Are you alleging that Apple knowingly and intentionally made a misleading or false material statement about their finances and assets? Isn't that a crime for a public company?
No. Not at all.
They just arrived at a different valuation than the County did.
Did the County disclose their valuation methodology?
Yeah, while part of me would love to see a corporation called on shenanigans about declaring crazy undervaluation for tax dodging, on the other hand this opens up the ability for my government to vindictively seize my house if I appeal my house value.
Even if I know I can't get what their assessor says its worth, I still wouldn't want to move just because I declare a different viable price.
Apple's insanely-low Valuation, just like the County's insanely-high Valuation, just represent the "bookends" of a Negotiation-Window. Neither side is REALLY serious about those figures.
It would be funny to have the local municipality come in and take the property though eminent domain using Apple's valuation.
Eminent domain requires justly compensating Apple for the loss of their property: not paying Apple the Proposed Tax Assessment value or the Fair Market value, that's not necessarily sufficient for just compensation. Even if the market considers their property worth only $5, and they might, if for example the property has special value to Apple which all other potential businesses are unable to exploit in any way, because the nature of the property not meeting their needs --- if Apple uses that property to generate $1Billion a year in revenue, then the public has to pay Apple at least enough $$$$ to replace the property that would be lost with an equivalent property that generates the same or more revenue.
Quite frankly, there are VERY few companies, even in Silicon Valley, that would be able to effectively utilize such a humongous space. In that case, the buildings might very well sit vacant (and no taxes collected) for YEARS, even possibly DECADES.
Apple could very well be right, that on the "Market", Apple's campus may actually BE relatively worthless to pretty much anyone you could name.
And it may very well also cost considerable amounts of money to convert such a complex (especially the main "spaceship" building) to a structure suitable for multiple, independent tenants. It simply wasn't designed that way; quite the opposite, in fact.
So, I would say that Cupertino should just take their $56 million they are already draining Apple for, come up with a REASONABLE ***MARKET*** Valuation for the new Campus, and STFU.
Companies and people have a sole duty to lower there tax bill as much as possible. If it isn't written in law do not give Uncle Sam anymore than the law says.
If anyone finds information on how Apple calculated that $200 valuation please share. I searched but found nothing. An AppleInsider article did say this though: "It is unclear if the $200 valuations are for hundreds of dollars or are in fact for $200 million." ( https://appleinsider.com/artic... )
Congratulations for using the system properly. That's why they have an appeals process. So if you're defending Apple here, I'm guessing you got your house down to a $10 value?
Oh, get over yourself!
Apple is just starting way low to allow themselves the maximum-sized difference between their claimed valuation and the county's claimed valuation.
It's merely a negotiation tactic. Repeated to a lesser or greater extent by every single business large enough to retain a lawyer.
Why would the tax assessor care? It's not like he's going to get a bigger bonus if the property is worth more. Geez, get over mistrust for the government.
Right. Because blind trust of the Government has worked out so well for us ordinary citizens...
Oh, you mean people who's best interests are in generating as much tax as possible?
Exactly.
Having said that, obviously Apple isn't really serious about the $200 figure; they are just giving themselves the maximum window within which to negotiate.
Time marches on, and their haven't been any 32 bit Intel (or Apple) CPUs sold for nearly a DECADE. Add to that the fact that supporting "cruft" does nothing good to overall stability and complexity of an OS, and in the end, adds significantly to time/cost of regression-testing of said OSes.
64-bit CPUs run 32-bit code natively. Recompiling software whose source code may be long gone just to have higher memory requirements doesn't make a lot of sense.
And do those same CPUs also automatically replace missing Library Calls, too?
And, to be fair, even when Apple wishes to sunset a particular Framework or protocol, they give Devs. ample notice, Deprecating (but still supporting) said Framework or Protocol for several major revisions of whatever OS(es) are affected.
And yet in the last couple revisions of macOS, Final Cut Studio (pre-X) has been completely broken with almost no notice.
Almost NO Notice?!? HOW long has FCPX been out?!? SEVEN YEARS!!! It may (was) not wonderful at first; but pretty much all of the deficiencies of the first "X" version have been addressed at this point. Time to get with some of the new stuff!
Motion was broken with Sierra, and High Sierra wipes out the rest. No warning on upgrade that they're no longer supported, even though they made both.
So, Motion 5 and Compressor 4 are broken, too? I would kind of doubt that:
...you should also remember they were sued, successfully, by the patent troll that claimed to own the protocol...
Which would make them not patent trolls. They defended their patents against the most well-funded legal team in existence, and showed that the protocol used their invention. They most certainly did not claim to own the protocol.
They were/are Patent Trolls. First it was FaceTime, then it was iMessage. I didn't call them Patent Trolls, the entire Tech-Press did:
VirnetX patented something fairly obvious that they had no intention of ever bringing to market, which, after all, is the entire reason behind the Patent system, and simply lay-in-wait for someone with deep pockets to accidentally trip-into their patent-trap.
No. I just don't use iPhones and I have good success. Windows and Android don't really have these problems (extremely rare - especially for things like small utilities like I mentioned), while iOS and macOS both cut legacy support out constantly even in point releases.
I certainly wouldn't say anything even close to "Constantly". And while I don't know anything about Android, Windows has also, at least in recent years, been much more willing to "cut legacy support" for things.
And, to be fair, even when Apple wishes to sunset a particular Framework or protocol, they give Devs. ample notice, Deprecating (but still supporting) said Framework or Protocol for several major revisions of whatever OS(es) are affected.
For example: 32 Bit Apps on macOS: They have been "Deprecated" for at LEAST 2 (and I think actually 3 or 4) MAJOR versions of macOS/OS X, and yet, even in the still-to-be-released macOS Mojave, their execution is still supported. IMHO, that's reasonable.
Time marches on, and their haven't been any 32 bit Intel (or Apple) CPUs sold for nearly a DECADE. Add to that the fact that supporting "cruft" does nothing good to overall stability and complexity of an OS, and in the end, adds significantly to time/cost of regression-testing of said OSes.
As a user, I don't like it so much, either; but the proof is in the pudding: MacOS and iOS remain stable and secure, and Windows is STILL a mess of exploit-rich spaghetti code, the likes of which have never before been seen.
That only tells me that you select low quality tools. There are very very few software tools that I use that I would want to upgrade. Some, due to their nature, will require security updates. Others will not.
Spoken like a true naive idiot.
Sometimes, you don't get to choose the Toolchain, or all the choices suck in various and wonderous ways...
I have never used a program where I thought this program is done, absolutely perfect I will never need to upgrade it again.
Well I absolutely have. There are plenty of small utilities especially where I don't need anything new for the foreseeable future - so long as some OS update doesn't come in and sabotage/break it.
So, you just shot your own self in the foot with your final sentence.
Running a business is expensive. It is more then the sum of all its parts, it needs money in reserve, it needs to support what it has.
All of you statements are true. I write Windows Business Application s/w for a living. We charge what we want for software products we develop, and for custom development and support services... However, MS REQUIRES that we charge an annual "maintenance" fee for that. ALL of it, IIRC.
Do I like the idea? NO!
But I will say that I would imagine that our "cut" of the Maintenance is occasionally all that allows me to take home a paycheck, when sales and support-work is "thin". And in the end, I am positive that that benefits both my employer as well as our customers...
Remember when Pope Jobs said they were going to open up FaceTime and make it cross-platform?
If you remember that, you should also remember they were sued, successfully, by the patent troll that claimed to own the protocol. Jobs spoke without consulting with anyone, and prior to the lawsuit.
But all the Apple Hating Slashtards CONVEEENIENTLY forget THAT part...
I don't. You are indeed free to chose between a locked-down OS and one giving you more freedom. Some people don't really want freedom and are perfectly happy in jail as long as their cell is comfortable enough. They call it the "walled garden".
But unlike Jail, which almost NOBODY calls "home", people who have chosen iOS by and large do not refer to iOS as "Walled". This is NOT some cyber-variant of "Stockholm Syndrome" by the way; because, unlike the now-famous Stockholm Hostages, NOBODY is PREVENTING iOS Users from "leaving"; so by definition, there can be no Hostage-Kidnapper relationship under which to form Stockholm Syndrome.
I have always wondered why a Windows computer will CONSTANTLY access the Hard Drive, even when it is ostensibly at Idle, with no Applications running (except Explorer.exe). THAT'S the kind of stuff that is super-creepy to me, and it has been going on for YEARS.
No need to wonder. You can use a utility like Process Monitor to see what's going on. But then, this is on a PC without all these newfangled "security enclaves" so it's not hard to figure out what's what. Can't do that easily on a phone.
Interestingly, I also noticed recently that my PC hard drive goes almost constantly as well, but it does this when looking at the machine's firmware screen. I have no idea if this is normal behavior of the hard drive controller or if the firmware is doing some hidden stuff in the background, but I do know for a fact that Windows is not always responsible for hard drive activity. It may be the drive firmware doing some weird stuff on its own.
Sorry; but it CANNOT be hidden for any appreciable length of time. There are PLENTY of nerds with nothing better to do than to let their phone sit for a day or two and watch the WiFi traffic OUT of the Device. SOMEbody would have spotted this behavior with iOS devices by now. Period.
I'd like to believe that, but there's more than one CPU in most phones (and PCs) these days, and they work independently of the OS. Just getting the OS source or monitoring it is not enough -- you have to have access to all the firmware and ROM in the chips to know exactly what's going on, and all of that stuff is encrypted in hardware. It's not like the old days where only the main CPU and OS kernel were in total control. Case in point, people are still trying to figure out exactly how Intel ME works, even though it's been around for many years.
What does that have to do with examining Source Code?
Slashdot Mirror
You need a key founder/s to make companies survive long term.
Paging Herman Hollerith and Thomas Watson. Please come to the white courtesy phone.
No? Paging Thomas A. Edison or Cecil Rhodes.
No? Paging Will C Durant, Henry Ford, or Kiichiro Toyoda.
Damn, not having much luck with any of these guys.
How about W.K. Kellogg? Henri Nestle? Akio Morita? Any of you guys around?
Amadeo Giannini? John Thompson?
Yeah, no company ever survives without its founder(s).
Perfect!
Except this isn't for Apple to negotiate, the market value is the market value.
Prove it.
There is no negotiating here. The market value is the market value.
Right.
So, if the county you live in records an assessment on your house that you think us way out of line, you believe "that's that"?
Are you alleging that Apple knowingly and intentionally made a misleading or false material statement about their finances and assets? Isn't that a crime for a public company?
No. Not at all.
They just arrived at a different valuation than the County did.
Did the County disclose their valuation methodology?
Yeah, while part of me would love to see a corporation called on shenanigans about declaring crazy undervaluation for tax dodging, on the other hand this opens up the ability for my government to vindictively seize my house if I appeal my house value.
Even if I know I can't get what their assessor says its worth, I still wouldn't want to move just because I declare a different viable price.
Apple's insanely-low Valuation, just like the County's insanely-high Valuation, just represent the "bookends" of a Negotiation-Window. Neither side is REALLY serious about those figures.
It would be funny to have the local municipality come in and take the property though eminent domain using Apple's valuation.
Eminent domain requires justly compensating Apple for the loss of their property: not paying Apple the Proposed Tax Assessment value or the Fair Market value, that's not necessarily sufficient for just compensation. Even if the market considers their property worth only $5, and they might, if for example the property has special value to Apple which all other potential businesses are unable to exploit in any way, because the nature of the property not meeting their needs --- if Apple uses that property to generate $1Billion a year in revenue, then the public has to pay Apple at least enough $$$$ to replace the property that would be lost with an equivalent property that generates the same or more revenue.
Quite frankly, there are VERY few companies, even in Silicon Valley, that would be able to effectively utilize such a humongous space. In that case, the buildings might very well sit vacant (and no taxes collected) for YEARS, even possibly DECADES.
Apple could very well be right, that on the "Market", Apple's campus may actually BE relatively worthless to pretty much anyone you could name.
And it may very well also cost considerable amounts of money to convert such a complex (especially the main "spaceship" building) to a structure suitable for multiple, independent tenants. It simply wasn't designed that way; quite the opposite, in fact.
So, I would say that Cupertino should just take their $56 million they are already draining Apple for, come up with a REASONABLE ***MARKET*** Valuation for the new Campus, and STFU.
Companies and people have a sole duty to lower there tax bill as much as possible. If it isn't written in law do not give Uncle Sam anymore than the law says.
Here's the quote you were fishing-for:
http://intltax.typepad.com/int...
There is a big difference between claiming tax relief for purposes that are truthful and valid, and blatantly trying to cheat the system.
They aren't trying to cheat the system; they are simply disputing a ridiculous valuation by the system, by using the system's appeals process.
If anyone finds information on how Apple calculated that $200 valuation please share. I searched but found nothing. An AppleInsider article did say this though: "It is unclear if the $200 valuations are for hundreds of dollars or are in fact for $200 million." ( https://appleinsider.com/artic... )
That's a VERY interesting point!
Congratulations for using the system properly. That's why they have an appeals process. So if you're defending Apple here, I'm guessing you got your house down to a $10 value?
Oh, get over yourself!
Apple is just starting way low to allow themselves the maximum-sized difference between their claimed valuation and the county's claimed valuation.
It's merely a negotiation tactic. Repeated to a lesser or greater extent by every single business large enough to retain a lawyer.
But when Apple does it, suddenly, it's "News".
Why would the tax assessor care? It's not like he's going to get a bigger bonus if the property is worth more. Geez, get over mistrust for the government.
Right. Because blind trust of the Government has worked out so well for us ordinary citizens...
Oh, you mean people who's best interests are in generating as much tax as possible?
Exactly.
Having said that, obviously Apple isn't really serious about the $200 figure; they are just giving themselves the maximum window within which to negotiate.
And so are the Assessors...
Can't remember if that was Apple or somebody else, but I know one of the big tech companies was running it's own bus company.
I'm pretty sure it was Google, actually.
Oh God. apple makes a few tech gadgets. Hardly anything very important. Lets see apple pave the streets and run the schools.
I'd bet they could do a better job of it than the Cupertino Town Council.
Time marches on, and their haven't been any 32 bit Intel (or Apple) CPUs sold for nearly a DECADE. Add to that the fact that supporting "cruft" does nothing good to overall stability and complexity of an OS, and in the end, adds significantly to time/cost of regression-testing of said OSes.
64-bit CPUs run 32-bit code natively. Recompiling software whose source code may be long gone just to have higher memory requirements doesn't make a lot of sense.
And do those same CPUs also automatically replace missing Library Calls, too?
And, to be fair, even when Apple wishes to sunset a particular Framework or protocol, they give Devs. ample notice, Deprecating (but still supporting) said Framework or Protocol for several major revisions of whatever OS(es) are affected.
And yet in the last couple revisions of macOS, Final Cut Studio (pre-X) has been completely broken with almost no notice.
Almost NO Notice?!? HOW long has FCPX been out?!? SEVEN YEARS!!! It may (was) not wonderful at first; but pretty much all of the deficiencies of the first "X" version have been addressed at this point. Time to get with some of the new stuff!
Motion was broken with Sierra, and High Sierra wipes out the rest. No warning on upgrade that they're no longer supported, even though they made both.
So, Motion 5 and Compressor 4 are broken, too? I would kind of doubt that:
https://www.apple.com/final-cu...
https://www.apple.com/final-cu... ...and, as a matter of fact, it looks like the FCP "ecosystem" is quite-intact:
https://www.apple.com/final-cu...
The Windows 10 upgrade tool at least warns you of incompatible software pre-upgrade, including 3rd-party software.
This article makes it clear that Apple tried to PERSONALLY inform purchasers of FCP about the demise of support for FCP (non-X) :
https://www.cinema5d.com/final... ...and it looks like there are some tools that help with the transition (no pun) :
http://www.geniusdv.com/news_a...
Looks pretty good for $10...
http://www.intelligentassistan...
Which would make them not patent trolls. They defended their patents against the most well-funded legal team in existence, and showed that the protocol used their invention. They most certainly did not claim to own the protocol.
They were/are Patent Trolls. First it was FaceTime, then it was iMessage. I didn't call them Patent Trolls, the entire Tech-Press did:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...
https://gizmodo.com/apple-orde...
https://techcrunch.com/2016/02...
http://fortune.com/2016/02/03/...
https://www.cultofmac.com/4302...
https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
Oh, and this Discussion Thread EXACTLY addresses the original question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple...
etc. etc...
VirnetX patented something fairly obvious that they had no intention of ever bringing to market, which, after all, is the entire reason behind the Patent system, and simply lay-in-wait for someone with deep pockets to accidentally trip-into their patent-trap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Significantly helped along by:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I mean, the obvious corruption got so bad that the Supremes had to put a stop to it!
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
So, don't paint Apple as the bad guy here.
No. I just don't use iPhones and I have good success. Windows and Android don't really have these problems (extremely rare - especially for things like small utilities like I mentioned), while iOS and macOS both cut legacy support out constantly even in point releases.
I certainly wouldn't say anything even close to "Constantly". And while I don't know anything about Android, Windows has also, at least in recent years, been much more willing to "cut legacy support" for things.
And, to be fair, even when Apple wishes to sunset a particular Framework or protocol, they give Devs. ample notice, Deprecating (but still supporting) said Framework or Protocol for several major revisions of whatever OS(es) are affected.
For example: 32 Bit Apps on macOS: They have been "Deprecated" for at LEAST 2 (and I think actually 3 or 4) MAJOR versions of macOS/OS X, and yet, even in the still-to-be-released macOS Mojave, their execution is still supported. IMHO, that's reasonable.
Time marches on, and their haven't been any 32 bit Intel (or Apple) CPUs sold for nearly a DECADE. Add to that the fact that supporting "cruft" does nothing good to overall stability and complexity of an OS, and in the end, adds significantly to time/cost of regression-testing of said OSes.
As a user, I don't like it so much, either; but the proof is in the pudding: MacOS and iOS remain stable and secure, and Windows is STILL a mess of exploit-rich spaghetti code, the likes of which have never before been seen.
Because I cannot live forever on $10.
And because for every Angry Birds, there are exactly 1.29 X 10^97 Applications that fill a particular want or need, but do so for a smaller audience.
That only tells me that you select low quality tools. There are very very few software tools that I use that I would want to upgrade. Some, due to their nature, will require security updates. Others will not.
Spoken like a true naive idiot.
Sometimes, you don't get to choose the Toolchain, or all the choices suck in various and wonderous ways...
I have never used a program where I thought this program is done, absolutely perfect I will never need to upgrade it again.
Well I absolutely have. There are plenty of small utilities especially where I don't need anything new for the foreseeable future - so long as some OS update doesn't come in and sabotage/break it.
So, you just shot your own self in the foot with your final sentence.
Running a business is expensive. It is more then the sum of all its parts, it needs money in reserve, it needs to support what it has.
All of you statements are true. I write Windows Business Application s/w for a living. We charge what we want for software products we develop, and for custom development and support services... However, MS REQUIRES that we charge an annual "maintenance" fee for that. ALL of it, IIRC.
Do I like the idea? NO!
But I will say that I would imagine that our "cut" of the Maintenance is occasionally all that allows me to take home a paycheck, when sales and support-work is "thin". And in the end, I am positive that that benefits both my employer as well as our customers...
Remember when Pope Jobs said they were going to open up FaceTime and make it cross-platform?
If you remember that, you should also remember they were sued, successfully, by the patent troll that claimed to own the protocol. Jobs spoke without consulting with anyone, and prior to the lawsuit.
But all the Apple Hating Slashtards CONVEEENIENTLY forget THAT part...
I don't. You are indeed free to chose between a locked-down OS and one giving you more freedom.
Some people don't really want freedom and are perfectly happy in jail as long as their cell is comfortable enough. They call it the "walled garden".
But unlike Jail, which almost NOBODY calls "home", people who have chosen iOS by and large do not refer to iOS as "Walled". This is NOT some cyber-variant of "Stockholm Syndrome" by the way; because, unlike the now-famous Stockholm Hostages, NOBODY is PREVENTING iOS Users from "leaving"; so by definition, there can be no Hostage-Kidnapper relationship under which to form Stockholm Syndrome.
Of course, but iOS is locked-down. If you value freedom you have to switch.
I value my freedom. It is YOU that wants to LIMIT my freedom to CHOOSE.
I have always wondered why a Windows computer will CONSTANTLY access the Hard Drive, even when it is ostensibly at Idle, with no Applications running (except Explorer.exe). THAT'S the kind of stuff that is super-creepy to me, and it has been going on for YEARS.
No need to wonder. You can use a utility like Process Monitor to see what's going on. But then, this is on a PC without all these newfangled "security enclaves" so it's not hard to figure out what's what. Can't do that easily on a phone.
Interestingly, I also noticed recently that my PC hard drive goes almost constantly as well, but it does this when looking at the machine's firmware screen. I have no idea if this is normal behavior of the hard drive controller or if the firmware is doing some hidden stuff in the background, but I do know for a fact that Windows is not always responsible for hard drive activity. It may be the drive firmware doing some weird stuff on its own.
Sorry; but it CANNOT be hidden for any appreciable length of time. There are PLENTY of nerds with nothing better to do than to let their phone sit for a day or two and watch the WiFi traffic OUT of the Device. SOMEbody would have spotted this behavior with iOS devices by now. Period.
I'd like to believe that, but there's more than one CPU in most phones (and PCs) these days, and they work independently of the OS. Just getting the OS source or monitoring it is not enough -- you have to have access to all the firmware and ROM in the chips to know exactly what's going on, and all of that stuff is encrypted in hardware. It's not like the old days where only the main CPU and OS kernel were in total control. Case in point, people are still trying to figure out exactly how Intel ME works, even though it's been around for many years.
What does that have to do with examining Source Code?
You're right. Nothing.