Houston NBC affiliate KPRC reports that five businesses along Westheimer Road in Houston were hit by random gunfire early Monday morning, with Apple's new Highland Village retail store being one of the targets.
The Houston Police Department confirms it is investigating five random shootings at business in southwest Houston.
Between 4:40 and 5:40 a.m. Monday, several windows were shot out. The targets were from gas stations to swanky furniture store Cantoni, officials said. [...]
The brand new Apple store at 4012 Westhiemer was also hit.
Glass pane left of Apple logo shattered by gunfire (Source: KPRC-TV)
No one was injured in the shootings, although an employee and a customer at a Valero gas station narrowly escaped the gunfire.
ifoAppleStore reports that Apple is planning to open a new retail store in the Cornwall Centre shopping mall in Regina, Saskatchewan. The location is a notable one for being the first in the vast province in the heart of Canada, with no other Apple retail stores located within a 300-mile radius.
Cornwall Centre is located in city center and has 90 retailers in an enclosed mall. City planning documents mention the new store, but the exact location within the mall isn’t known. Based on construction schedules, the store could open by November 2012.
Regina, the provincial capital with a population of roughly 200,000, is the second-largest city and part of the second-largest metropolitan area in Saskatchewan, just behind Saskatoon.
Regina's Cornwall Centre is getting a store selling Apple products — though, contrary to rumours that circulated Tuesday morning on the web — it won't be an Apple store.
Krista Bebeau, the downtown mall's marketing manager, said it will an outlet of a firm called iWorld Connect — the website of which (http://iworldconnect.com/) confirms the company is opening a store in Regina.
A pair of filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that Apple executive Scott Fortsall and board member Mickey Drexler each sold off tens of thousands of shares of Apple stock on Friday, netting millions of dollars each.
Forstall, who serves as senior vice president of iOS Software and has been a fixture in Apple's keynote presentations and media events, sold off 64,151 shares of Apple stock on Friday, netting roughly $38.7 million. Forstall gained 120,000 shares of Apple stock last month as a 2008 retention bonus of restricted stock units converted to actual stock. 55,849 shares were immediately sold off at that time to account for the taxes due on the conversion, and Forstall held on to the remaining shares until last Friday.
Following Friday's transaction, Forstall holds 2,988 shares of Apple stock, worth roughly $1.75 million at today's share price and the same number of shares he held prior to last month's vesting of his 2008 retention bonus. Forstall is also in line to receive a number of other stock grants should he remain with the company over the next several years, including a 150,000-unit grant that will vest in equal portions next year and in 2016. A separate grant of 100,000 units will vest in 2014.
Meanwhile, longtime Apple board member Mickey Drexler, who serves as Chairman and CEO of J. Crew and was previously President and CEO of The Gap, has cashed in on stock options dating back nearly a decade in order to reap a substantial windfall.
Drexler exercised a set of 20,000 options from 2003 priced at $9.16 each and a second set of 20,000 options from 2004 priced at $14.205 each, selling off all 40,000 shares on Friday for $24.1 million. After accounting for the exercise prices on the options, Drexler netted close to $23.7 million. Drexler continues to hold 584 shares of Apple stock worth roughly $384,000 at today's share price.
Apple today sent out an email encouraging Mac developers to sign up for the company's Developer ID program so that their apps can be properly signed ahead of the launch of OS X Mountain Lion later this year. Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper feature gives users the ability to set limits on app installation, with the new "Developer ID" program providing a middle ground of security by which developers can certify that they are the developer behind a given application package.
Should the developer be found to behave maliciously, Apple will be able to revoke the Developer ID associated with that developer, preventing applications signed with the ID from running and causing further harm to users.
The Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, but we also want to protect users when they get applications from other places. Gatekeeper is a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion that helps protect users from downloading and installing malicious software. Signing your applications, plug-ins, and installer packages with a Developer ID certificate lets Gatekeeper verify that they are not known malware and have not been tampered with.
This marks the second such mass emailing to encourage adoption of Developer ID among the Mac developer community, as Apple sent out a similar mailing back in late February following its announcement of OS X Mountain Lion. The next major operating system is due for public launch in "late summer" and will undoubtedly be a featured topic at Apple's sold-out Worldwide Developers Conference in early June.
Apple closed a number of U.S. retail stores last week, and is closing another half dozen more this week for undisclosed renovations. All of the stores closing are street-level locations and the most likely reason is to retrofit the stores with Apple's new security grate system. Apple closed a number of other stores last fall for the same reason.
Security grating barely visible at Apple's 4th Street store in Berkeley, California
MacRumors has begun receiving reports that iTunes Match has started going live in several new countries today. So far we have heard from users in Austria, Greece, and Italy, with some users reporting that they have been required to agree to updated iTunes Store terms and conditions addressing the service while others have even been able to sign up for the service.
iTunes Match signup page in Italian iTunes Store
It remains unclear just how broad this latest round of debuts is, as Apple has yet to update its support document outlining availability of iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match, but signs of activity in various international iTunes Stores suggest that iTunes Match may also be going live in Bulgaria, Portugal, and Slovenia.
As part of the new rollout of Apple's paid iTunes Match service, users in these countries should also be receiving access to the free iTunes in the Cloud services for music and music video, which allow users to re-download purchased content any number of times to devices associated with their iTunes Store accounts.
According to former Apple executive Tony Fadell -- these days remaking the thermostat -- Apple's designers had extensive discussions about including a hardware keyboard on the iPhone, but ultimately decided against it. Fadell discussed the iPhone design process in a sit-down interview on Josh Topolsky's On The Verge show.
I wanted to try [a touchscreen keyboard]... I wanted it to work. It made sense that you wanted a full screen, you didn't want a keyboard.
Fadell also mentions the other designs for the iPhone, including the iPod + Phone concept using the iPod click wheel as a controller, but noted that the team ultimately discarded that concept because the control scheme was too restricting.
Apple's designers make many prototypes that never hit the light of day. We didn't know it at the time, but the iPod with click-wheel dial that Steve Jobs jokingly showed at the original iPhone announcement wasn't too far off from something Apple had actually created.
In his biography, we learned that Jobs had set up two competing teams to find the best iPhone design. One based its designs off the existing iPod, while the other designed a brand new touchscreen system that ultimately became the iPhone.
Earlier this year, Apple began revealing more information about its Mastered for iTunes program, requesting that music professionals supply Apple with higher-quality recordings as source material for the compressed tracks made available for sale through the iTunes Store. The higher-quality source material, processed according to Apple's guidelines, is being requested to allow Apple to create better-sounding tracks in the 256 kbps AAC format used for the iTunes Store.
Ars Technicatakes a thorough look at the Mastered for iTunes program and whether it truly does make a difference to consumers. While the whole article is an interesting read on some of the technical details of audio formats and mastering and the varying perspectives of several music industry professionals, Ars' conclusion is that the Mastered for iTunes program can make a difference in quality of iTunes Store music.
We enlisted Chicago Mastering Service engineers Jason Ward and Bob Weston to help us out, both of whom were somewhat skeptical that any knob tweaking could result in a better iTunes experience. We came away from the process learning that it absolutely is possible to improve the quality of compressed iTunes Plus tracks with a little bit of work, that Apple's improved compression process does result in a better sound, and that 24/96 files aren't a good format for consumers.
Ars worked with a number of audio engineers on test projects comparing various combinations of original 24-bit, 96 kHz master recordings, uncompressed WAV files ripped from CDs, standard iTunes Store tracks, and tracks created by applying Apple's Mastered for iTunes process to the master recordings. In one example, a standard iTunes Store track sounded "boxy" or "muffled" compared to the original CD master WAV file, but after processing through Mastered for iTunes tools, the resulting track sounded significantly better and more "alive" on a subjective basis.
Part of the difficulty in assessing sound quality comes from the emotional response involved in how sounds register to human ears. Some differences in sound quality can be quantified using various tools to analyze the waveforms generated by different audio files, but the ultimate measure of sound quality lies with the human ears receiving and interpreting the sounds.
Nevertheless, Apple markets the Mastered for iTunes program as providing a path for musicians and music professionals to have iTunes Store content more closely match "music as the artist and sound engineer intended", and more and more musicians are taking advantage of the program in attempting to improve the quality of their music available through the world's most popular music vendor.
Rovio today announced that Angry Birds Space has reached 50 million downloads, marking yet another milestone for the popular franchise. The title debuted on a number of platforms, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac, on March 22.
Angry Birds Space hit 50 million downloads within 35 days, making it the fastest growing mobile game yet and breaking all our previous records. This has been simply amazing, and the whole Rovio team is thrilled to see such a fantastic reception for the game.
The iPhone version of Angry Birds Space continues to top the App Store charts in markets around the world, while the Mac version has dropped to #9 on the U.S. paid app chart after peaking at #2.
Microsoft and Barnes & Noble today announced the formation of a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary focused around the existing Nook digital e-reader and e-book business, as well as Barnes & Noble's college business. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, which is preliminarily being called Newco until an official name is chosen, and receive 17.6% ownership of the business.
One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.
The inclusion of Barnes & Noble’s College business is an important component of Newco’s strategic vision. Through the newly formed Newco, Barnes & Noble’s industry leading NOOK Study software will provide students and educators the preeminent technology platform for the distribution and management of digital education materials in the market.
As part of the deal, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have also settled their patent dispute, which saw Microsoft suing for infringement by the Nook reader in a move Barnes & Noble had positioned as an attack on all Android-based systems. The new deal will see Barnes & Noble and Newco holding a royalty-bearing license on the Microsoft patents in question.
The Microsoft/Barnes & Noble venture seeks to increase competition in the e-book market, taking on both Amazon's dominant position and Apple's upstart status that has seen the iPad become a popular e-reading option for consumers but much lower adoption of iBookstore content. Barnes & Noble has had some success with Nook, but its momentum has slowed recently and recent antitrust suits against Apple and book publishers breaking down the new agency model for e-book distribution have raised concerns that the industry will quickly return to a near-monopoly for Amazon.
In the latest installment of its "iEconomy" series, The New York Times takes a look at how Apple minimizes its corporate tax burden, taking advantage of a number of legal maneuvers and loopholes around the world. Apple's strategies are of course fully legal and used by many other corporations, but with a spotlight on Apple as it has rapidly risen to become the world's most valuable publicly-traded company with record-setting profits, it has obviously attracted much attention about how it handles its money.
Apple, for instance, was among the first tech companies to designate overseas salespeople in high-tax countries in a manner that allowed them to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other continents, sidestepping income taxes, according to former executives. Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods, say accountants at those companies.
Among the tactics used by Apple:
- Setting up subsidiaries in low-tax locations such as Nevada, Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the British Virgin Islands, routing as much revenue as possible through these locations. By routing much of its U.S. revenue through its Braeburn Capital subsidiary in tax-free Reno, Nevada, Apple is able to avoid California's corporate tax rate of 8.84%, while also reducing its tax burden on money earned in other states.
- Apple's iTunes S.à r.l. subsidiary in Luxembourg consists mainly of a mailbox and a few dozen employees, but records $1 billion per year in revenue as the entity responsible for all iTunes Store transactions throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. With the iTunes Store offering strictly downloadable goods, Apple is able to take advantage of favorable tax treatment available in Luxembourg as part of the country's efforts to attract businesses.
- Apple has substantial operations in Ireland, but the report notes that one of the main benefits of locating there is that Apple is able to internally transfer its patent royalty earnings to a subsidiary there, with the money being subjected to a 12.5% tax rate rather than the 35% tax rate found in the United States. More than one-third of Apple's worldwide revenue is booked through its Irish subsidiaries.
- Apple records 70% of its revenue overseas, even though much of the product value would normally be considered to derive from their design, which occurs in the United States.
Overall, Apple paid $3.3 billion in corporate taxes in 2011 on earnings of $34.2 billion in profits, an effective tax rate of 9.8%, which is considered low by corporate standards. But with the company's tactics relying on a complex and disjointed system of tax laws throughout the world, it is difficult for the United States to single-handedly require Apple to book more of its revenue in its home country, which currently has the highest corporate tax rates in the world when federal and average state rates are included.
Apple has provided an official response to The New York Times, highlighting its role in job creation in the United States, the tax payments it does make, and its charitable giving. The company also notes that its business practices are in full compliance with all laws and accounting rules.
Update: As noted by Forbes, The New York Times is reporting an incorrect calculation of Apple's effective tax rate for 2011 of 9.8%, simply reusing numbers released several weeks earlier by the Greenlining Institute. Forbes points out that Apple's $3.3 billion in taxes paid during 2011 come from its quarterly estimated tax payments made during the year, but that federal tax guidelines instruct taxpayers to base their calculations on the previous year's earnings.
Consequently, Apple's 2011 quarterly tax payments are actually based on 2010's earnings, with the correct amount of tax for 2011 not being settled until Apple files its final taxes in 2012. And given Apple's strong growth rate, the incorrect assumption that Apple's 2011 tax payments were based on 2011's earnings grossly understates Apple's tax rate.
As outlined in his previous piece debunking the Greenlining Institute's claim, Tim Worstall notes that Apple reports its effective tax rate in its annual 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that rate came in at 24.2% for 2011, much more in line with industry norms.
Reuters reports that Apple has been negotiating with movie streaming service EPIX for the rights to stream content to the Apple TV set-top box. According to sources, the deal would also extend to future streaming devices such as the much-rumored Apple television set.
Apple, which now sells a $99 set-top box that hooks up to a television set and lets users stream online content from Netflix and the MLB channel, opened discussions with three-year-old EPIX, created by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, MGM and Viacom's Paramount Pictures.
One of the sources told Reuters that any discussions would apply to its set-top box and also to upcoming devices that stream content.
Sources note that talks between Apple and EPIX remain preliminary and that no deal is expected in the near future. Still, the rumors suggest that Apple is continuing to push forward in its attempts to secure content as it seeks to build a bigger footprint in the living room.
EPIX has an exclusive streaming agreement with Netflix that extends through September, so it seems unlikely that any agreement with Apple could go into effect before that time, but it also remains unclear how the financial situation would shake out for EPIX in adding Apple while Netflix loses its exclusivity.
Following its late February acquisition of app search and discovery firm Chomp, Apple has now killed off Chomp's Android services.
The move was reported late yesterday by a MacRumors reader who noticed that the Chomp app for Android had ceased functioning on his device, and GigaOM confirms that Chomp has also removed Android search functionality from the Chomp website.
Apple reportedly paid about $50 million for Chomp, which also had a deal with Verizon to power its Android app search tools. That agreement will presumably be ending as Chomp completes its integration into Apple and focuses all of its attention on iOS.
Advertising tracking firm Ace Metrix today shared its data on viewer reactions to Apple's new celebrity iPhone 4S ads featuring Siri and starring Samuel L. Jackson and Zooey Deschanel. The new ads are registering well with consumers, generating scores higher than any other iPhone 4S ad released so far this year.
“Apple’s ads for iPhone had been falling rather flat earlier in the year, all scoring below the Apple iPhone norm of 620. This new creative tack that uses likeable celebrities struck a chord with American viewers,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “These ads performed very well, especially with younger women, who did not react as strongly to Apple's more feature-focused ads from earlier in the year. Celebrity ads are risky, as many celebrities can be polarizing. In these latest ads, Apple has chosen wisely, using celebrities with broad appeal."
But while the new celebrity iPhone 4S performed very well, they were unable to unseat Samsung's top Galaxy Note as the most popular mobile phone ad of 2012. The Galaxy Note and iPhone 4S hold the top nine positions among mobile phone ads released so far this year, with Samsung's "Samsunged Again" Super Bowl commercial directly targeting Apple and iPhone users placing tenth.
As pointed out by MacGeneration [Google translation], Apple's Mac App Store has reached a new milestone with 10,000 apps available for purchase or free download through the marketplace.
Our own sister site AppShopper confirms the milestone, currently indexing 10,339 applications in the store. Apple launched the Mac App Store in January 2011 and has quickly moved to offer its own major software titles through the marketplace, viewing it as the future of software distribution on the Mac platform. Even OS X Lion itself is distributed via the Mac App Store.
The 10,000 Mac App Store apps pale in comparison to the 600,000 apps available through the iOS App Store, but the Mac App Store remains a success by desktop software sales standards. Last December, the store passed 100 million downloads, making it the "largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world".
Last month, the State of Texas announced that Apple would be making a major expansion of its existing customer support and administrative campus in Austin, investing over $300 million to add 3,600 workers at the site. The move would more than double Apple's workforce in Austin.
Over the past several weeks, a number of governmental agencies, including the State of Texas, Travis County, and the City of Austin have been working on tax break packages designed to secure Apple's commitment to bring the new jobs to Austin. While most of the incentive packages have been approved, the Austin American-Statesman reports that delays in work by Travis County are leaving Apple "frustrated" and the deal "in peril".
Dave Porter, senior vice president for economic development at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday that Apple's plans to bring its Americas operations center to Austin are up in the air because of the county's continuing deliberations and calls for new conditions on its incentives deal with the company.
"This deal is not done. It remains in peril. And Apple is frustrated," Porter said.
Travis County had been expected to offer tax breaks of $5.4-6.4 million as part of the overall incentive package of $35-36 million over 10-15 years, and while Travis County had given initial approval to its portion of the deal earlier this month, it has yet to be finalized.
The delays are related to objections raised by the opponents of the deal, who have claimed that the terms of the deal are too favorable for Apple and could see the company avoid penalties should it fail to meet some of the contract's terms.
Apple had been said to also be considering Phoenix, Arizona as a potential location for its new facilities, and while it seems likely that the company would much prefer to locate the new facility at its existing campus in Austin, it is likely continuing to weigh its options until a final deal for the Austin site is signed.
Progress continues on the independent film "Jobs", which will see Ashton Kutcher play the role of the Apple co-founder and CEO. According to Variety, actor Josh Gad is in talks to portray Steve Wozniak in the film, which will focus on the early days of Apple.
Written by Matt Whiteley, pic chronicles Steve Jobs from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple, where he became one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of our time.
Gad is making a deal to play Wozniak, who created the Apple I computer and co-created the Apple II computer in the mid-1970s.
Gad is best known for his starring role in The Book of Mormon, a satirical Broadway musical from the creators of irreverent animated television show South Park. Gad has also held a number of other film, TV, and stage roles, and has occasionally served as a correspondent for The Daily Show.
Production on "Jobs" is reportedly set to begin next month. The film is a separate project from the upcoming Sony Pictures film based on Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs.
Back in late 2010, Apple announced that it would cease supporting Java for OS X, with Steve Jobs noting that Apple was always a version behind that being distributed by Sun/Oracle, which handled Java for all other platforms.
Confusion about whether Oracle would step into the Java void created by Apple's removal of support was addressed several weeks later when Apple and Oracle announced plans to expand Oracle's OpenJDK project to include OS X as a means to deliver Java SE 7 to Mac users.
Oracle today announced that is taking the next step toward OS X compatibility with the release of Java SE 7 Update 4 and JavaFX 2.1. For Java developers, the update marks the first release of the Java Development Kit (JDK) and JavaFX Software Development Kit for OS X. The OpenJDK community is continuing its work on a consumer version of Java SE 7 for OS X, and Oracle says that a public release for consumers will be coming "later in 2012".
This release marks Oracle’s first delivery of both the Java Development Kit (JDK) and JavaFX Software Development Kit (SDK) for Mac OS X.
- Java developers can now download Oracle’s JDK, which includes the JavaFX SDK, for Mac OS X from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
- Oracle plans to release a consumer version of Java SE 7, including the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for Mac OS X later in 2012.
While the transition to Oracle/OpenJDK for Java support on OS X continues, Steve Jobs' comments about Apple's Java packages always being a version behind and how that arrangement "may not be the best way to do it" proved prescient in recent weeks with the appearance of the Flashback malware. The latest incarnations of Flashback managed to infect over 600,000 Macs by taking advantage of a vulnerability in Java that had been patched by Oracle in February but which had not yet been patched on OS X.
In response, Apple released several updates to Java for OS X, including one that disables the automatic execution of Java applets. As an additional layer of security, once a user manually turns on automatic execution, the system will once again disable it after a period of time if no applets have been executed.
Forstall, who serves as senior vice president of iOS Software and has been a fixture in Apple's keynote presentations and media events, 
Microsoft and Barnes & Noble today 
As 
Progress continues on the independent film "Jobs", which will see 
Back in late 2010, Apple 
