Our Taxing Problems

Tim Cook from Apple testified to Congress yesterday. To summarize, Apple moves money around the world to reduce/eliminate taxes as the law proscribes.

Our tax laws make this possible! This is a face palm moment, right?

Before we let Apple off the hook, let’s remember tax policy is greatly influenced by lobbying which is paid for by people/corporations whose ox is about to be gored.

During the last election Mitt Romney said he paid all the tax he owed and not a penny more. Left out was these were tax rules Bain Capital had rallied for.

What I’m getting at is, when someone says they’re just following the law, take that with a grain of salt.

Meanwhile, what’s going on here with Apple has been going on in England with Google.

From BBC.com: Google’s boss has told UK politicians to “sort out” the tax system, after criticisms of the internet search giant by Labour leader Ed Miliband.

Mr Miliband told a meeting of the firm’s staff that he was “disappointed” it had paid just £6m in corporation tax on UK sales worth £3.2bn in 2011.

But executive chairman Eric Schmidt said Google followed “the tax laws of the countries we operate in”.

I’m sure they have, but I close my eyes and see accountants playing Twister on the books!

There was a time when big business and the American dream were closely aligned. We could afford to give corporations a little slack, because in the end we knew they’d employ people and drive prosperity. Those days are over. We shouldn’t favor corporations with gifts for acts they no longer perform.

We can’t afford big corporations being financial takers. We just can’t.

Huffington Post: Citizens for Tax Justice, which advocates steeper corporate taxes, said it surveyed major U.S. companies and found that 26 on average paid no net federal income taxes between 2008 and 2011, among them General Electric and Duke Energy .

“This isn’t fair to the rest of us,” said Bob McIntyre, director of the left-leaning tax research group.

No joke. It isn’t.

This doesn’t just go on with money moving to Ireland or the Cayman Islands. There is a state-to-state competition as well.

Take a look at your phone bill (if AT&T is your home or cell carrier). Look down near the bottom for a copyright notice.

Since 2008 all of the current and past AT&T trademarks and previous regional Bell names are now owned by various Nevada Limited Partnerships based at 645 East Plumb Lane Reno, Nevada. This office location is currently an AT&T main office-formerly occupied by SBC/Nevada Bell.

That means when your Connecticut phone bill comes, a rights fee is paid to AT&T Intellectual Property for displaying logos, etc. That lowers AT&T’s taxes here by shifting the income to Nevada where there’s no corporate income tax! Any time you see an AT&T logo, money is being moved to Nevada.

The problem with fixing the tax code is those who want the code fixed (you and me) will be outspent and outmaneuvered by those who want to avoid paying taxes. I wish I had the solution.

Back in the Eisenhower administration, Charles Wilson was nominated for Secretary of Defense. He had been president of General Motors so there was concern he’d make any decision that affected GM in the company’s favor. He said he would not…

“because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa”. – Wikipedia

Those days are gone.

The Tablet Quandary

It’s thin and fast with a full complement of ports, quad core processor and high resolution screen hidden behind scratch resistant Gorilla Glass.

I have been told by Helaine that Santa would like to bring me something if he only knew what I wanted. I have been toying around with the idea of a tablet, but I’ve been totally confused and undecided.

Actually that’s not true. I’ve eliminated one model. I’ve decided not to go with an iPad.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know my dislike of Apple’s tight grip on hardware and software. You might think you own your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone, but try and use it in a way Apple doesn’t like! You’re in for a rude awakening.

As it turns out I am happy with Android, the other ‘favored’ tablet operating system. It’s what’s on my phone and it seems to be geekily sweet.

After dinner tonight (Chinese in Newington) Steve Parker and I popped into Best Buy on the Berlin Turnpike. They have a pretty nice selection of tablets, but they’re all tethered for security purposes. That makes it a lot more difficult to feel the tablet out.

At first I thought 7″ might be a nice size. Now I’m leaning toward 10″. The 7″ just felt too small.

On the other hand the 10″ models I held were too bulky… too thick and heavy.

After voluminous reading I’m leaning toward the ASUS Transformer Prime, which won’t be released until Saturday! The specs are crazy. It’s thin and fast with a full complement of ports, quad core processor and high resolution screen hidden behind scratch resistant Gorilla Glass.

There’s an optional keyboard and docking unit. No appeal for me at all.

It’s pricey. $500 puts it near the top end of Android tablets.

There’s still plenty of time to ponder. I’ll let you know when I move into the pre-purchase obsession phase.

The iPhone 4S Is Here–So?

What was shiny and exciting a few years ago produces yawns today. That’s why so much of what was announced today seemed like catch-up.

“Disappointing.” That’s what my friend Peter just said on the phone. He was referring to Apple’s iPhone announcements earlier this afternoon. As Apple show-and-tells go this was subdued.

Though many expected an iPhone 5 instead it’s the iPhone 4S. Sure it’s reworked, but it will look the same and to many that will eliminate the cool factor that leads to some upgrades.

The iPhone 4S does have an upgraded CPU which should eliminate much of the lag that’s the bane of smartphone users. More efficient battery use is promised, as it always is. The 4S will also make my ex-pat friend Farrell happy as even Verizon’s version is now a “World Phone,” capable of working on nearly any cell network anywhere.

I did a story on the 4S this afternoon on FoxCT. There’s a limited amount of time available there let me expand on something I hinted at in my piece.

Apple has been an innovator and category killer in everything from smartphones to tablets to computers to music players. At some point a product becomes mature. That’s happened here. Others have subsumed Apple’s earlier breakthroughs. Often they’ve improved trails Apple blazed! What was shiny and exciting a few years ago produces yawns today. That’s why so much of what was announced today seemed like catch-up.

Many of Apple’s new features are already features in Android (and possibly Windows latest phone operating system which I am less familiar with). Other features like the Siri assistant were originally stand alone products. Apple can call them new, but I played with Siri before it was purchased by Apple.

To most people Apple’s strength is their control of every part of the platform. It’s their hardware, their software and apps they approved in their store. That keeps the process clean. Apple products just work and their user interface is incredibly intuitive.

Because I’m a geek at heart Apple’s end-to-end control is more a problem than feature! I don’t want them to be my nanny.

I am expecting my Andriod based Samsung Galaxy Sii any second now. I don’t think I’m giving up anything.

iPhone 4 Solution: The Part That Doesn’t Make Sense

Unfortunately some of Jobs’ presentation didn’t make sense to me, specifically where he said all smartphones suffer signal degradation when you hold them the wrong way.

Steve Jobs gave another iPhone 4 presentation today. This wasn’t as joyous as his first because he was trying to undo the damage from a small technical problem that Apple milked into a large PR problem.

The solution to Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna woes is free cases for all! Even Consumer Reports was hoping for that solution. Who am I to not approve?

Unfortunately some of Jobs’ presentation didn’t make sense to me, specifically where he said all smartphones suffer signal degradation when you hold them the wrong way.

  • The iPhone’s antenna is external–actually part of the case
  • Holding the phone with your finger in the wrong spot on the antenna detunes it attenuating the signal
  • A plastic or rubber case/bumper will solve the problem by moving your finger off the antenna

But Steve, the other smartphones already have plastic around their antennas because all the other smartphones have their antennas inside the case.

Either

  • A case solves the iPhone’s problems
  • or

  • The other ‘pre-cased’ phones really don’t suffer this problem.

It doesn’t seem like it can be both. It’s not a big deal, but I still feel like I’m being spun. I hate being spun.

The Dead iPhone Lives!

Uh oh. That’s not how this is supposed to work.

I tried to fire it up again and again a few seconds after the Apple logo appeared my phone shut itself down. I felt like Sully attempting to restart his engines before landing in the Hudson.

For me it was a typical morning–meaning it started after 1:00 PM. After checking a message on the iPhone I tried to respond… and nothing! The faux keyboard was faux working. I’ve been around computers long enough to know the answer to most of life’s problems is a reboot.

I held the button at the top of the iPhone firmly until the unit had put itself to sleep. Then I pressed again watching the Apple logo appear on the screen. A few seconds later the phone went dark.

Uh oh. That’s not how this is supposed to work.

I tried to fire it up again and again a few seconds after the Apple logo appeared my phone shut itself down. I felt like Sully attempting to restart his engines before landing in the Hudson.

My expertise is tech support. Most of my friends come to me. This time it was me who was at a loss. That’s not unusual. Most tech support problems comes after an unlikely sequence of events. Specific individual problems are rare, but with an installed base in the tens of millions even rare iPhone problems are well documented.

In cases like this Google is your friend! Here’s my exact search

“iphone apple comes on then shuts down”

Google’s first return was

“iphone wont start apple logo then shuts off – Mac Forums”

Bingo!

It looked like my phone was in an endless loop. As it attempted to boot the iPhone its operating system came across a bad piece of data and gave up! This kind of circumstance shouldn’t happen but is anticipated. Apple built in a way to restore a phone like mine.

Because the iPhone has a limited set of buttons this restore requires an exact sequence of multiple presses while the phone is tethered to my PC and iTunes is running. It didn’t take long for the restore to begin–a restore which wipes the phone clean then installs the newest iPhone firmware.

My phone back hadn’t been backed up since the middle of April. Anything new I’d added since then is lost. I just put Steve Parker and Ryan Spain’s numbers in yesterday. Gonzo!

Restoring all my stuff isn’t as much a pain as it is time consuming. This will be a one to two hour procedure. Some ‘non-factory authorized’ modifications will have to be restored later in an even more tedious dance.

Adding a specific reason would be a good conclusion to this post. It’s funny. Until this very second I never wondered why it happened. Unfortunately I’ll never know. In fact the folks at Apple probably won’t know either.

The new reality of our 21st Century life is we’ve made some of our tools so complex it impossible to follow their every move. Even worse it’s impossible to anticipate their every outcome. My iPhone and the stock market have a lot in common this week.

I Love/Hate My iPhone.

Contempt toward me and my fellow iPhoners gushes from Cupertino. They are concerned about me the same way my 20 minute on-hold-call is important to my bank!

The little counter that ticks off call time on my iPhone says I’ve racked up 6 days, 20 hours since early October! That’s a lot, isn’t it?

There’s no comparable counter for Internet use. It would surely be a much larger number!

This iPhone of mine has changed my life. It is more than I’d hoped for. There are so many ways it’s useful.

For the first time in my life I’m really keeping a calendar–really! It’s so easy to do it would be stupid not to. It syncs with Google’s calendar magically.

I am watching the Phillies most nights as I work at my desk. The Phillies games stream right to the phone. The quality is great, though a few years from now my opinion of great will surely change.

It is my book, my magazine, my newspaper. It is NPR in the car when the show I want is on a station with ratty reception. When needed it’s also my GPS.

Facebook and Twitter, though easily accessible on the phone are still mainly relegated to more traditional computers. Not so email which is often read and quickly answered right on its slab screen. The phrase “Sent from my iPhone” is really a euphemism for “message will be short, curt, poorly formatted.”

Dozens of the photos used to illustrate blog entries were shot on the iPhone. Under the right circumstances it can produce decent photography. That being said, good shots take work on this camera.

The iPhone has been my platform of choice recently for video. I’ve shot and edited little web stories on the iPhone. Crazy.

And yet with all I love about the iPhone there is so much I hate… starting with Apple and Steve Jobs. Contempt toward me and my fellow iPhoners gushes from Cupertino. It is only matched by Apple’s greed. They are concerned about me the same way my 20 minute on-hold-call is important to my bank!

Early on I called Apple “the controlling psychotic girlfriend of computing.” My mind hasn’t changed where that’s concerned. Seeing what’s gone on with Mark Fiore’s cartoons and Adobe Flash have only reinforced this opinion.

There is so much the iPhone can and should do, but won’t because it doesn’t seem to be in Steve Jobs’ best interest. So many parts of the system are walled off from each other. That reduces functionality. I want enhancements, not reductions.

In order to really take advantage of the iPhone you need to ‘jailbreak’ it. That frees the phone from many Apple imposed restrictions. It also voids the warranty if you’re caught.

There’s a rumor on the geek sites tonight Apple might be violating federal law with their warranty policies. A warranty can only be voided if your action might hurt the purchased item. Since Apple’s own software can be easily restored it should be a no harm, no foul situation.

There’s also the problem of power. If you own an iPhone you own auxiliary power sources. You have to. All the good things the iPhone does eat power!

There are power cables and wall warts stashed away at work and in my office at home. In the car there’s a plug for the cigarette lighter. I even bought a battery so the phone can be charged away from wall power.

If I had it to do over today I’d seriously consider one of the Android phones instead of my iPhone. I like the idea of an open source operating system and somewhat less draconian rules on what I can do with an item I own.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone not only is the best phone I’ve ever had, it’s the best toy ever! I don’t regret buying it. I’d just like an alternative when my contract’s up.

The iPhone is often too compelling for its own good. Helaine has reached for it threatening to throw it out, or at the very least introduce it to water! My fault, not hers. It’s tough to put down.

I coddle this phone like no piece of electronics I’ve ever owned before. It’s currently next to me nestled in a rubberized skin with a plastic screen protecting its glass screen. There is not a scratch on it.

A few days ago as a pajama wearing me walked to the bathroom Helaine said, “It’s in your pocket, isn’t it?”

Maybe an intervention is in order?