cnocbui

ireland said:

The EU has too much power it's messing up Europe completely. Each state should return to full independence and Brussells should be broken up.

Maybe.  Then you have the old Europe with separate currencies, border controls, import duties, regulations. A whole variety of national corporate tax rates to pay, most a lot higher than 12.5%.  There would be no single market for Apple to operate in, they would need to have subsidiaries or agents in each and every country they wanted to operate in.  I bet if you put that prospect to Apple they would have near meltdown.  The increased costs Apple would face would likely make that 8 Billion they may have to pay to Ireland seem like small change.

The real biggie is the Euro.  It has a lot going for it but it seems like it just isn't workable in the long run from an economics perspective as the individual Euro states are just so diverse and each really needs different economic settings.  One size just doesn't fit all.

sflocal said:

crowley said:

Company CFO favors his company's interests. Shocker.

Fortunately, the company CFO is not the designated arbiter of fairness when it comes to questions of the company's financial compliance.

Apple did nothing wrong, and the CFO is emphasizing that as well.  We all know that, and so do you.  This is not about the typical run-of-the-mill CFO that is purposely doing something shady to save tax money.  

If the EU found that Ireland did something wrong, then it is Ireland ONLY that should foot the bill.  Apple should have zero requirements to be forced to retroactively pay back taxes that were not required at the time.  Zero.  Screw the EU.

Ireland can't foot the bill.  The whole point of this exercise, which almost no one seems to get, is the idea that there is a suspicion that Ireland gave Apple, and probably some other companies as well, an unfair advantage over their rivals by not collecting 12.5% of their profits.  The only way to redress that unfair advantage is for Ireland to collect the taxes that they should have collected in the first place.  There is no fine payable to the EU or taxes to be forwarded to the EU.  There is no 'bill' to foot.

stevie said:

It would be a lot more fair if Ireland gave a bunch of tax refunds to Apple, given how much Apple helps Ireland's economy.  They have NO gratitude for Apple!

What an amusing idea.  It could set a trend.  The IRS could give Apple huge refunds too because they do so much for the US.  Now there's a thought, and of course to be fair, they should do the same for each and every mutinational - the great taxes back movement.

Of course, Stevie, your personal taxes and those of your fellow taxpayers would have to be increased substantially to make up for the returned taxes, but I am sure you wouldn't mind that.

jfc1138 said:

ETA: I'd drop the title size from my cutandpaste off Apple's news release from back then but I don't know how....

Paste it into a txt only document in TextEdit or TextWrangler then copy it again and paste in the forum.

gatorguy said:

Well that settles it. If Apple now says it's "cool" they have a product on the way for that slot. 

Maybe.  My son and I think VR needs a killer app to trigger ignition.  If Valve had come up with a VR Half Life 3, that might have done it and kicked things off but they haven't so we are wondering what these soon to be released VR headsets are going to be used for.  They require an expensive graphics card to run and an all-round high performance machine and the headsets and and associated peripherals aren't cheap.  Why would people people invest in this when theres pretty much nothing to do with them once acquired?

Do you recall criticisms of the Samsung S6 because it had such a high resolution screen and therefore would waste power driving it?  Those pixels were necessary when an S6 is used for VR with the Gear headset because each eye only sees half the screen so each half has to have a lot of pixels.  Doesn't seem so silly now considering Samsung are the only Player to have a working and shipped VR product.

Given the iPhone is Apple's mainstay and they seem to be putting a lot of grunt into the A processors and GPUs, and taking account of the OLED screen rumours, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple pursued the same route Samsung have with the iP7 having a very high pixel count/density OLED screen and serious GPU power in the A10 to drive it for VR purposes when used in a Gear-like accessory.