Apple

Apple has gone on a very public tax strike. Months after reporting the second-highest quarterly profits in U.S. history, America's favorite company is refusing to bring home more than $60 billion of offshore funds in protest of the taxes it would have to pay. Apple paints its predicament as unfair. Yet Apple's funds did not build up offshore because its iPhones, iPads and Macs are so much more popular overseas than they are at home. Though more than two-thirds of its retail stores are in the United States and Apple sells more products in the U.S. than in any other nation, it reports to shareholders that it made 24 cents in pre-tax profit for every dollar of sales in the United States, compared to 36 cents profit on every dollar of sales abroad.

Look, I'm not above sneaking a few extra vegetables and fruits into my kid's diet. I'm lucky that he's not a very picky eater and loves broccoli, so I don't have to do that much sneaking. But sure, a little spinach in a smoothie, some pasta with veggies in it? I'm there. But have we really gotten to the point where we have to trick kids into eating apples ? And do they really need a marketing ploy? They're already sweet! They're nature's candy! They keep you away from the doctor's office when eaten daily!

Apple today announced what many were expecting, given its huge war chest of around $100 billion in cash: future stock dividends and a stock repurchasing program. The company released the news in a conference call early Monday. It's amassed a huge pile of cash in recent years thanks to the runaway successes of its iPhone and iPad, a smartphone and a tablet, respectively, that are dominant in their categories. Apple said it plans a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share sometime in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, which begins in July.

News Roundup •••• The “is Valve making a console?” rumors got a lot more interesting as Apple is now being linked to the Steamers (as I like to call them), but in terms of “wearable computing” (i.e. Google's first potential Project Glass competitor). Huh? [ Metro ] •••• Video game sales continue to plummet, down another 20% in March. The steepest decline in the area of hardware might be due to the fact that the current most popular hardware available is really freaking old . You're not helping either, Vita . [ Zacks ]

You would be able to play games, read electronic books, listen to music, watch movies and choose from nearly 140,000 smart-phone applications - all while on the go with Apple Inc.'s new iPad. The question is whether you would want or need such a device, and be willing to pay $499 or more for it. After months of hype that culminated in days of water-cooler speculation, Apple unveiled Wednesday the highly anticipated iPad, essentially a personal computer contained in a portable flat-panel touch screen.

Towson University put on a New York City look for its Maryland Arts Festival gala, on opening night of the Baltimore-Washington premiere of "Rags: Children of the Wind." The musical's story takes place in New York, so the party's more than 300 guests were treated to some Big Apple scenery, including a mini-Statue of Liberty, a Central Park fountain and a nighttime NYC skyline, all under a tent outside TU's Stephens Hall.Among those taking in the sights: Towson University president Dr. Hoke Smith and Joanne Glasser, the college's institutional advancement VP, the party's hosts; Teresa Hardin, event coordinator; Michael Decker, festival artistic producer; Nan Rosenthal, Lois Hodes and Sharon Akers, festival board members; Bruce Ballard, Aramark Corp.

SAN FRANCISCO - As Apple Inc.'s iPhone faces stiffer competition in the lucrative market for smart phones, the company is going after one of its main rivals with patent lawsuits claiming theft of touch screen technology and other features. The complaints cover a slew of models made by Taiwanese phone maker HTC Corp., including the Nexus One, G1 and myTouch 3G - all using the free, rival Android mobile operating software from Google Inc. Non-Android phones include HTC's Touch series. Patent cases can take months or years to resolve.

From the BalthTech blog: Big news for fans of Verizon's wireless network: It'll be getting the Apple iPad starting Oct. 28. You'll be able to buy the iPad at 2,000 Verizon Wireless stores nationwide. (Is this the precursor to Verizon getting the iPhone next year, as recent reports suggest?) Interestingly, consumers won't have access to the iPad 3G. Instead, if you want one from Verizon, you could buy an iPad Wi-Fi version plus a Verizon MiFi mobile hotspot. The hotspot uses Verizon's 3G network and generates a Wi-Fi hotspot that you can then use the iPad with.

C ertain shiny little things make me weak in the knees and the wallet. I am helpless in the face of that perfectly designed something that performs beyond its weight class. Tiny diamonds that sparkle big. My previous car, a little silver Miata with a big, throaty throttle. Sliders. Which is why Steve Jobs should have had me at, "So, let me show it to you now," when he unveiled Apple's newest sleek sliver of desire, the iPad. But all I could think of during Wednesday's rollout was: iCan't.

Apple Computer exonerated its chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, yesterday of any wrongdoing in a stock options backdating probe. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said that while its investigation revealed that the company's stock option procedures "did not include sufficient safeguards to prevent manipulation," Jobs did not benefit financially from any questionable stock awards. As a result of the internal investigation, Apple said it would record $84 million in expenses related to the options awards.

Fiona Apple played a short series of promotional shows earlier this year to support her upcoming album. Now, she's launching a full tour for "The Idler Wheel is Wiser" that includes stops in Baltimore and Washington D.C. Apple's mini-tour, her first series of live performances outside of Los Angeles, started at South by Southwest and garnered near-ecstatic reviews from critics who said she was giving once-in-a-lifetime performances....

Apple has gone on a very public tax strike. Months after reporting the second-highest quarterly profits in U.S. history, America's favorite company is refusing to bring home more than $60 billion of offshore funds in protest of the taxes it would have to pay. Apple paints its predicament as unfair. Yet Apple's funds did not build up offshore because its iPhones, iPads and Macs are so much more popular overseas than they are at home. Though more than two-thirds of its retail stores are in the United States and Apple sells more products in the U.S. than in any other nation, it reports to shareholders that it made 24 cents in pre-tax profit for every dollar of sales in the United States, compared to 36 cents profit on every dollar of sales abroad.

Few nonfiction writers think bigger than Walter Isaacson, who has taken on subjects like Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. But when Apple founder Steve Jobs invited him in 2004 to write a complete and frank biography, Isaacson held back. He figured Jobs was in midcareer, so a book was premature. He had finished with Franklin the year before and was still grappling with Einstein. "My initial reaction," Isaacson says in "Steve Jobs," the biography he began five years later, "was to wonder, half-jokingly, whether he saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.

The world's nicest NFL Player met the New York media Monday and charmed everyone in the room. And considering the room was the cavernous Jetsindoor practice facility, crammed with enough TV cameras, tape recorders and notebook-wielding reporters to cover a papal visit, this was no small feat. At probably the biggest news conference ever held for a backup quarterback, Tim Tebow said all the right things to the howling jackals of the press, as you knew he would. He was folksy and humble and open and aw-shucksy, just what you'd expect. How many times did he say he was "excited" to be a Jet?

This week,"The Amazing Race"brings us hay, oil, apples, cheese and crackers. Plus a little bit of heartbreak. I'm fortified with lots of homemade peppermint cookies, though, so I can get through this. Remember Bavaria? Land of Beards and Inquisitive Cows? That was so seven days ago. The remaining teams are sent to Baku, Azerbaijan. I know, you're all, “I'm so tired of everyone always going to Azerbaijan, it's like the Palm Springs of the Eurasian continent.” I'll still give you a geography refresher, though.

Apple made headlines again last week, but this time they weren't entirely about the new iPad. The tech behemoth announced that it would start paying a quarterly dividend worth $2.65 per share beginning in July. That amounts to nearly $10 billion to be paid out in the first year alone. "Apple is the leader here," says Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst with Standard & Poor's, who adds that the company will put pressure on other technology firms to start paying dividends.

Apple "interim" CEO Steve Jobs startled the Mac community last week when he announced yet another major shift in the direction of the Mac OS.This time the victim is Rhapsody, Apple's fully modern Mac operating system that was to replace Systems 7 and 8. The operating system is the underlying software that runs your Mac, just as Windows runs a PC. The jilted Rhapsody will yield to Mac OS X (that's the Roman numeral 10, not the letter "x") in 1999.Rhapsody was born of Apple's December 1996 acquisition of NeXT, Steve Jobs' post-Apple venture.

Apple Inc. shares reached an all-time high Tuesday after a newspaper report said the iPhone could find a new U.S. sales outlet through Verizon Wireless. Since its 2007 launch, the iPhone has been available in the U.S. only to subscribers of AT&T Inc. The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that Apple plans to release an iPhone this year that would work on technology used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Inc. in the U.S. Apple and Verizon declined to comment on the matter.

Shocking bulletin from the Big Apple: New York is officially agog at the Jets signing of Tim Tebow. "Linsanity" is so yesterday. Now it's all about "Timsanity. " The New York media is reacting to the Jets' controversial signing in its usual under-stated way. The New York Daily News has a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty on its cover. The New York Post ran a front-page headline that blared: "GOD HIM!" And it's all Tim Tebow, all the time on talk radio and the TV sports show.

Apple today announced what many were expecting, given its huge war chest of around $100 billion in cash: future stock dividends and a stock repurchasing program. The company released the news in a conference call early Monday. It's amassed a huge pile of cash in recent years thanks to the runaway successes of its iPhone and iPad, a smartphone and a tablet, respectively, that are dominant in their categories. Apple said it plans a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share sometime in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, which begins in July.