marktime

This is really a non-issue for Apple. Foreign taxes paid are a credit against Apple's US tax liability. Assuming that at some point Apple repatriates its cash to the US, as long as the marginal US tax rate at that time is greater than what the EU is claiming this won't have any impact on Apple's overall tax liability. Apple has never been against repatriating the money, they have been against paying a 35% tax rate when their competitors (Samsung et. al.) get to pay a much lower than the rate. At a 20% rate I'm sure Tim Cook would bring a lot of that cash back to the US.

Otoh, whatever is paid to the EU is tax money that the US won't collect. This is more of a grab by the EU on money that would otherwise end up in the US Treasury. You would think that the US would be a lot more energetic in fighting the EU on this.

I think it's very funny to contrast Kanye West with Taylor Swift. When she thought that Apple shoukd do something (pay artists during trial periods) she made a cogent, rational argument to which Apple responded right away. Kanye West on the other hand is just flaming.

Time for Kanye to take a lesson from Taylor.

The DA was later heard to say that "the phone may also contain proof that the pyramids were landing pads for alien spaceships."

I assume that one of the first things Tim Cook did was to ask his hardware engineers to get started moving the autowipe feature into the ARM processor silicon so that this government mandated workaround won't work with future generations of iPhones.