MacRumors

Italian regulators have completed an investigation into allegations that Apple failed to pay €879 million ($964 million) in corporate taxes, according to Reuters. The report states that, under Italian law, prosecutors can now ask a judge to bring the case to trial. Apple claims that it has paid all necessary taxes in countries that it operates and is confident that the process will be resolved.

The investigations accuse Apple of booking profits generated in Italy through an Irish subsidiary in an effort to lower its taxable income base and save nearly €900 million from 2008 through 2013. Apple argues that it's "one of the largest tax payers in the world and paid every euro of tax it owed wherever it did business," and believes that the allegations against its employees are without merit.

It said the Italian tax authorities had audited Apple’s Italian operations in 2007, 2008 and 2009 and confirmed it was in full compliance with the OECD documentation and transparency requirements.

"These new allegations against our employees are completely without merit and we’re confident this process will reach the same conclusion," it said.

Apple is one of several multinational tech companies, including Amazon and Google, that have faced corporate tax investigations in the United States and Europe. The U.S. Senate accused Apple of avoiding billions in income taxes in May 2013, while the European Union accused the company of receiving illegal state aid from Ireland after completing a formal investigation into its questionable tax practices in the country last year.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

The most recent iOS 8.3 beta was seeded to developers on March 12, but even though its been in the hands of testers for over a week, people are still discovering hidden features. Over the weekend, two new iOS 8.3 features were found, including an update to Siri and an update to app purchase settings.

With the iOS 8.3 beta 3 installed, users can now ask Siri to make phone calls using the iPhone's speaker. If you ask Siri to "Call [name] on speaker," the call will be made via speakerphone, enhancing Siri's hands-free capabilities. If you make the same request in iOS 8.2, Siri ignores the "on speaker" part and places the call as normal.

The new feature makes it possible to activate Siri while plugged in by saying "Hey Siri" and make a phone call, all without needing to touch the phone or put on a headset for hands-free operation.

In the Settings menu of an iOS device running iOS 8.3 beta 3, there's a new option under iTunes & App Store labeled "Password Settings." In this section, there is an option to change the password settings for purchases and in-app purchases, choosing options to either "Always Require" a password when making a purchase, or to "Require After 15 Minutes."

"Always Require" and "Require After 15 Minutes" are not new settings -- the options have previously been located within the Restrictions section of the Settings app -- but a user is required to select one in order to access a new password toggle setting, which lets users toggle the password requirement for free apps on and off. When toggled on, downloads labeled as "GET" in the App Store will not require a password.

Apple's new Password Settings are not functional right now, returning a "Cannot connect to iTunes Store" message when tapped, but it's likely they will be made available in a later beta ahead of the update's public release. The Password Settings menu can also be found under General --> Restrictions.

In addition to the newly discovered features listed above, iOS 8.3 adds quite a bit of new functionality to Apple's mobile operating system. Earlier betas have introduced a wireless CarPlay feature and several emoji changes, like a new emoji picker, diversified emoji with skin tone modifiers, new flags, and new icons for the watch, phone, and computer emoji, which now resemble an Apple Watch, an iPhone, and an iMac. Most notably, keyboard spacing has been changed to prevent users from hitting the period key when they meant to hit the space key when searching in Safari.

There's also support for Google two-factor authentication when adding Google accounts on iOS, Apple Pay support for China UnionPay, new Siri languages, filtering options for Messages, and more. We've been keeping a complete list of iOS 8.3 changes in our iOS 8 Features Roundup.

Many of us keep backups of our data on hard drives, using Apple's Time Machine, but how many of us keep multiple copies? And copies that are protected from not only disk failures, but also natural disaster? Estimates suggest 30 percent of people have never backed up their data, and the number of people who keep multiple backups is even lower.

With World Backup Day coming up, we teamed up with ioSafe and Synology to explore the consumer-oriented backup options they offer and to demonstrate the importance of keeping several copies of your data by simulating the effects of a house fire on the hardware.

If you're not familiar with ioSafe and Synology, ioSafe is best known for its disaster proof solutions, producing a range of hard drives that can withstand fire and water damage. Synology is known for its line of DiskStation NAS devices and for its DiskStation Manager software, which can be used for hassle-free backups, personal cloud storage, and more.

We traveled to Seattle to meet up with ioSafe and Synology to test out a Synology BeyondCloud NAS paired with an ioSafe Solo G3, a multi-backup solution that protects data from all kinds of damage, from hard drive failures to a house fire. We checked out some of the things you can do with the setup and then we set it all on fire.

If you want to jump right to the good stuff, aka the fire, watch the video below. We filmed everything so you could see how the ioSafe G3 held up and watch the data recovery process. After watching the video, you can read on for more details on how the Synology BeyondCloud and ioSafe G3 work together and what you can do with them.

Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the post -- we're going to be giving away a complete backup solution consisting of a 3TB Synology DiskStation BeyondCloud NAS and a 3TB ioSafe Solo G3.

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Apple today seeded the fifth beta of OS X Yosemite to developers, almost a month after seeding the first OS X 10.10.3 beta and just a week after releasing the fourth beta to developers.

The new beta, build 14D113c, is available for registered developers through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store and through the Mac Dev Center. Yosemite Recovery Update 3.0 is also available.

With today's update, Apple has continued polishing the Photos for OS X app, and there are just two remaining known issues with the software, including an issue with favorites and a problem with missing thumbnails when restoring an Aperture-upgraded Photos library with Time Machine.

Earlier betas of OS X 10.10.3 have brought several new features to Yosemite, including the new Photos for OS X app. Designed to integrate with iCloud Photo Library, Photos for OS X is a replacement for both iPhoto and Aperture and is on track to see an early 2015 public launch. Reviews have suggested that while Photos is a suitable replacement for iPhoto, with more advanced tools and performance optimizations, it may leave professional users disappointed.

Along with the new Photos for OS X app, the first two OS X 10.10.3 betas introduced a redesigned emoji picker that consolidates emoji into a single page with clear labels, new diversified emoji and emoji skin tone modifiers, new flag emoji and updated emoji for the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch, and support for Google 2-step verification when setting up accounts in System Preferences.

A new Apple wireless keyboard featuring backlight keys and a power button has been spotted on the Apple Online Store in Czech Republic and Hungary, with an identical Arabic version appearing on the U.S. storefront. The graphic render shows controls for adjusting the brightness of the backlight added to the F5 and F6 keys, as found on current MacBook models, while the eject key for CDs has been replaced with a power button.

Apple has not updated the product description for its wireless keyboard to match the new visualization, so it remains to be seen if this was simply a mistake or if the company will quietly refresh the keyboard in the near future. The old Apple Wireless Keyboard with no backlight keys and an eject key is still shown on the Apple Online Store in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries.

The addition of a power button on the keyboard is interesting, given that Macs currently do not detect wireless keyboards until after booting. It could be speculated that the power button is for turning on or off the wireless keyboard itself, but additional photos reveal that the keyboard still has a power button on the side in its traditional spot. As such, the exact functionality of the key remains unknown.

Update Mar 24: Apple has removed images of the new Apple Wireless Keyboard with backlight keys and a power button on the Apple Online Store in Czech Republic and Hungary. Graphic renders of the current Apple Wireless Keyboard with no backlight controls and an eject key are now showing again.

(Thanks, Roman!)

Apple continues to offer praise for Becoming Steve Jobs, the unauthorized biography of the late Apple co-founder set to be released on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Apple told The New York Times that the upcoming book is "better than anything else we've seen," and several executives at the company agreed to be interviewed for the title because they "felt a responsibility to say more" about the Steve that they knew and worked with.

“After a long period of reflection following Steve’s death, we felt a sense of responsibility to say more about the Steve we knew,” Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said. “We decided to participate in Brent and Rick’s book because of Brent’s long relationship with Steve, which gave him a unique perspective on Steve’s life. The book captures Steve better than anything else we’ve seen, and we are happy we decided to participate.”

Apple senior executive Eddy Cue tweeted last week that Becoming Steve Jobs is "well done and first to get it right" in regards to reflecting on Jobs, after he called the film Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine "an inaccurate and mean-spirited view of my friend." Apple CEO Tim Cook also dismissed Walter Isaacson's official biography of Jobs as a “tremendous disservice” to the Steve that he knew, adding that “the person I read about there is somebody I would never have wanted to work with over all this time.”

While it appears that Apple is now set on changing the narrative surrounding Jobs posthumously, the company initially showed no interest in participating in Becoming Steve Jobs, co-written by authors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, executive editor of Fast Company. Apple refused to provide the tech journalists with interviews in 2012, but changed its mind 18 months later, according to The New York Times.

“I think our patience and quiet perseverance was what eventually won them over,” said Mr. Schlender, who covered Mr. Jobs for almost 25 years. He said he wanted to write the book because he felt there was a side of Mr. Jobs’s personality that had never been captured by journalists. While the authors fact-checked portions of the book with Apple and other sources and showed the finished volume to the company, Apple wasn’t allowed to have “any editorial input whatsoever,” Mr. Tetzeli said.

Jobs passed away in October 2011 following a lengthy battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Revolutionary Leader will be available through Amazon on March 24 in hardcover and digital formats. Both official excerpts and leaked content from the biography has surfaced in recent weeks, and a sample of the book's prologue and first chapter is available through iBooks in select countries.

Elle is the first magazine to feature the Apple Watch in Australia with a fashion shoot starring the publication's in-house fashion editor Sara Smith. The multi-page style guide in the latest April issue offers women tips on how to make the Apple Watch work with different wardrobes depending on the time and place, such as during the weekend, at a cocktail party or in the workplace.

Apple continues to carefully curate the Apple Watch's image and exercise control over the way it's portrayed in magazines, positioning the wrist-worn device as a fashion item first and a technology device second. Apple wants the Apple Watch to be seen as trendy and sporty, perhaps in an attempt to avoid the device being viewed as overly technical and unfashionable as some people have opined about other wearables.

"For a cocktail party: Wear with a tuxedo suit and sexy heels (think Le Smoking Saint Laurent style with Alexander Wang black heels), or if you have the legs for it, a killer cocktail dress. Mix statement jewels with your watch. Try a fabulous cocktail ring and Cartier’s Love Bracelet would look great sitting side by side with your Apple Watch. It will be the perfect conversation starter at a party."

Apple Watch has been featured in several fashion and fitness magazines worldwide in recent months, including Self, Vogue, Style, East Touch, YOHO and Fitness Magazine. The wrist-worn device will be available April 24, with pre-orders starting April 10 in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and United Kingdom. Apple Watch starts at $349 for the Sport model, while the 18-karat gold edition will retail for upwards of $10,000.

ABC was recently invited to Apple's top-secret health and fitness lab for the Apple Watch for an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the testing facility, accompanied by Apple executives Jeff Williams and Jay Blahnik. The network shared a preview of its visit on Good Morning America earlier today, and has now provided a closer look at the facility on the latest episode of late night show Nightline.

The five-minute interview behind closed doors revealed that Apple collected over 18,000 hours of health and fitness data based on over 10,000 workout sessions that Apple employees participated in over the past two years at the company's secretive fitness lab. Blahnik, director of fitness and health technologies at Apple, also confirmed that the company tested the Apple Watch outdoors based on a variety of activities.

Apple Watch will be available April 24, with pre-orders starting April 10 in the first wave of launch countries: United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and United Kingdom. The wrist-worn device starts at $349 for the Apple Watch Sport, while the stainless steel models will retail for between $549 to $1,099 and the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition will cost up to $17,000.

Apple's newly refreshed MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro models no longer support running Windows 7 with Boot Camp, according to Apple's Boot Camp support document. Boot Camp on the new notebooks only works with Windows 8 or later, so it is impossible to use Boot Camp to install Windows 7 on the machines.

For those unfamiliar with Boot Camp, it is Apple's software designed to allow Mac users to install Microsoft Windows on their machines.

Apple also dropped Windows 7 Boot Camp support in the 2013 Mac Pro, suggesting the software would cease to be supported by future Macs, but Macs released in 2014 continued to offer Windows 7 installations. The 2014 MacBook Air and the 2014 MacBook Pro will be the last Apple notebooks that support Windows 7.

Though Boot Camp no longer supports Windows 7, the operating system can continue to be used on these newer machines with virtualization software like VMware Fusion and Parallels.

It is not surprising that Apple has opted to phase out support for Windows 7, given its advanced age. Windows 7 first became available to the public in 2009 and was followed by Windows 8 in 2012. Despite being six years old, Windows 7 continues to be the most heavily used Windows-based operating system.

Mac users were not happy with Apple's decision to cease Windows 7 support in the Mac Pro, and it's likely the dropped support in the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro will also be met with resistance. Windows users have not yet embraced Windows 8 due to both its cost and its interface, which deviated significantly from the design of Windows 7.

Windows 10, coming later this year, may encourage stalwart Windows 7 users to upgrade, as it melds Windows 7 design elements with Windows 8 design elements for a happy medium that might satisfy a wide range of tastes. Windows 10 pricing has not been unveiled, but it will be a free upgrade for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users.

(Thanks, Daniel!)