HMRC stings Apple with £136 million bill for back taxes
Tech giants are often criticised for using complex tax loopholes to bank more of their profits than arguably they should, but occasionally the authorities do manage to find fault in their accounts. Following “an extensive audit” of Apple’s books, HM Revenue & Customs scored itself an additional £136 million in back taxes, plus interest, from the company. The Financial Times spotted the payment in the financials of Apple Europe, a UK subsidiary that performs sales support, marketing and other duties for other Apple subsidiaries. According to the FT, HMRC reasoned that Apple Europe did not receive appropriate commission for sales leads from an Ireland-based subsidiary over a number of years up to 2015. Less commission, less taxable income… you get the idea.
Apple Europe’s financials say the £136 million adjustment “reflects the company’s increased activity,” and we can’t definitively know HMRC’s side of the story since it doesn’t “comment on the tax affairs of individual companies.” Apple Europe also mentioned tax payments will increase in the future to reflect this new understanding with HMRC. Commenting on the news, Apple issued the following statement:
“We know the important role that tax payments play in society. Apple pays all that we owe according to tax laws and local customs in the countries where we operate. As a multinational business and the largest taxpayer in the world, Apple is regularly audited by tax authorities around the world. HMRC recently concluded a multiyear audit of our UK accounts and the settlement we reached with HMRC is reflected in our recently filed accounts.”
The HMRC’s £136 million is just a drop in the ocean that is Apple’s bank account, though the company is due to start paying Ireland the €13 billion it owes in back taxes there any day now. European regulators declared back in 2016 the tax breaks Apple was and had been receiving from the Irish government were illegal, resulting in billions owed to the country. Not that Ireland is the only tax-friendly territory in Europe Apple’s set up shop in, of course.
Source: Financial Times (paywalled)
Brilliant turns your light switches into connected-home hubs
Brilliant plugs directly into your home’s existing light-switch ports, and it controls a slew of smart home devices, including lights, the Ring doorbell, Nest thermostat, Sonos speakers, Amazon Alexa and more. This is a control panel built for everyday folks, rather than businesses, and it has a price to match. A single Brilliant panel starts at $200 and maxes out at $350 for a four-switch set (that’s $50 for each additional switch). The whole shebang will be available at the end of February.
The basic Brilliant panel features a touchscreen, camera and microphone. This allows users to see who’s at the door via the Ring doorbell (and unlock it, if you like what you see), or start a video intercom conversation with someone in another room (if you have two Brilliant switches, that is). You can also ask Alexa to do things via Brilliant, and the company promises Google Assistant compatibility is on its way. Brilliant connects to Sonos speakers for now, though developers plan to add standard Bluetooth connectivity down the line.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.
Sony’s $30,000 4K short-throw projector hides powerful sound
We’ve been eying Sony’s short-throw projectors for the past few years, but they’ve always been too obscenely expensive to really take seriously. Well, that’s not changing this year. In fact, the new LSPX-A1 is actually more expensive than last year’s $25,000 model at $30,000. But, with that extra cost comes a major new feature: six speakers that simulate 360-degree atmospheric sound.
The LSPX-A1 also looks like more of a high-end piece of furniture, with its sleek marble top and wooden shelf. Those two glass feet also act as tweeters, thanks to built-in actuators. And, of course, there’s a subwoofer hiding underneath. In a brief demo, the projector did a decent job of spitting out a 120-inch 4K image from just 9.6-inches feet away from a wall. It wasn’t astoundingly bright, but that could have been due to the less-than-ideal viewing conditions. One major downside: While it supports HDR10, there’s no Dolby Vision.
In terms of sound, the six speakers easily managed to fill a small conference room which was about the size of a typical living room. But while it’s nice to have an all-in-one speaker solution, it didn’t actually sound like something that cost $30,000. I’ve heard $500 speakers with a better sense of detail and presence. Honestly, though, this projector isn’t meant for a discerning audience — it’s for folks with money to burn.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.
Waze’s crowd-sourced traffic info comes to Ford Sync 3 cars
In 2016, Ford wisely decided to offer Apple’s CarPlay and Android Auto on all its Sync 3 infotainment system-equipped 2017 vehicles, and owners are seeing more benefits from that at CES 2018. Ford announced that it now supports Waze’s traffic and navigation app directly from your iPhone. After you plug it into any of the vehicle’s USB ports, the app will appear on the Sync 3 touchscreen, letting you control it from there or use voice commands.
Waze, owned by Google, gathers traffic information from you and shares it, telling others if there’s a traffic jam along your route, for instance. You can be even more helpful by directly relaying unknown accidents, construction and other issues. Waze’s navigation system can then help you pick the quickest route, tell you about HOV lanes, relay your arrival time to friends and family and even find the cheapest gasoline nearby.
As long as you keep your Waze iOS app updated, you’ll have the latest version on a Sync 3 car, which is one of the benefits of Ford’s wide-open system. It also unveiled Alexa support at CES 2018, giving you voice-controlled music, news and 25,000 other skills. It’s odd that the automaker didn’t mention Waze Android support, since Google owns both Android and Waze, but we’ve reached out for more info.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.
CabinR’s travel bags keep thieves away with an annoying alarm
Not everyone is good at keeping track of their personal belongings, like a backpack or a messenger bag. So CabinR, a startup based out of Hong Kong, wants to help you feel safer on a journey. The company has created two bags, a backpack and a messenger model, that feature an alarm system powered by RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags to (hopefully) keep any potential thieves away from your stuff. It works quite simply: On the bag, there’s an alarm device that you activate by pressing a button, and the only way to deactivate is by tapping an RFID plastic card on it.
If you don’t do that and open the bag, its sensors will detect movement and create a loud, annoying sound that can only be turned off with your personal CabinR card. The shortcoming is that, if someone really wants to, they can just step on it and break it to shut it off. This is important because CabinR’s bags don’t have any GPS or other location sensors, so if someone breaks the alarm system, there’s no way to know where they took the backpack or messenger bag. That said, the company says it plans to bring those types of features to its products in the future.
CabinR is set to launch a Kickstarter campaign on January 11th, where early-bird backers will be able to get one of the bags for about $120. They’re clearly not perfect, but at least CabinR has the right idea.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.
iPhone X Sales Were ‘Stellar’ in Several Countries During First Month of Availability
Kantar Worldpanel’s newest smartphone OS data details the “stellar” performance of the iPhone X in multiple markets around the world during November, amid an overall “mixed performance” for iOS devices from September to November 2017. While Apple’s piece of the smartphone ecosystem fell in Great Britain, the United States, Japan, and Australia, the company saw ongoing growth in urban China during this period.
Specifically, iOS dropped 3.8 percentage points in the U.S. when compared to the year-ago period, resulting in a total smartphone OS sales share of 39.8 percent. In the U.S., Android grew 4 percentage points to capture 59.4 percent of the smartphone OS market.
Kantar noted that in the U.S. the iPhone X was outsold by the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus in November, coming in third and helping Apple capture the three top spots for the best-selling smartphone models that month. The researchers said that Apple “easily” beat Samsung’s Galaxy S8, which landed at sixth place.
In China, Kantar said that iOS “continues to impress” with a growth of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year and sitting at 24.3 percent of the smartphone OS market in the country. At the same time, Android fell 4.6 percentage points, but it still owns 75.5 percent of the smartphone OS share in China.
Kantar Worldpanel global director Dominic Sunnebo explained that Apple’s growth in China during this period was helped by “staggering” demand for the iPhone X, despite its high price tag, and came from users who were mostly switching sides from rival smartphone makers.
“Apple was riding on the back of some momentum before the iPhone X release but demand for latest model in urban China has been staggering given its price point.
“Apple is now back on form – the iPhone X was the top selling model in urban China in November, with a market share of 6.0%. Unlike in Europe and the US, where the vast majority of new early iPhone X sales came from existing Apple smartphone owners, in urban China there are significant numbers of Huawei, Xiaomi and Samsung customers switching to the new iPhone models, which they deem a cut above the rest.”
Despite an overall percentage point loss for Apple in Great Britain from September to November (down 4.2 points), Kantar said that for the month of November only, “Apple achieved its highest share in more than three years.” The company reached 49.4 percent of the market in November thanks to iPhone X demand, beating out Samsung and “easily regaining” the number one sales spot for the month.
For most markets, Kantar wondered how long Apple will be able to keep its sales momentum going with the smartphone’s high price tag. Numerous reports in recent weeks have discussed the same topic, with analysts predicting “weakened demand” in Q1 2018 now that early adopters have received their iPhone X.
Related Roundup: iPhone XTag: Kantar WorldpanelBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
Discuss this article in our forums
Shoneel Kolhatkar on why Samsung brought the Galaxy Note’s S Pen to a PC
As one of the largest technology companies in the world, Samsung was omnipresent at CES 2018, with a host of new and enhanced products. In personal computing, its most significant introductions include a pair of new pen-enabled notebooks in the Notebook 7 Spin and the Notebook 9 Pen, to go along with a long-lasting Notebook 9, and some enhanced displays that improve performance and quality.
Shoneel Kolhatkar, Samsung Senior Director, Product Marketing, stopped by the Digital Trends booth and began his session talking about the Notebook 9 Pen. This is a 13.3-inch convertible 2-in-1 that brings Samsung’s extensive S Pen capabilities to a Windows 10 notebook. Kolhatkar described the Notebook 9 Pen as “the best of productivity and the best of portability,” and went on to focus on the functionality brought to Samsung notebooks by the S Pen software.
Next, Kolhatkar discussed the importance of the “prosumer,” or the typical consumer who uses PCs to get work done. Clearly, Samsung is focused on providing solutions that meet the needs of consumers — watching video and playing casual games, for example — while providing real productivity enhancements like the Action Memo utility that allows users to take a screenshot, draw, and more on any web page and the S Notes app that allows user to create notes while saving audio recordings and syncing everything to the Samsun cloud.
Kothatkar also discussed Samsung’s desire to match PC functionality to that provided by Samsung smartphones. For example, the S Pen from a Samsung Note 8 will work on the Notebook 9 Pen and vice versa. And, the notebook can be synced with a Samsung smartphone for transferring notes and other information that’s created using the S Pen technology.
There’s more to learn, including an overview of Samsung’s other laptop offering, the Notebook 9, which skips the S Pen but packs in a 75 watt-hour battery for up to 19 hours of battery life and tosses in an Nvidia discrete GPU for enhanced graphics capabilities. Check out the video for more on Samsung at CES 2018, including an overview of Samsung’s general strategy to leverage its success in smartphones to help grow its presence in notebooks as well as where its Bixby digital assistant fits into the picture.
Editors’ Recommendations
- Samsung’s Notebook 9’s S Pen challenges Google and Apple, sans batteries
- Samsung refreshes its Notebook 9 laptops for 2018, adds model supporting S Pen
- Watch Samsung’s CES 2018 press conference live at 2 p.m. PT today
- It’s almost here! Here’s the best of what’s coming at CES 2018
- The Pixelbook nearly doubles Samsung’s Chromebook Pro in price. Is it justified?
On vacation? A robot could soon be carrying your bags to your hotel room for you
You might remember Rosie, the robot from the cartoon The Jetsons, rolling around the Jetsons’ home, making beds and serving meals straight out of a food machine with just the push of a button. But while we’re not quite there with the technology just yet, a trio of concept robots announced by LG this week at CES might be getting us closer to life at Skypad apartments.
LG announced the new members of their Cloi robot squad for commercial use at a press conference Monday — the porter robot, the serving robot, and the shopping robot. All are larger, rolling versions of the Cloi home robot LG debuted at CES last year. They all have round, flat faces with eyes that blink, and are about three feet tall.
“As an important part of our future growth engine, LG is committed to expanding its portfolio of robots that can deliver real convenience and innovation in our customers’ lives,” said Ryu Hye-jung, head of the smart solution business division for LG’s Home Appliance & Air Solutions Company. “We will continue to develop a wide range of products across commercial and home robots while seeking new opportunities to contribute to the advancement of the robotics industry.”
As you might have guessed already, the porter robot will pull duty at places like hotels, where it won’t just carry your bags for you but also help you check in and out of your room. The serving robot, which is equipped with an enclosed slide-out tray, will bring drinks and food out to people at restaurants and airports before rolling back into the kitchen. The shopping robot is equipped with a — you guessed it — a shopping cart, where shoppers can use a bar code reader on the device to scan items as they place them in the cart. The “face” of the robot displays the items scanned and can assist with checkout.
LG has been creating concept robots for awhile. A multilingual airport robot is currently being tested at South Korea’s Incheon International Airport and is designed to assist travelers by giving information about flights. Regardless, you’ll have to wait a while until you can see them during your stay in Las Vegas or anywhere else — LG has no timeline for when they’ll be available, or for how much.
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Do you use stock SMS apps?
The pros of going third-party.
There are a lot of benefits to using Android, and one of them is the sheer amount of customization that you have over your UI, default applications, etc. The Google Play Store is filled with third-party SMS apps to replace the one that comes preinstalled on your phone by default, and while some of them aren’t that great, there are a lot of excellent ones to choose from.
We’ve previously talked about our top picks for the best of these apps, but some of our forum users recently approached this conversation a bit differently by talking about the main reasons they choose to ditch stock texting apps in the first place.
Here are some of the top answers.
mysamsungs7e
01-08-2018 11:52 PM“
for the reason that we like Android: variety.
Reply
cwbcpa
01-09-2018 06:44 AM“
Choice is a good thing. Don’t like stock, choose something else. You like stock, stick with it. If an app is good and you find it useful, don’t whine about kicking a couple bucks to a developer. They put work in and if they don’t get paid for that work, they won’t develop better apps.
Reply
Almeuit
01-09-2018 12:24 AM“
Different colors.. fonts.. etc. Also some functionality. Such as I have it set to use MMS if it’s over 160 characters.. therefore long SMS messages don’t get split up by carriers since it’ll send as a file with MMS.
I also like the quick reply function and the customization to how notifications work with Textra over stock.
To me that’s worth the little I dished out for the app. I paid a few…
Reply
01-09-2018 02:03 AM“
Total customisation from colours to sounds. Get a long sms…..no problem with textra – but on sammy default I must tap the first part of sms to take me to the next page which shows the full sms???? Weird! Only thing with textra is that I can’t read my sms on my gear S3 whereas sammy can. As for the cost of buying apps you’re only paying for someone’s time & effort so a couple of $ or even a few…
Reply
Now, we’d like to hear from you – Do you use stock SMS apps? Why or why not?
Join the conversation in the forums!
How to properly secure your Android phone
Know how to use the tools you’re given to keep your phone and your data secure.
Google, Apple, and Microsoft have great tools for managing your online security. Some implementations may be technically better than others, but you can be reasonably sure that your data — both on the phone and in the cloud — is safe. If you need more reassurance or have different needs, third-party companies are available that work with the big three to provide enterprise-grade security assurances. No method is 100% secure, and ways to get around it are found regularly, then patched quickly so the cycle can repeat. But these methods are usually complicated and very time-consuming and rarely widespread.
This means you are the weakest link in any chain of security. If you want to keep your data — or your company’s — secured, you need to force someone to use these complicated, time-consuming methods if they wanted to get into your phone. Secure data needs to be difficult to obtain and difficult to decipher if someone does get ahold of it. With Android, there are several things you can do to make someone have to work really hard to get your data — hopefully so hard that they don’t bother trying.
Use a secure lock screen
Having a secure lock screen is the easiest way to limit access to the data on your phone or the cloud. Whether you just left your phone on your desk while you had to walk away for a moment or two or if you’ve lost your phone or had it stolen, a lock screen that isn’t simple to bypass is the best way to limit that access.
The first step is to lock the front door.
If your company issued you a phone or you work for someone with a BYOD policy, there’s a good chance your phone is forced by a security policy to have password protection, and your IT department may have assigned you a username and password to unlock it.
Any method that locks your phone is better than none, but generally, a random six-digit PIN is enough to require someone to have special knowledge and tools to bypass it without triggering any self-destruct settings. Longer, randomized alpha-numeric passwords mean they will need the right tools and a lot of time. Entering a long complex password on a phone is inconvenient for you and we tend not to use things that inconvenience us so alternatives have been thought up that use patterns, pictures, voiceprints, and a host of other things easier to do than typing a long password. Read the instructions and overview for each and decide which works best for you. Just make sure you’re using one.
Encryption and two-factor authentication
Encrypt all of your local data and protect your data in the cloud with two-factor authentication on your account logins.
Recent versions of Android come encrypted by default. Android 7 uses file-level encryption for faster access and granular control. Your corporate data may have another level of security to reinforce this. Don’t do anything to try and lessen it. A phone that needs to be unlocked to decrypt the data is one that only someone dedicated is going to try to crack.
Online accounts all need to use a strong password and two-factor authentication if offered. Don’t use the same password across multiple sites and use a password manager to keep track of them. A centralized spot with all your account credentials is worth risking if it means you’ll actually use good passwords.
More: Two-factor authentication: What you need to know
Know what you’re tapping on
Never open a link or message from someone you don’t know. Let those people email you if they need to make the first contact, and offer them the same courtesy and use email instead of a DM or a text message to get in touch with them the first time. And never click a random web link from someone you don’t trust. I trust the Wall Street Journal’s Twitter account, so I’ll click obscured Twitter links. But I won’t for someone I don’t trust as much.
Trust is a major part of security at every level.
The reason isn’t paranoia. Malformed videos were able to cause an Android phone to freeze up and had the potential to allow elevated permissions to your file system where a script could silently install malware. A JPG or PDF file was shown to do the same on the iPhone. Both instances were quickly patched, but it’s certain that another similar exploit will be found, especially when we see stories of flaws like Meltdown and Spectre affecting all our digital things. Files sent through email will have been scanned and links in the email body are easy to spot. The same can’t be said for a text message or a Facebook DM.
Only install trusted applications
For most, that means Google Play. If an app or link directs you to install it from somewhere else, decline until you know more. This means you won’t need to enable the “unknown sources” setting required to install apps that didn’t originate from a Google server in the Play Store. Only installing apps from the Play Store means Google is monitoring their behavior, not you. They are better at it than we are.
If you need to install apps from another source you need to make sure you trust the source itself. Actual malware that probes and exploits the software on your phone can only happen if you approved the installation. And as soon as you’re finished installing or updating an app this way, turn the Unknown sources setting back off as a way to combat trickery and social engineering to get you to install an app manually.
With Android Oreo, Google has made it easier to grant trust to a source so you won’t have to flip any switches or toggles after you’ve set things up. This is something Google is always working on because they put their name on the back of every phone and look bad when stories about malware on Android happen.
More: Everything you need to know about the Unknown Source setting
None of this will make your phone 100% secure. 100% security isn’t the goal here and never is. The key is to make any data that’s valuable to someone else difficult to get. The higher the level of difficulty, the more valuable the data has to be in order to make getting it worthwhile.
Some data is more valuable than others, but all of it is worth protecting.
Pictures of my dogs or maps to the best trout streams in the Blue Ridge Mountains won’t require the same level of protection because they aren’t of value to anyone but me. Quarterly reports or customer data stored in your corporate email may be worth the trouble to get and need extra layers.
Luckily, even low-value data is easy to keep secure using the tools provided and these few tips.
Updated January 2018: In light of the recent round of web security issues, we have refreshed this page with up-to-date information.
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