avon b7

"We always pay all the taxes we owe wherever we operate and there has never been a special deal"

Part of the investigation suggesed that Apple was effectively deciding for itself how much to make available and then paying what Apple itself said it, ehem, 'owed'.

That resulted in the 0,005% for one particular year. 

Then Tim Cook came out and said "Apple has values". It's a shame no one bothered ask him to define them with regards to taxation. 

And then, according to him, it was "political crap". 

That begs the question "what kind of crap was it when you paid 0.005% in the EU and funnelled taxation away from the countries that generated the income?" 

As for there never being a special deal, we know that Apple has admitted one in the past but claimed it was so long ago that no one remembered the details. 

Not dissimilar to when high ranking executives get hauled before Congress and suddenly 'lose' their memories. 

Apple has changed its ways over the years but only under pressure. 

In fact, there was a cut-off point for the investigation that led to this situation which meant it could not consider some of those earlier years. 

Of course way back then, Apple was a smaller company and that it why things didn't pop up on the radar for so long. 

Nikon8 said:

Next get rid of Broadcom chips. 

I can't see that happening any time soon:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-announces-multibillion-dollar-deal-with-broadcom/#:~:text=Today Apple announced a new,cutting-edge wireless connectivity components.

Signing out and in again before each post seems to work. 

gatorguy said:

avon b7 said:

gatorguy said:

test test test

Cloudfare? 

Yup.
 

For the last few days I've been unable to post because of the Cloudfare verification step, which is successful after hitting the post button, but sends me back to the post message dialog but it's now empty (message not posted) and Chrome unable to render the page correctly.

I've cleared cookies for the site, restarted, signed in and out etc but it's still broken somewhere. 

rob53 said:

spheric said:

Fidonet127 said:

tlinn said:

I will forever be grateful to the Europeans for forcing Apple to adopt USB-C. But the idea that Apple shouldn't be compensated for developing a platform that allows thousands of developers to make a living, or that the "fair" amount of compensation should be decided by developers seems ridiculous to me. Apple is not a charity, nor do they exist to be the world's R&D department. Much of what the Europeans are doing feels like protectionism.

That said, there are plenty of examples where Apple disadvantages its own customers and stifles innovation—like forcing all browsers to use the same engine. This is where government action should focus. 

There is no evidence that EU forced Apple to go USB-C as Apple was already heading there. Yes they put it into law, but the market was already forcing Apple to go USB-C. Due to timing, EU got the credit. 

These statements are so telling: you all think the EU is all about Apple. Fact is, the EU doesn’t give a SHIT about Apple: the USB-C standardisation was about getting EVERYBODY to unify their charging. Apple was already headed there because they aren’t stupid and knew it was coming (and they probably talk regularly with the Commission), having sat out the horrific micro-USB suggestion. 

The EU rightfully gets the credit for kicking everybody into supporting a single standard — they’d already been working with various manufacturers for a decade before Apple finally switched their iPhones, as well. 

Why does everybody have to unify their charging standard? Europe has all kinds of electrical "standards" so why don't they adopt America's standard? There's no way America will adopt any non-American electrical standard. This is the EU having a double standard. They want to keep their standard and force others to adopt theirs even if it's inferior to others. How many electronic products are actually developed by the EU? Not anywhere near the number developed in the USA yet the EU continues to force American companies to do the stupid things the EU demands they do. 

"Why does everyone have to unify their charging standards?" 

Please read the impact assessments and the preamble to the legislation because you obviously haven't done that. The answer to your question is there. 

'Standardisation' is a common goal in many fields but there are always exceptions, even within standards. The more ingrained a national standard, the harder it is to standardise across a bloc. That is why, in the case of electrical equipment we have power supplies that cover a range of options.

The common charger initiative was relatively easy to implement in that sense (but there are exceptions there too) because of the fast moving pace of that industry, which is not limited to mobile phones by the way and does allow for better options down the line. The difference will be that the changes are implemented uniformly across industry.

No one is asking America to adopt non-American standards. America can do as it pleases and EU companies have to comply. Just like US companies (and EU companies) have to comply with EU regulations if they want to do business here.