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The hotel announced (via Redmond Pie) it now offers custom-designed 24-carat gold plated iPads for its guests to use during their stay, to act as a virtual concierge to access services like private dining and housekeeping, noted management to The National:

“Our exclusive Burj Al Arab 24-carat gold iPads further enhance our guests’ experience during their stay,” said general manager Heinrich Morio. “We have also recently introduced iMacs inside all our suites.”

The iPads were made by Gold & Co London, described as “the ultimate in luxury accessories” by chief executive Amjad Ali. The iPads are 64GB models with 4G connectivity and will be available for sale soon in the hotel’s gift shop with a price tag of 37,490 AED, or $10,448 Canadian dollars.

Having visited Dubai before and dined at Al Muntaha (on the 27th floor) for Friday Brunch at the Burj Al Arab, this hotel is the real deal when it comes to the ultimate in hotel luxury. If only guests could keep the gold iPads, but unfortunately that is not the case as they are required to be returned at the end of your stay.

Check out this documentary on the hotel below:

7-Star Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai Now Offers 24k Gold iPads for Guests is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation led by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain found that Apple set up corporate structures that allowed the company to pay little or no corporate tax on a big chunk of its overseas income, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The published reports come hot on the heels of Apple’s release of 17 pages of testimony prior to the U.S. Subcommittee investigation on tax practices.

The report seems to reinforce an earlier New York Times investigation which stated that Apple pioneered its famous “double Irish with a Dutch sandwich” technique to avoid paying taxes.

Apple has devoted a major part of its testimony to defending its use of five subsidiaries based in Ireland: Apple Operations International, Apple Operations, Apple Operations Europe, Apple Sales International and Apple Distribution International.

These subsidiaries are key players because ? as the investigation has found ? Irish tax law only considers companies as residents if they are managed and controlled there. The IRS, meanwhile, only counts corporations as American if they are incorporated here, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Here is what the Apple statement says about AOI, reported by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt:

AOI is incorporated in Ireland; thus, under US law, it is not tax resident in the US. AOI is also not tax resident in Ireland because it does not meet the fact-specific residency requirements of Irish law.

The WSJ points to several findings of the lengthy investigation including how AOI doesn’t qualify as a tax resident of any other country under the applicable local laws, or how ASI (Apple Sales International) only paid a 0.05% tax rate in 2011. A third Apple subsidiary, AOE (Apple Operations Europe), maintains that its corporate profits aren’t taxable by any country.

Apple’s Corporate Structures Allow Tax Avoidance, Says U.S. Senate Report is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

AT&T’s statement to the Verge on Monday notes that “by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from [Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry].” Besides FaceTime, Samsung and BlackBerry’s pre-installed video chat apps will also be included.

And more will be coming for all of its customers before the end of the year: “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 Apple updated its mobile video chat app to work over cellular last summer, AT&T came under fire when it announced subsequently that only customers who subscribed to one of its Mobile Share plans could use it. Several open internet groups threatened to file complaints with the FCC, calling the carrier’s policy a violation of net neutrality. Several months later, AT&T opened the service to anyone with an LTE device.

Based on broadness of the statement, it sounds like video chat apps like Google’s new Hangouts app, available for both iOS and Android, will also be free to operate over AT&T’s network later on this year.

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Biggr. A free terabyte of space

At Flickr, we believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life’s moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We’re giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free. Just how big is a terabyte? Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.

And yep, you heard us. It’s free.

This means you can now upload as many pictures and HD videos as you please to fill up 1 terabyte of free storage. The new web view of Flickr looks more magazine-like with various column layouts.

This new additional storage will work out great for users of the Flickr iOS app, which was revamped last December and updated in February with faster uploading and automatic saving of images from your Photostream to your camera roll.

Anyone going back to Flickr because of this new redesign and storage announcement?

Flickr Gets Revamped: Now Offers 1 Terabyte of Free Storage is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

Cook will call for a revenue-neutral reform of the corporate tax code that does away with all tax expenditures, lowers tax rates and establishes a “reasonable” tax on companies’ earnings from overseas. It’s not in the planned testimony, but in an interview last week, Cook made it clear that he does not believe that a tax rate of zero is a reasonable number. In his testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigations, he will say that Apple supports this simplification of the tax code despite the likelihood that it will mean Apple’s overall corporate taxes will go up. The current corporate tax system “applies industrial era concepts to a digital economy” and “undermines U.S. competitiveness,” Apple believes.

Before Cook gets into his specific suggestions for fixing how U.S. businesses are taxed on foreign earnings, he’s going to spend most of his time going over why he’s being called to testify in the first place: Apple’s accounting methods. Apple keeps at least $100 billion in foreign earnings outside of the IRS’s grasp because it doesn’t wish to pay the 35 percent tax it would incur by bringing that money home. Many other businesses follow similar practices.

According to the published testimony, Cook will going into detail about how the company accounts for profits earned in the U.S., how investment in its foreign assets is taxed, how it shares R&D costs with an Irish subsidiary and more. (It’ll probably be a snoozefest for everyone except those who get a thrill out of spreadsheets.) Most of it is Cook on the defensive, explaining how what Apple does is within legal limits. Cook plans to assure the committee it’s not cheating on its taxes with any special tricks and “does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

He will underscore his point about Apple being on the up and up by laying out how much the company pays in taxes. Last year it paid $6 billion in taxes to the U.S. and this year, Cook has said it will pay $7 billion.

Tuesday’s testimony will be Cook’s first appearance before Congress. The company’s tax practices came to light a year ago when the New York Times highlighted some of the methods Apple has used to keep its overall taxes at a minimum.

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If you’re into iPhone concept videos, Ran Avni and Uygar Kaya released a new video this morning showcasing an ‘iPhone 6′ with a whole bevy of features such as an HD display, slimmer design and notification LEDs to name a few:

iPhone 6 concept with full hd retina display, ultra slim design, notification leds, charging animation, front facing stereo speakers, dust-water resistant, touch sensitive volume rocker, wide visible screen, wireless charging, 13 mega-pixel camera and more…

The concept created by Uygar KAYA?, and the video created by Ran Avni.

Check out the video below and tell us what you think–is this too much?

iPhone 6 Concept Envisions HD Display, LED Notifications, Wireless Charging [VIDEO] is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource