Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky

Before either Apple CEO Tim Cook or Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer took the stand to testify on behalf of Apple to defend the company’s tax practices, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky lashed out on Senator John McCain and Senator Carl Levin for the “spectacle of dragging in here executives from Apple using the brute force of government to bully a great success story.”

Senator Paul, a notable Tea Party leader and son of Representative Ron Paul, is often outspoken on issues of tax reform and made no effort to align for his Republican colleague Senator John McCain.

Chairman Levin didn’t hesitate to bring the narrative against Apple and its tax practices back to the center stage soon after Senator Paul’s comments.

“Apple has done more to enrich people’s lives than politicians will ever do,” Senator Paul voiced on Twitter after his monologue.

“If there is anyone to blame here it is not Apple, it is Congress and the tax code it created.”

Senator Paul cited Apple’s business with glass suppliers for its hardware in his home state of Kentucky.

Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer are both positioned to testify on behalf of Apple shortly, but you can read their prepared remarks that they published prior to today’s appearance. We don’t expect Apple will offer much deviation from its prepared remarks unless any unexpected questions prompt a notable response.

Follow along with C-SPAN’s coverage of Apple’s testimony here.

If there is anyone to blame here it is not Apple, it is Congress and the tax code it created.—
Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) May 21, 2013

To US Senate: I say, instead of Apple executives, you should have brought in a giant mirror if you want to see who is responsible.—
Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) May 21, 2013

I am offended by the spectacle of dragging in here executives from Apple using the brute force of government to bully a great success story.—
Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) May 21, 2013

Instead of examining our broken tax system, the US Senate is about to harass Apple-one of the greatest business success stories in history.—
Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) May 21, 2013

Zagg, a company that makes high quality keyboard cases for iPads that we’ve reviewed in the past, today introduced two brand new keyboard cover and folio designs for iPad mini. Zagg says both products are ultra-thin Bluetooth keyboards that take advantage of “a unique, patent-pending hinge system that enhances the iPad mini user experience with a full range of viewing angles up to 135 degrees.” Get full details on both new products below:

ZAGGkeys Cover: The first product Zagg is showing off today at CTIA 2013 is the ZAGGkeys Cover (pictured above). Zagg says its the thinnest Bluetooth keyboard on the market at 6.3mm and it also features backlit keys in 7 colors and three brightness settings (Zagg already makes one of our favorite backlit keyboards for iPad with similar features). It also includes magnets to keep the case closed and secure when in transit and up to 3 months battery life with normal use.

Zagg will be selling the ZAGGkeys Cover for $99 in both silver and black.

ZAGGkeys Folio: The second product for iPad mini is Zagg’s latest Folio design. It includes everything that the new ZAGGkeys Cover offers but will be a little thicker at 16.75 mm (when closed) to provide “full body protection to help keep an iPad free from scratches and dings.” Its keyboard alone is also slightly thicker than the Cover design at 6.9mm.

The Folio will sell for $99 in black and white (more colors coming soon) when it launches at retail.

Both products are expected to land by summer.

We already reviewed Zagg’s Mini 7 and Mini 9 for iPad mini and quite enjoyed the Mini 7. 

Update: Live coverage of the Senate hearing on Apple’s offshore tax practices is above.

As things heat up in the row on alleged tax avoidance by Apple, Ireland has denied a claim made by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that it had agreed a special deal with the company to allow it to pay corporation tax of just 2% on its Irish earnings.

The denial was made to Yahoo! Finance reporter Conor Humphries:

According to the congressional report, Ireland had also agreed a special 2 percent rate for Apple’s Irish taxable profits instead of the normal 12.5 percent, but a spokesman for Ireland’s finance department, when asked how and why this had come about, said: “Ireland’s tax system is statute based, so there is no possibility of individual special tax rate deals for companies.”

This appears to flatly contradict a statement by the Senate subcommittee that accused Apple of …

Negotiating a tax rate of less than 2 percent with the government of Ireland – significantly lower than that nation’s 12% statutory rate

Apple yesterday published its testimony to the committee, which states:

Apple does not use tax gimmicks. Apple does not move its intellectual property into
offshore tax havens and use it to sell products back into the US in order to avoid US tax; it does not use revolving loans from foreign subsidiaries to fund its domestic operations; it does not hold money on a Caribbean island; and it does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands.

There is no direct reference to the 2% claim in Apple’s testimony, but it will almost certainly be addressed when Tim Cook appears before the subcommittee later today. C-SPAN is covering the hearing live - which is now underway.

There have been plenty of hints over the past months that indicate that Apple’s incoming next round of MacBook Air/Pros would contain 802.11AC Gigabit wifi chips, not the least of which was code we found referencing ’802.11AC‘ in 10.8.4 Betas.

TonyMacx86, found some interesting parts on Chinese VR-Zone today that could be the next 802.11AC boards in Macs, widely expected to be announced at WWDC next month. The Broadcom BCM94360CD PCI-E mini custom combo WLAN+Bluetooth card supports IEEE 802.11ac, the next standard in wireless computer networking. Interestingly, it also looks like it may fit in current MacBooks which could mean aftermarket updates could be possible.

This compares to the current cards below via iFixit below:

Logitech’s UE brand is often at the top of our list when it comes to the best bluetooth speakers around, so we’re excited that today the company introduced its latest product with the announcement of the ‘UE BOOM’. Logitech is calling this “the world’s first social music player,” and that’s due to the fact that it’s the first to offer 360-degree sound and a 15-hour rechargeable battery. That’s a nice step up from the 5-8 hours you’ll get with most Bluetooth speakers.

Logitech is also following a trend that many Bluetooth speaker manufacturers have been lately: With UE BOOM you’ll be able to wirelessly connect two UE BOOMs via a free companion app to allow for traditional right/left stereo sound and other sound settings. It’s also water and stain proof:

Its versatile go-anywhere shape is wrapped in a specially developed acoustic skin that is both water and stain resistant so you can enjoy your music anywhere you go.

Logitech is selling the UE BOOM now in the U.S. and Europe for $199 in multiple colors. That’s about $50 less than its high end UE Boombox and $100 more than its smaller UE Mobile Boombox. We’ll of course be bringing you our full hands on soon to see how the BOOM stacks up to our other favorite bluetooth speakers.

The Chrome App Launcher is coming to OSX, providing a simple way to launch Chrome ‘packaged apps’ — web apps that are written in a combination of HTML5, Javascript and CSS but which look and behave like conventional PC or Mac apps …

Google Chrome team member François Beaufort, who has the whacky job title of Happiness Evangelist (some Google employees get to pick their own job titles), posted the screengrab on his Google+ page.

Chrome Team is currently working on bringing the App Launcher on the Mac platform as you can see in the screenshot below.

You can already give it a try by running the last chromium build available at download-chromium.appspot.com with the –show-app-list switch.

To see it in action, you’ll need to download at least one app from the Chrome Web Store in addition to Chromium itself.

Apple remains the most valuable brand in the world, in an annual ranking by market intelligence company Millward Brown, reported in Marketing Week.

The Millward Brown Brandz rankings take into account both financial strength and brand equity, a measure of the value consumers place in a brand. Despite Apple’s share-price woes, the brand is regarded by consumers as the ‘gold standard’, says the report …

“What we see with the most popular or powerful brands is that brand lasts a lot longer, is more robust and doesn’t tend to slip as much, whereas the finances go up and down,” explains global BrandZ director Peter Walshe, suggesting that brand is more sustainable than financials.

Apple’s brand value only increased by 1 per cent this year but it still holds the record for the most valuable brand. And it leads by a long way. The next brand in the ranking, Google, is worth $113.7bn [reversing a 3 per cent decline last year to a 5 per cent gain] so Apple is $71.4bn ahead — nearly the value of Coca-Cola, which just shows how strong, powerful and meaningful that brand is,” says Walshe.

An interesting way to look at the numbers is if the brand is worth $185b, and you add Apple’s cash hoard of $150b, you get pretty much to the company’s current market capitalisation — before factoring in anything else, like its product pipeline. Of course, it can be argued that the brand equity already takes into account consumer expectations of future cool gadgets, but it does seem to add weight to the suggestion that the company is significantly undervalued.

Welcome South Australia to the Apple Store family.  The Rundle Place Centre Apple Store will open at 10am local time on Saturday May 25th.

An anonymous tipster from the area sent in the above image which is supposed to be the store before opening.

It isn’t quite Stanford 2005, but the Corning stories and others are amusing.

All of a sudden Flickr is back. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Tumblr (that was quick!) post on the matter:

Photos tell the stories — stories we’re inspired to relive, share with our friends, or capture simply to express ourselves. Collecting these moments is a part of our everyday. Since 2005, Flickr has become synonymous with inspiring imagery. Today, we’re thrilled to take Flickr even further with a beautiful, completely re-imagined experience that puts photos front and center. When it comes to photography, technology and its limits shouldn’t hinder the experience. So we’re also giving our Flickr users one terabyte of space — for free. That’s enough for a lifetime of photos — more than 500,000 original, full-resolution, pixel-perfect, brilliant photos. Flickr users will never have to worry about running out of space.

1TB is “I no longer have to think about where to store photos,” and full res quality means no compromise. Oh, and we’ve heard there will be some even bigger things coming up from Yahoo/Flickr for iOS users next month. Flickr is currently integrated into OS X and Apple TV software.