The fallout over the EU’s tax fight with Apple rages on. We just want to clarify what’s going on: Ireland isn’t sending Apple the $14.5 billion dollar bill for back taxes, the European Union is. Ireland is on Apple’s side in this case and Irish leaders say they will appeal the case to the EU. Another, perhaps unforeseen player in the case: England, which just voted to leave the EU, mostly over disagreements on immigration policies.
Now, some pundits are saying the Apple tax case illustrates another reason the UK may have had the right idea on the Brexit vote: individual EU countries don’t have control over things such as giving out tax breaks in order to lure in businesses, and if they DO extend those tax breaks, even if it was decades ago as is the case with Apple and Ireland, they don’t control their own destiny on how that works out in the future.
Naturally, EU member countries are watching the Apple tax case closely, and if some have been leaning towards perhaps following England’s exit, well, we can understand if they think that a maybe… unwarranted 14.5-billion dollar shakedown of Apple is yet one more thing to consider.
Dropbox clients data bubbles up from 2012 hack
Bad news if you’re a Dropbox user: a mid-2012 hack has apparently sent account details for over 68 million users to the dark web.
Last week, Dropbox warned all user with pre-2012 accounts to change their passwords, and now we know why. Dropbox had admitted they were hacked, but said the passwords were hashed, or not easily deciphered, but security experts who had access to the roughly 5 gigs of data say that sussing out the passwords isn’t very tough and yes, they do work to open accounts.
So if you haven’t yet, you might want to once again dream up a new password that combines your cat’s name, an old phone number and an emoticon.
Will Apple bridge the legacy headphone jack gap?
It looks like we may have an answer to one of the most burning tech questions ever: how exactly will you use your regular old headphones with the jack-less new
Well, Forbes says an apparently leaked iPhone packaging insert gave some clues and also answered several other questions: First, the insert was from a phone with 256gb of memory, so there’s that, and second, a pair of lightning-connected earbuds called “EarPods” will also be in every iPhone box. And lastly – drumroll please – yes, there will be a lightning-to-legacy headphone jack adapter in the box as well.
That’s perhaps the biggest news, since Apple typically makes you cough up 30 bucks or so for some little thingie that should have come with their products anyway. Of course, all the details will be revealed on September 7 at the big Apple Event, but we hope these rumors are legit. We’ve got the rest of the day’s tech news at Digital Trends dot com, thanks for watching and we’ll see you tomorrow. I could actually use this keyboard.
