Following Apple's adoption of sapphire crystal as a strong and durable covering for the rear cameras on the iPhone 5 and fifth-generation iPod touch late last year, rumors of expanded uses for the material have gained some traction. Back in March, we covered a report suggesting that sapphire could see wider adoption as coverings for displays on mobile devices, and just last week a sketchy rumor claimed that Apple is planning to use a sapphire-covered capacitive home button with integrated fingerprint sensor for the iPhone 5S. Amid these discussions of the potential of sapphire, Corning has published a feature outlining why its latest Gorilla Glass 3 is in fact...

Last week Apple told the U.S. District Court in California that it planned to add the Samsung Galaxy S4 to its patent lawsuit already underway against Samsung. As promised, Apple today filed a motion (via Foss Patents) that details five different patents that the S4 allegedly infringes on. The filing includes two Siri-related patents violated by Google Now, Google's robust voice activated search assistant. Patents '604 and '959 cover a "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system." The other three...

Three Apple executives, CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and head of tax operations Phillip A. Bullock, appeared in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation earlier today, testifying about Apple's tax policies. MacRumors has a rough transcript of the hearing, while the full event is viewable on C-SPAN. The full hearing was quite long, but here are some selected excerpts from our transcript. At the beginning of the hearing, Senators are allowed to make whatever opening statements they wish. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) gave a spirited defense of Apple, saying he was "offended" by the hearing. "Tell me a politician who is up here and doesn't try to minimize his taxes… Tell me what Apple has done is illegal. I am offended by a government…...

Microsoft today released details on its next generation console at an event hosted at its Redmond campus in Washington. Called the Xbox One, the new console is designed to be the ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system with a heavy focus on both gaming and interactive television watching. The Xbox One recognizes individual users and presents a customized home screen filled with content like TV and movies, games, and music, along with a new Trending section that displays friend activity and a live TV system. Xbox One utilizes voice commands, motion control via the Kinect, and a new feature called Instant Switching to allow Xbox users to switch from gaming to TV to other types of entertainment with quick commands that work as fast as swapping channels on the TV. Home screen sharing, called Snap Mode, allows users to display multiple items on the television screen. The Xbox One's comprehensive voice commands, such as "Watch...

Tonymacx86 points (via 9to5Mac) to recently discovered photos of a Broadcom BCM94360CD Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card that supports the 802.11ac "Gigabit Wi-Fi" standard rumored to be coming to Apple's Mac lineup later this year. While the photos were posted to Chinese site VR-Zone in early March, they are only just now being noticed by those following Apple rumors. While the reports suggest that the new card is intended for the next-generation MacBook Pro or MacBook Air models rumored for...

After jostling in competing memoranda yesterday, Apple and a group of U.S. Senators are prepared to go head-to-head in a committee hearing examining the tax avoidance strategies of Apple and other multinational corporations. CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and Apple's head of tax operations Phillip A. Bullock will appear in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation in the second part of a committee hearing running now. The hearing is streaming live on C-Span and we will be liveblogging the hearing below. Apple yesterday...

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 26 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's future Magic Mouse that will utilize a new force sensor. Our report also covers and 4 new design patents covering Apple's Smart Cover and more.

A Senate subcommittee has released a 40-page memo accusing Apple of not paying billions of dollars in federal taxes through "extensive tax-avoidance strategies". Apple CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and Apple's head of tax operations Phillip A. Bullock will appear in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation tomorrow. The company issued a statement earlier today in a preliminary defense against the Subcommittee's accusations. The subcommittee, which previously explored tax avoidance by other multinational corporations using offshore subsidiaries, found similar practices at Apple. In addition, the subcommittee review discovered an unusual tax scheme: Apple’s claim...

In a statement to The Verge on the future of pre-loaded apps, AT&T today revealed that it is planning to offer FaceTime over cellular to all of its customers on any data plan by the end of 2013.For video chat apps that come pre-loaded on devices, we currently give all OS and device makers the ability for those apps to work over cellular for our customers who are on Mobile Share or Tiered plans. Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry have chosen to enable this for their pre-loaded video chat apps. And by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from those three manufacturers. Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.When FaceTime...

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster today released a brief report highlighting April data from market research firm NPD looking at Apple's U.S. Mac and iPod sales. The data shows Apple's Mac sales coming in flat year-over-year, and while Munster acknowledges that it has become increasingly difficult to extrapolate NPD's numbers to Apple's global sales performance, he views the latest data as "neutral to slight positive" relative to expectations for the company.Based on the differences between NPD data and Apple reported Mac sales over the past few quarters, we note it is becoming more difficult to draw conclusions from NPD data (see table below). We note that some of the more recent supply issues with the redesigned Macs have impacted the Apple reported numbers over the past two quarters. At the end of the day, we believe this April data point is likely a neutral to slight positive given our expectation that iPads will continue to cannibalize Macs over the next few years.Munster...

A new and wild analyst report sees Apple's stock rocking to $888/share in the not-too-distant future based on Apple announcing an inked deal with China Mobile later this year driven by a new mid-range iPhone.