Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Trader pleads guilty to $1 billion stock fraud scheme
A former Rochdale Securities trader whose unauthorized purchase of about $1 billion of Apple stock caused the demise of the financial services company pleaded guilty on Monday to wire fraud and conspiracy.
David Miller, 40, entered his guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Martinez in Hartford, Connecticut.
Miller faces a maximum 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 8, but under a plea agreement he could receive a term of five to eight years. The Rockville Centre, New York resident is free on bond…
Prosecutors said Miller bought 1,625 million Apple shares on October 25, 2012, the day the maker of iPads, iPods and iPhones planned to report third-quarter results, hoping to profit if the company’s share price rose.
But they said Miller falsely told Rochdale that the trade was for a customer that had in fact ordered just 1,625 shares.
When the bet backfired, Rochdale was on the hook for $5.3 million of losses on the extra 1,623,375 shares, leaving the Stamford, Connecticut-based company undercapitalized, the SEC said in court papers…
The SEC said as a result of Miller’s bets, Rochdale ceased operations and its staff left or was fired in November 2012. On February 25, Rochdale asked Connecticut, the SEC and other regulators to withdraw its registrations.
So much for counting on the industry kingpins to regulate themselves. So much for providing oversight – preventing deception and fraud. Things were sufficiently lax to kill the company providing the opportunity to commit the crime.
Apple, Morgan Stanley, corporations unite to support gay marriage
Gay-marriage advocates, aiming to show broad support as the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the issue for the first time, have enlisted Apple, Morgan Stanley and dozens of Republicans who once held top government positions…
The justices will hear arguments March 26 on California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that halted gay marriage in the state after it was allowed for five months.
The corporate group, which also includes Facebook and Intel will argue in its brief that gay-marriage bans in 41 states harm workplace morale and undermine recruiting.
“No matter how welcoming the corporate culture, it cannot overcome the societal stigma institutionalized by Proposition 8 and similar laws,” the companies will argue.
Apple’s U.S. corporate tax for 2012 equals 1 of every $40 collected
…The New York Times reported that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is wrapping up an investigation into a number of technology companies that use specialized accounting practices to avoid U.S. taxes, which are higher than those levied in many foreign countries.
According to the sources, Apple had become the focus of the inquiry as its accountants have managed to allocate some 70 percent of taxable income overseas despite running a base of operations in the U.S. The tactics used are completely legal, though head of the investigations committee Senator Carl Levin said off-shoring income and intellectual property is hurting the U.S. budget and ultimately average Americans…
In its statement on Thursday, Apple said it was “one of the top corporate income taxpayers in the country, if not the largest…
For the past fiscal year, Apple said it paid “an enormous amount of taxes” to local, state and federal governments. “In fiscal 2012 we paid $6 billion in federal corporate income taxes, which is 1 out of every 40 dollars in corporate income taxes collected by the U.S. government,” according to the statement…
Apple is cooperating with Senator Levin’s investigation, “which is expected to yield recommendations to Congress” that may have an effect on future tax code discussions…when I am 275 years old.
The article is interesting to me as a weighty counter to childish geeks who treat Apple’s significance to the United States economy as if it still was two guys in a garage in California. They have no clue about the tax repatriation proposals already offered by Tim Cooke or the firm’s role in bettering working conditions abroad.
There is always some ivory tower biz major who whines about the suicide rate in some FoxConn factory town in China. A rate that is almost as high as [gasp] Cincinnati.
Oprah’s attempt to promote the Microsoft Surface = FAIL
Oprah is out plugging the Surface for Microsoft, stating that she is buying several of the devices as gifts.
However, in sending out that specific tweet, she, or whoever was running her account that day, used a somewhat embarrassing service to communicate.
Yes, this is amateur hour…
Surface ads, now brought to you by iPad.
Har!
Apple’s blasphemous logo under fire from religious fundamentalists
According to a translation of a Russian news report that’s been kicking around the Web, some conservative believers see the image of the bitten apple as a symbol of Adam and Eve’s original sin in the Bible. Some have gone so far as to cover up the logo and replace it with an image of a cross.
Apparently no one has clued these folks in to the fact that Apple’s name and logo were actually inspired by the legendary piece of fruit that fell on the head of mathematician and astronomer Isaac Newton….
Why would that make a difference to some nutball fundamentalist?
New anti-blasphemy laws proposed in Russia’s parliament could conceivably prevent Apple from selling products with its own logo in the country…
If Apple does come to blows with the Russian church or government over its iconic logo, it could find allies within the country. Interfax news reports that the Russian political party Yabloko has been a sharp critic of the efforts to create what it calls a “clerical-police state” that is “deliberately fueling a conflict between the Russian Orthodox Church and secular civil society.”
Yabloko might have another good reason to come to Cupertino’s defense in Mother Russia — the party’s name is also the Russian word for “apple.”
Har!
Google paying largest fine in FTC history for lying about privacy
Google has agreed to pay a record $22.5 million fine for ignoring security settings designed to prevent advertisers from tracking users with cookies in Apple’s Safari web browser, bringing an end to a six month investigation aimed at better protecting consumers’ privacy rights online.
The penalty imposed by the United States Federal Trade Commission is the largest the agency has ever issued and the first for violations of its Internet privacy order…
The FTC wasn’t just responding to Google’s bypassing of Safari settings. Instead, the settlement involved the larger issue of an agreement the FTC made with Google last year addressing the privacy of users. Google’s willful bypassing of Safari’s settings violated that earlier consent order…
Commission members noted that the heart of the charges were aimed, not at Google’s continuing to collect identifying data through cookies, but primarily at Google’s false instructions to Safari users telling them that they didn’t need to opt out because, Google had lied, Apple’s default Safari settings were being respected by the company and that no further action on users’ part was necessary.
“This settlement is intended to provide a strong message to Google and other companies under order that their actions will be under close scrutiny and that the Commission will respond to violations quickly and vigorously.”
Google remains under its consent order, and the FTC has left the door open to additional fines if the search giant continues to violate its agreement with the government not to bypass the rights of users and lie to them about what they are doing or provide false instructions about how to opt out of Google’s data collections.
Greed is an amazing motivation – one of the most powerful at corrupting standards.
The patent system is out of sync
The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple’s smartphone technology battle is questioning whether patents should cover software or most other industries at all.
Richard Posner, a prolific jurist who sits on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, told Reuters this week that the technology industry’s high profits and volatility made patent litigation attractive for companies looking to wound competitors.
“It’s a constant struggle for survival,” he said in his courthouse chambers, which have a sparkling view of Monroe Harbor on Lake Michigan. “As in any jungle, the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted by the ecosystem…”
Posner said some industries, like pharmaceuticals, had a better claim to intellectual property protection because of the enormous investment it takes to create a successful drug.
Advances in software and other industries cost much less, he said, and the companies benefit tremendously from being first in the market with gadgets – a benefit they would still get if there were no software patents.
“It’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries,” he said…
Posner’s idea of examining whether industries like software should receive patent protection is a mainstream one, especially in the computer industry, said John Allison, a professor at University of Texas at Austin who studies intellectual property rights.
However, recent patent law reforms passed by the U.S. Congress did not directly address the issue, and Allison said classifying industries for the purposes of intellectual property protection – as Posner suggests – was “completely impractical” because talented lawyers could game the system.
RTFA for examples and anecdotal references. Posner makes the legal case for an opinion held by most involved geeks.
Judges are getting fed up with patent lawsuits
We need more judges like U.S. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner.
Yesterday, Posner scrapped a trial between Apple and Google’s Motorola Mobility slated to start in Chicago next week after he rejected the arguments for damages because neither side was able to prove it was harmed.
The move is a welcome breath of practicality in this increasingly muddled and litigious world of technology patent warfare. Beyond competing in the market, technology players have moved to the courtroom as a second front, using patents to distract competitors and even ban products from coming into the country.
While these companies see some strategic or monetary gain to be had by this, virtually everyone else loses…So it’s refreshing that more judges are taking action to throw out cases, streamline the lawsuits, and even order both sides to hash out their differences. I applaud the move and can only hope this is the beginning of a trend.
“Judge Posner has repeatedly urged the parties to ‘winnow’ the case and did most of the winnowing himself by throwing out claim and claim, argument after argument,” said Florian Mueller, who runs legal blog Foss Patents and is a consultant who has done work for companies such as Microsoft and Oracle.
He’s not the only one. In Germany, Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court has thrown out two lawsuits between Apple and Samsung Electronics. Samsung said it would appeal the decision.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, based in California, ordered the CEOs of Apple and Samsung to meet face to face and work out a deal. Even if it was ultimately fruitless, you have to respect her attempt to settle such a complicated mess. She also ordered the companies to reduce the size of the case to make it more manageable for a jury to decide. Apple and Samsung each dropped a number of patent complaints as a result of the order…
While Posner’s decision scrapped the planned jury trial, the lawsuit will continue to move forward as the companies seek to obtain an injunction on the other’s products…That’s why it’s important that judges remain aggressive in their willingness to throw out extraneous complaints.
I understand the tactic. Especially in light of the US Patent Office and their peers around the world. They have become useless carbon copy grantors of anything that rolls in the door – regardless of duplication or value.
But, the lawsuits are becoming as frivolous as people who sue because they can’t figure out how to use their smartphone.
Half of all American households own an Apple product
A recently-conducted survey found that there is an Apple product in over 55 million U.S. homes, and one-in-ten households that do not fall into that category plan to make a purchase in the next year.
According to CNBC’s All-America Economic survey…the iPhone maker’s products have a unique momentum as the average Apple-owning home has three such devices…“It’s a fantastic business model — the more of our products you own, the more likely you are to buy more,” said Jay Campbell, a vice president at Hart Research…
Unsurprisingly, the most saturated Apple demographic makes over $75,000 a year, with 77 percent of these higher income buyers owning at least one device. On average, high-earners own an average of three Apple products. This is contrasted by a 28 percent ownership rate for people earning $30,000 or less.
Some 63 percent of survey respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 said they were Apple users, which mirrored the answers of 35-to-49-year-olds. Ownership fell off moving further up the scale, with only half of 50-to-64-year-olds and 26 percent of those aged 65-and-up using a product made by the Cupertino, Calif., company.
Apple devices seem to be popular with children as over 61 percent of households with kids own at least one, which is 13 percent more than homes without 17-and-under family members.
Finally, the products have a bi-coastal appeal, though west-coasters have a significantly higher adoption rate with 57 percent of households counting themselves as users compared to an average 47 to 51 percent for the rest of the country.
Our family’s geek background enters the equation from a completely different direction. Most Apple owners in our family came into using their devices rather analytically – looking for best use in the category whether it be portable music, smartphone or computing device.
In my case, I bought an Apple Mini when they first came out just to experiment with OS X. After 25 years in Microsoft, IBM and other computing environments, I discovered how easy computing as a utility could be. Then Apple seemed to be reading my mind when they began a convergence with entertainment systems. Easy as pie.
Why the new iPad isn’t called iPad 3
One of the big mysteries ahead of Wednesday’s Apple event was a simple question: What is the new iPad going to be called? The tech press had long settled on iPad 3, but some outlets had recently reported that the product name would actually be iPad HD, in reference to the new high-resolution Retina display.
Apparently, Apple wasn’t having any of that. More than an hour into the show, Apple CEO Tim Cook finally revealed that the new iPad is called just that: the new iPad.
It seems like an odd choice at first sight, especially in light of the fact that Apple will continue to sell the iPad 2 for $399. However, the new name signals something much more profound than just a new product generation.
Apple is acknowledging that we have arrived in a post-PC world, where iPads aren’t just niche products for gadget lovers with an eye for specs and revision numbers. Instead, they’re among the best-selling computing devices, something that everyone uses to explore the Internet, do commerce and consume media…
Part of this post-PC reality is a new normalcy. Consumers don’t have to be sold on getting a new iOS device anymore; they’re on everyone’s short list when contemplating a new purchase. And that’s especially true in the tablet market, where Apple sells more devices than all of its competitors combined. So it’s time for the company to treat its post-PC products the same way it’s been treating its PC product segments for some time: as devices you’re going to buy and frequently replace over several product generations, no matter the specs.
Apple has long been doing this in the PC space, where its products are simply called MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini. Sure, the most dedicated Apple followers will always know which generation of the MacBook Pro has which CPU, and which ports are present on which laptop iteration. But for the rest of us, these differences don’t matter all that much. We buy the latest generation, trusting Apple that the hardware will live up to our expectations. We expect the MacBook Air to be the best in portable computing and the MacBook Pro to be powerful – and we don’t need complicated revision numbers to keep track of all the changes over the years.
In a way, not going for names like iPad 3 or iPad HD shows that the iPad has grown up: it’s a device that’s here to stay and shape the post-PC world for years to come. It’s the new iPad, made for a new world.
I think Janko got it exactly right. I sat in on meetings that struggled with questions like this way too many times.
I especially recall a successful name that made sense and sounded great, too – in the much smaller business world I once inhabited. When Dawes Cycles became part of the M.Y.Sports group – and planned serious entry into the US market – our best hit in a lightweight sports bike ended up being called the Atlantis. Sorted at a board meeting in Birmingham. It brought together two prime markets in the US and UK.
I hardly ever admitted that I offered the name after listening to Donovan’s song – “Atlantis” – on the radio that morning.
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