a 5% gain year over year.

Nokia remained high on the list with a 1% gain giving it a score of 76, and Samsung experienced the most growth at 7%, bringing it to a score of 76. HTC and LG both saw drops in satisfaction while BlackBerry remained on the bottom of the list with a score of 69.

The improvement [of Samsung] is the largest yet for any cell phone manufacturer, and earns Samsung a position even with the industry average and Nokia (+1%) and just behind second place Motorola, up 5% to 77. Nevertheless, Samsung remains well behind industry leader Apple.

Since the May 2012 customer satisfaction survey which was the first that ranked smartphones, Apple has introduced its newest phone, the iPhone 5, while Samsung has debuted several devices including its most recent Galaxy S 4.

The ACSI also ranked wireless telephone service, with Verizon and AT&T experiencing small gains in satisfaction. Verizon ranked first with a score of 73 outranking Sprint's steady 71, which earned it the top spot last year. AT&T went from 69 to 70, and T-Mobile dropped to last place with a score of 68.

The ASCI bases its customer satisfaction index on a survey of 70,000 people in the United States that asks customers about the products and services they use the most. It measures satisfaction with more than 230 companies that span 43 industries and 10 economic sectors.

Tonymacx86 points (via 9to5Mac) to recently discovered photos of a Broadcom BCM94360CD Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card that supports the 802.11ac "Gigabit Wi-Fi" standard rumored to be coming to Apple's Mac lineup later this year. While the photos were posted to Chinese site VR-Zone in early March, they are only just now being noticed by those following Apple rumors.

While the reports suggest that the new card is intended for the next-generation MacBook Pro or MacBook Air models rumored for launch at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), a commenter on the Tonymacx86 discussion thread points out that the card is actually nearly identical in size, shape, and layout to the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card found in the current iMac.

The BCM94360CD card, which is very likely a custom design for Apple, contains Broadcom's BCM4360 802.11ac transceiver chip, offering support for the in-process Wi-Fi standard that allows for triple the speeds of the current 802.11n standard. An apparent date code of "1240" on the part suggests that it was manufactured in early October 2012, several months before Apple was reported to have struck a deal with Broadcom to bring 802.11ac support to its 2013 Macs.

After jostling in competing memoranda yesterday, Apple and a group of U.S. Senators are prepared to go head-to-head in a committee hearing examining the tax avoidance strategies of Apple and other multinational corporations.

CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and Apple's head of tax operations Phillip A. Bullock will appear in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation in the second part of a committee hearing running now.

The hearing is streaming live on the subcommittee's website and below. We will be liveblogging the hearing at the bottom of this post.

Update: iOS users can view the hearing at NBCNews.

Apple yesterday released a statement laying out some of its international operations and financial strategies, noting that it paid $6 billion in federal income tax in 2012 and that it has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the United States.

A bipartisan group of Senators responded with a statement of its own, accusing Apple of using several offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying income taxes. Said Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), "Apple sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars, while claiming to be tax resident nowhere."

Earlier today, the Irish government -- where a number of Apple's subsidiaries are headquartered -- said that it was not responsible for the tax rates Apple pays in other countries and that its system was transparent.

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Following this morning's acquisition of Tumblr, Yahoo today hosted an event in New York City to detail changes to its popular photo sharing site Flickr. Flickr on the web has been given a major design overhaul, with a focus on full resolution pictures.

In addition to eliminating much of the white space on the site, Flickr is now displaying in-line photo streams that encompass the majority of the screen and detailed photo-centric profile pages. Flickr has also implemented a slideshow mode to allow its users to flip through photos hands-free.

With the redesign, Flickr is encouraging its users to upload high resolution photos by giving every Flickr user 1TB of storage space for free. That is a marked increase from its former photo storage policy, which limited users' monthly upload bandwidth and allowed only 200 photos to be visible. Flickr will allow up to 3 minutes of 1080p video as well.

At Flickr, we believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life's moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We're giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free. Just how big is a terabyte? Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.

And yep, you heard us. It's free.

Flickr has upped the price of its ad-free accounts, charging $49.99 per year for an ad-free browsing experience, along with introducing a new "Doublr" account, which offers 2TB of storage space for $499 per year.

During the announcement, Flickr also revealed that its redesigned iOS app, which was released last December, grew total Flickr uploads by 25 percent. Flickr's iOS app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

A Senate subcommittee has released a 40-page memo accusing Apple of not paying billions of dollars in federal taxes through "extensive tax-avoidance strategies".

Apple CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and Apple's head of tax operations Phillip A. Bullock will appear in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation tomorrow. The company issued a statement earlier today in a preliminary defense against the Subcommittee's accusations.

The subcommittee, which previously explored tax avoidance by other multinational corporations using offshore subsidiaries, found similar practices at Apple. In addition, the subcommittee review discovered an unusual tax scheme: Apple’s claim that two key offshore companies are not tax residents of Ireland, where they are incorporated, or of the United States, where Apple executives manage and control the companies. One of those Irish subsidiaries has paid no income taxes to any national tax authority for the past five years.

"Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven," said Sen. Levin. "Apple sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars, while claiming to be tax resident nowhere. We intend to highlight that gimmick and other Apple offshore tax avoidance tactics so that American working families who pay their share of taxes understand how offshore tax loopholes raise their tax burden, add to the federal deficit and ought to be closed."

The full forty-page memorandum (PDF) goes into some detail on the company's tax strategies, and we will likely hear much more about this at tomorrow's hearing.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the comment thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All MacRumors forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

While Apple's 15" MacBook Pro was the first consumer notebook to gain a Retina-level display nearly a year ago, it is no longer the only such offering, as Google's Chromebook Pixel with its 12.85" 2560x1700 display and Toshiba's Kirabook with a 2560x1440 220 PPI display have joined the market in recent months.

Seeking to raise the ante on Retina displays, Samsung and Sharp have both introduced new high-resolution displays in the past week, targeting notebooks and ultrabooks with the latest technology. The new displays from both companies sport 16:9 ratios, making them unfit for Apple's line of notebooks, which all use 16:10 ratio displays, but they should make Retina displays a mainstream feature in the relatively near future.

Sharp last week announced new 11.6", 14", and 15.6" displays with pixel densities of 235-262 PPI, joining the company's existing 13.3" display at 221 PPI. Samsung's announcement today included a new 13.3" display with a 3200x1800 LCD panel at an even higher 276 PPI.

For comparison, Apple's 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display has a 2560x1600 13.3" display at 227 PPI.

While high resolution is the most obvious benefit of these new displays for consumers, some of the screens bring other benefits as well. Samsung says its new 13.3" display offers 30% power savings over existing displays, something that would be important for a potential MacBook Air with Retina display. That machine is constrained by needs for a super-thin display and battery. And even for Apple's existing Retina MacBook Pro, advances being brought about by Samsung and Sharp are likely to make their way into Apple's notebook displays in the future.

Sharp advertises similar energy-saving benefits from its new IGZO displays:

IGZO technology enables smaller thin-film transistors and increased light transmittance. As a result, fine text can be rendered crisply and clearly, and images can be displayed with impressive realism. For example, the 14-inch panel boasts a pixel density of 262 ppi, which represents 1.67 times the number of pixels of full high definition. Increased light transmittance also means lower rates of energy consumption, with IGZO technology reducing the amount of power required to drive liquid crystals during the display of still images. These factors lead to greater energy efficiency and longer battery life on notebook PCs.

Apple has been rumored to be looking at Retina displays for desktop applications as well, but a future Retina iMac would face a different set of issues, including the cost of the panel itself at such large sizes, as well as the immense graphics and connectivity needs to drive such a display.

In a statement to The Verge on the future of pre-loaded apps, AT&T today revealed that it is planning to offer FaceTime over cellular to all of its customers on any data plan by the end of 2013.

For video chat apps that come pre-loaded on devices, we currently give all OS and device makers the ability for those apps to work over cellular for our customers who are on Mobile Share or Tiered plans. Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry have chosen to enable this for their pre-loaded video chat apps. And by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from those three manufacturers.

Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.

When FaceTime over cellular was announced alongside iOS 6, AT&T initially restricted the service to its customers that subscribed to a Mobile Share data plan. AT&T soon expanded access, first to customers on a tiered data plan with an LTE device, and then to all customers with a tiered data plan regardless of device. Only customers with a grandfathered unlimited data plan were restricted from using the service.

AT&T plans to allow its unlimited customers with LTE devices access to FaceTime over cellular beginning in June, with full access to all customers becoming available by the end of the year.

Apple today released a statement [PDF] ahead of Apple CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and head of tax operations Phillip A. Bullock's appearances in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation tomorrow.

In the seventeen page statement, Apple notes that it has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the United States -- both directly and through suppliers and contractors. It notes that the company paid nearly $6 billion in federal taxes in fiscal 2012 and the company expects to pay $7 billion in 2013.

The company also says Apple "does not use tax gimmicks", pushing back against reporting in The New York Times that examined Apple's international tax strategies.

Apple, a California company, employs tens of thousands of Americans, creates revolutionary products that improve the lives of tens of millions of Americans, and pays billions of dollars annually to the US Treasury in corporate income and payroll taxes. Apple’s shareholders – from individuals and institutions to pension funds and public employee retirement systems – have benefitted from the Company’s success through the appreciation of its stock price and generous dividends. Apple safeguards the capital entrusted to it by its shareholders with prudent management that reflects the Company’s extensive international operations. Apple complies fully with both the laws and spirit of the laws. And Apple pays all its required taxes, both in this country and abroad.

Apple reiterates repeatedly that all of its financial activities are fully legal and in the best interests of its shareholders. The company says it supports comprehensive reform of the U.S. corporate tax system, instead proposing a new system that is "revenue neutral, eliminates all tax expenditures, lowers tax rates and implements a reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows free movement of capital back to the US." Apple notes that this would likely result in the company paying even more in corporate tax, but supports it nonetheless.

The document includes an extensive history of the company, as well as fairly extensive details about Apple's corporate structure and tax practices, including details about Apple's sales and use tax payments ($1.3 billion in FY2012), state income tax payments ($830 million), and Apple's contributions to employer payroll taxes ($327 million).

It lays out Apple's network of foreign subsidiaries, including several located in Ireland which distribute 'active foreign, post-tax income as dividend payments within Apple's foreign corporate structure'.

Apple wants to make clear to the Subcommittee that the Company does not use its Irish subsidiaries or any other entities to engage in the following tax practices that were the focus of the Subcommittee’s September 20, 2012 hearing, entitled Offshore Profit Shifting and the US Tax Code. Specifically, Apple does not move its intellectual property into offshore tax havens and use it to sell products back into the US to avoid US tax, nor does it use revolving loans from CFCs to fund its domestic operations. Apple does not hold money on a Caribbean island, does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands, and does not move any taxable revenue from sales to US customers to other jurisdictions in order to avoid US taxation.

The statement continues in some detail, examining Apple's various international holdings and how the company uses them to fund international expansion of retail stores and other investments.

It also notes that analysis of its decision to issue $17 billion in debt to fund share repurchases and dividends, rather than repatriating foreign earnings, "was in its shareholders' best interests".

Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer will appear at 9:30AM Eastern time in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. The hearing, titled "Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code - Part 2" will be in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The subcommittee is attached to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

Other witnesses at the hearing include tax policy experts from the IRS and the Department of the Treasury, as well as professors from Harvard and Villanova.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the comment thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All MacRumors forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster today released a brief report highlighting April data from market research firm NPD looking at Apple's U.S. Mac and iPod sales. The data shows Apple's Mac sales coming in flat year-over-year, and while Munster acknowledges that it has become increasingly difficult to extrapolate NPD's numbers to Apple's global sales performance, he views the latest data as "neutral to slight positive" relative to expectations for the company.

Based on the differences between NPD data and Apple reported Mac sales over the past few quarters, we note it is becoming more difficult to draw conclusions from NPD data (see table below). We note that some of the more recent supply issues with the redesigned Macs have impacted the Apple reported numbers over the past two quarters. At the end of the day, we believe this April data point is likely a neutral to slight positive given our expectation that iPads will continue to cannibalize Macs over the next few years.

Munster stands by his predictions of 5% year-over-year decline in Mac sales for the second quarter as customers await updated models and the PC market remains weak.

On the iPod side, Munster only briefly cites NPD data showing sales sliding 36% year-over-year, compared to the Piper Jaffray estimate of a 23% decline for the entire quarter on a worldwide basis. But with iPod sales now representing only about 2% of Apple's revenue, the impact of the continued decline in iPod sales as customers shift increasingly to smartphones will be negligible.

Apple's retail stores have been ranked as the U.S. retail chain with the highest sales per square foot for a number of years and according to a new report from Asymco’s Horace Dediu, the company also outranks competitors when it comes to revenue per visitor, hitting a record high of $57.60 per visitor in the first quarter of 2013.

Apple experienced a seven percent growth in visitors during the quarter, leading to an average of $13 million in revenue per Apple Store, which is the highest it has been during a non-holiday quarter.

During its Q2 financial results call, Apple reported a total of $43.6 billion in revenue with $5.2 billion in retail, up 19% from the previous quarter.

Apple gets an average of 250,000 visitors per store per quarter, up from approximately 170,000 visitors per quarter in 2010. In recent years, the company has been focusing on building new Apple Stores across the globe and expanding existing stores to increase available square footage. Apple plans to open 30 new retail stores in fiscal 2013 and remodel 20.

Digitimes briefly reports that Apple will be releasing updated notebooks "in the near future", with supply chain sources indicating that Apple's orders will rise 20% in the second quarter compared to first-quarter production.

The new MacBooks are only expected to receive specification upgrades to Intel's latest Haswell platform and are estimated to be unveiled at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, the sources said.

Claims of a 20% increase in orders come less than a month after the site claimed that orders would see a 10% increase for the quarter, although overall notebook shipments for 2013 are expected to be flat or only slightly higher year over year due to a lack of major updates and a weak PC market.

Late last month, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that an update to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines would be a highlight for next month's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which kicks off on June 10. Kuo had previously believed that Apple would consolidate its MacBook Pro lines into an all-Retina lineup in mid-2013, but he now believes that continued popularity of the non-Retina models has led Apple to push back its consolidation plans for the time being.

Kuo indicated that updated models of the non-Retina MacBook Pro and MacBook Air should ship relatively soon after WWDC, with updated Retina MacBook Pro models shipping somewhat later due to constraints on display production.

Digitimes reports that Apple will soon begin trial production on its fifth-generation iPad, with full production said to be planned to begin in July. Based on that schedule, Apple could hit monthly production of 2-3 million units by September as it prepares to launch the updated version of its full-size tablet.

As with a number of previous rumors, the report claims that the new iPad will be narrower, thinner, and lighter than the current design, taking a number of design cues from the iPad mini. As a result, Digitimes says that the new iPad will be 25-33% lighter than the current models, in line with previous claims from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

The display of the new iPad, which will hit market shelves as early as September, will still be a 2,048 x 1,536 Retina display, the same as the one used in the 4th-generation model, except that the new display is built on a glass substrate of 0.2mm, thinner than the 0.25mm one for the 4th-generation device, the sources said, adding the new table will has a narrow bezel.

The touch panel solution for 5th-generation iPad is GF2 (1 layer of glass and two layers of ITO film) instead of G/G bonding used in 4th-generation iPad, the sources added.

The new iPad will use one LED light bar for backlighting, compared to two LED light bars used in 4th-generation iPad, the sources noted.

Kuo had previously predicted that production on the new iPad would ramp up in August or September, with shipments following soon thereafter.

Rumors of an iPad mini-like design for the next-generation iPad have been supported by leaked photos showing what was claimed to be the front bezel and cover glass for the device, as well as photos of the device's rear shell and cases said to be based on the product's design.

Previous rumors have also suggested that Apple would be able to use more efficient backlighting in the fifth-generation iPad, reducing the device's size both directly through eliminating one of the two backlight units and indirectly through allowing for a smaller battery.