MacRumors

Apple CEO Tim Cook will testify in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation next week, Politico is reporting. The subcommittee is attached to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The hearing, titled "Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code - Part 2" will occur at 9:30AM on Tuesday, May 21 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The Subcommittee will continue its examination of the structures and methods employed by multinational corporations to shift profits offshore and how such activities are affected by the Internal Revenue Code and related regulations. Witnesses will include representatives from the Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, representatives of a multinational corporation, and tax experts.

Representatives from Microsoft and HP testified on September 12 on the same topic.

Apple recently borrowed $17 billion in a bond offering, in part to return cash to shareholders without bringing some of its $100 billion overseas cash pile to the United States. If it were to repatriate that cash to the U.S., it would need to pay a more than $13 billion tax bill.

Apple's App Store today reached 50 billion downloads since its inception in 2008, and along with the milestone comes the end of the company's "50 Billion App Countdown" promotion launched thirteen days ago. The winner of the promotion, who is yet to be announced, will be awarded a $10,000 gift card valid for App Store, Mac App Store, or any other iTunes Store content. Fifty additional winners will receive $500 gift cards.

The milestone is being acknowledged on Apple's website with a graphic showing a "Thanks" message written using award-winning iPad app Paper by FiftyThree.

The App Store took nearly 3 years, 8 months to reach 25 billion downloads, with the next 25 billion downloads requiring only about 14.5 months.

With the last 25 billion downloads coming over a period of 14.5 months, Apple's pace is now at over 20 billion downloads per year or over 50 million per day. As tracked by our sister site AppShopper, Apple has approved a total of nearly 1.2 million apps for the App Store since its launch, with nearly 850,000 of them currently available in the store.

At the Google I/O keynote in San Francisco this morning, Google demonstrated an upcoming overhaul for its mobile mapping apps on iOS and Android and announced an iPad version of Google Maps that will hit the App Store this summer.

The new version of Google Maps will incorporate both restaurant and location ratings from Zagat. Google is bringing Google Offers integration to its mobile maps, offering discounts and coupons from retailers like Starbucks directly in the app. Searching for a restaurant or location within Google Maps will display ratings, reviews, and available offers.

Google also plans to add live coverage of traffic incidents around the world, providing real time alerts with dynamic re-routing capabilities to improve the functionality of its turn-by-turn directions. As for Google Maps on the iPad, Google introduced a new tablet-centric feature called "Experience," which provides indoor maps for a variety of locations, displaying restaurant and shopping options.

While on stage, Google's Mobile Director of Maps Daniel Graf didn't waste an opportunity to poke fun at Apple's Maps. While speaking about Google Maps on iOS, he had this to say: "People called it sleek, simple, beautiful… and let's not forget accurate."

Apple Maps, which was introduced alongside iOS 6 to replace Google Maps, has been heavily criticized for providing inaccurate results and for its lack of crucial features, like transit information. Though Apple has been working to improve Maps, the addition of real time traffic reports, rerouting, and a more personalized experience puts Google Maps even further ahead of Apple Maps.

Google also demoed its redesigned desktop mapping experience, which has a heavy focus on both "immersive imagery" and a more personalized experience. As noted by The Verge, Google Maps will be given a total design overhaul, displaying an edge-to-edge map within the browser window that is accented by a single search box. Maps are vector-based and quick loading, with details on locations and directions provided by information cards.

A lone search box in the upper left gives you access to Maps’ features, as does clicking on elements within the map. Google has integrated Google Now’s card metaphor to present information from a newly built-in version of Google Earth, reviews from Zagat and Google+, Street View, and directions. And new user interface tweaks surface locations and transit routes before you even search for them.

Clicking on a location within Google Maps will display reviews and a 360 degree inside-view option. Maps on the desktop has also been enhanced with imagery that allows users to explore mountains, oceans, and more, as it incorporates Google Earth's 3D view.

Google is currently allowing users to sign up to preview the new Google Maps desktop experience. Google's iPad app and redesigned mobile apps will be released this summer.

Google has unveiled a new unified messaging service that is designed to work on Android, iOS, and the web. Called Hangouts, the app incorporates and unifies several different Google services, including Google Talk, Google+ Messenger, and the existing Google+ Hangouts.

Today we're launching a stand-alone version of Hangouts that combines text, photos and live video across Android, iOS and your computer.

Now that Hangouts spans modalities and devices, you can finally fuhgeddaboudit (the technology, that is), and focus on what really matters: creating lasting relationships. And that, we think, is a plus.

Hangouts, which is similar to Facebook Messenger, places an emphasis on "conversations which last," saving chats between users in the cloud and allowing users to access past chats, shared photos, and video call history. The app's interface also emphasizes conversations over contacts and supports both multimedia content and additions like emoji.

According to Google's Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundrota, detailed chat history can be toggled off. “Of course we give you the ability to delete those things,” he said. “But having the ability so save those conversations, I think is delightful and amazing.”

Because Hangouts relies on Google's cloud, both video and text chats can take place on a number of different devices and between multiple people. The app will be available today from Google Play, the App Store, and the Chrome Web Store.

Update: The Google Hangouts app can now be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Update 2: As noted by Engadget, AT&T is currently restricting the group video chat functionality of the Google Hangouts app to WiFi.

Google today officially announced its new music subscription service, Google Play Music All Access, at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. As reported yesterday afternoon, the service is designed to compete with Spotify, providing songs on demand that can be streamed to a computer or mobile device.

The service, which is built on Google's existing Google Play Music Store, will cost $9.99 per month with a 30-day free trial available. Google is, however, offering a discount for early adopters. Those who begin the free trial by June 30 will pay just $7.99 per month. The Verge has a rundown on a few of the available features for music discovery and recommendations.

A recommendation engine will guide users towards new music they may have already discovered. As demoed on an Android device — it also works in a standard web browser — All Access incorporates both local tracks and those available for streaming into one master searchable library, a marked improvement over much of its streaming competition.

Google's tagline for Google Play Music All Access is "Radio without Rules," a small jab at Apple's upcoming Pandora-style music service, iRadio. As of last week, Apple was still in negotiations with music labels but is reportedly aiming for a summer launch of its own music subscription service.

At today's Google I/O keynote, Google unveiled Google Play Game Services, which is designed to compete with Apple's Game Center. Like Game Center, Game Services features real-time multiplayer capabilities, leaderboards, cloud saves, and achievements.

The service is not limited to Android developers as Google has developed it to link gaming across Android, iOS, and the web. Google will be providing the SDK for Game Services to both iOS and web developers in addition to Android developers. As noted by Engadget, Game Services more closely resembles the now-defunct OpenFeint social gaming platform than Game Center.

Unlike Apple's Game Center application, what Google's offering is backend support for developers rather than a standalone application. Think of it more like OpenFeint than Game Center – you can sign in using your Google+ login in-game, and that login will track your identity (including leaderboard scores, achievements and saves) across various games and devices.

Several Android games have been updated with the new gaming service, including Osmos, Kingdom Rush, and Super Stickman Golf 2. The service and the SDK are launching today, with the following features:

- Achievements that increase engagement and promote different styles of play.
- Social and public leaderboards that seamlessly use Google+ circles to track high scores across friends and across the world.
- Cloud saves that provide a simple and streamlined storage API to store game saves and settings. Now players never have to replay Level 1 again.
- Real-time multiplayer for easy addition of cooperative or competitive game play on Android devices.

Google's Game Services comes several years after the introduction of Apple's Game Center. Game Center was originally introduced in 2010 and underwent a major overhaul in late 2011.

Earlier this year, we noted that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was continuing to look at the use of personal electronic devices during the taxi, takeoff, and landing phases of commercial flights, hoping to take action by the end of the year to loosen restrictions currently requiring that all devices be powered down during these times.

Bloomberg now provides another update on the situation, noting that the airline industry remains divided over whether restrictions should be relaxed as reports of possible interference between these devices and aircraft electronics continue to surface. The report leads with a brief anecdote involving an iPhone:

The regional airliner was climbing past 9,000 feet when its compasses went haywire, leading pilots several miles off course until a flight attendant persuaded a passenger in row 9 to switch off an Apple Inc. iPhone.

“The timing of the cellphone being turned off coincided with the moment where our heading problem was solved,” the unidentified co-pilot told NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System about the 2011 incident. The plane landed safely.

Despite the fact that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, some pilots and airlines remain concerned over the potential impact of these electronic devices on their aircraft. The International Air Transport Association collected a list of 75 suspected cases of interference between 2003 and 2009 and airlines are continuing to see occasional reports, although some remain in favor of relaxing the regulations.

Even Delta Air Lines Inc., which argued for relaxed rules, told the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration its pilots and mechanics reported 27 suspected incidents of passenger electronics causing aircraft malfunctions from 2010 to 2012. Atlanta-based Delta said it couldn’t verify there was interference in any of those cases.

The airline industry has been divided. Delta said in its filing that it welcomes more electronics use because that’s what its passengers wanted. United Continental Holdings Inc. said it preferred no changes because they’d be difficult for flight attendants to enforce.

Just last week, a study indicated that 30% of U.S. airline passengers who have brought electronic devices onboard have accidentally left them on at least once.

With increased connectivity in the air through in-flight Wi-Fi and pilots even taking advantage of iPads to replace their traditional flight bags weighing 30-40 pounds, consumer demand for increased access to their electronic devices during flight has raised visibility of the debate over whether such devices pose risks during critical phases of flight. For now, the debate continues to play out as both sides seek to use scientific data to back up their positions.

Reuters is reporting that Apple has responded to the Justice Department's accusations that the company colluded with publishers to increase e-book pricing, saying that it negotiated with the publishers separately and reached different agreements with each.

But Apple said the publishers had decided, independent of Apple, to eliminate discounts on wholesale book prices of e-books, to sell lucrative hardcover books first to bookstores in a practice called windowing and to take other measures to push Amazon to raise prices.

In a court filing dated April 26 but released on Tuesday, Apple said it had approached publishers to create an online bookstore that would eventually become the iBookstore and had demanded a 30 percent commission, that publishers would not undercut prices paid to Apple, and that "windowing" be scrapped.

Apple said that points of contention in early negotiations centered around Apple's demand for a 30 percent commission and price caps. Apple went on to note that each publisher immediately offered its own counterproposals in what Apple described as "tough negotiations."

The company also claims that before it entered the market the publishers were engaged in a battle to break Amazon's grip on the low-cost e-book market, with Apple laying the blame for any potential collusion on the publishers.

The lawsuit was originally filed in April 2012 and included HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan and Penguin, but the Justice Deparment settled with the publishers and has since concentrated on Apple. Recently, CEO Tim Cook was ordered to testify in the case.

Google is set to announce a new music subscription service tomorrow at its annual Google I/O conference, reports The Verge, having finalized deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment., and Warner Music Group.

The service is said to be a direct Spotify competitor, offering up songs on demand that can be streamed to a computer or mobile device for a set monthly fee.

Though Google has had an existing music service since 2011, it operates in a manner that is similar to iTunes, allowing users to purchase individual songs and albums. It also has a "locker" that lets users store digital entertainment collections.

Pricing information on the new service has yet to be released, but The New York Times claims that Google will not offer a freemium ad-supported tier.

Google's streaming service will not include a free tier, according to the people briefed on the plans who did not want to be identified discussing confidential matters. The subscription rate was not known, but is expected to be similar to that of Spotify and other competing services, like Rhapsody and Rdio, which tend to charge about $10 a month.

While Google's streaming music service will be released ahead of Apple's rumored iRadio service, the two are fundamentally different. With a Spotify model Google will be able to offer songs piecemeal, while Apple's iRadio is said to closely resemble Pandora, which plays a selection of random songs based on user preference. As of last week, Apple was still in negotiations with music labels.

Google's subscription music service will be connected to Play, Google's digital content distribution platform. The Wall Street Journal notes that the upcoming streaming music service is separate from a second paid music subscription service in the works from YouTube, which would give users access to music videos and audio-only songs.

Google I/O is set to kick off tomorrow with an opening keynote at 9am PT at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

The CharityBuzz auction for coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook has just ended, with a final bid driving the price up to $610,000. Previously, the auction had stagnated at $605,000, where it remained until 30 minutes before the bidding closed.

The $610,000 bid was placed by a newcomer to the auction who had not previously bid before, known only as "a********s." While CharityBuzz will not release the name of the high bidder, it is possible that the winner will come forward to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the auction.

Currently, the money that the Tim Cook auction has brought in is more than twice as much as the total of the current high bids on the other 118 auctions that are supporting the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Because the bidding totals ran so high with bidders clamoring for a moment in the spotlight, CharityBuzz was forced to implement bank qualification terms before additional bids could be placed, which slowed bidding considerably.

Under the terms of the auction, the high bidder is entitled to a 30–60 minute meeting with Cook at Apple headquarters on a mutually agreed upon date.

Networking company Sandvine has released a new report that breaks down North American iTunes traffic on fixed networks, examining how iTunes customers are using the service. Surprisingly, the largest portion of iTunes traffic is not generated from streaming, but from the App Store.

Direct App Store downloads account for 38.1% of total iTunes traffic, while 36.15% of traffic comes from iTunes streaming, which includes movie and song previews, along with iTunes Match.

With iTunes Match, customers can stream music and video purchases to both mobile devices and Apple TVs. Apple's streaming traffic may increase in the coming months with the introduction of iRadio, the company's rumored streaming radio service.

Media downloads, which are non application purchases such as music, movies, and books make up the third largest portion of iTunes traffic at 20.47% and the final 5.33% of traffic is generated from iTunes Browsing as users visit various App Store and iTunes pages.

As Tim Cook noted in Apple's Q2 financial results call, iTunes has been experiencing phenomenal growth with record quarterly billings of $4 billion. Apple's App Store is nearing 50 billion downloads and has paid out more than $9 billion to developers.

Sandvine's report also points out that Apple manufactured devices generate 35% of all streaming audio and video on fixed access networks, with the iPad generating the most traffic at 10%.

To generate its report, Sandvine examined a cross-section of customer data, gathered over a one-month period and compiled a 24-hour profile of each network normalized by the number of active subscribers at each hour of the day.