Gizmodo

Microsoft, which has been trying to force Windows Phone into the Android and iPhone conversation in its recent commercials, is going head on against Apple in its latest spot. That's not surprising (as Samsung loves to pick at Cupertino all the time), but what's hilarious is that Microsoft is using Apple's own Siri to do the ribbing in the commercial. You can hear Siri poke fun of the iPad when compared to the Surface in the ad. It's pretty good (for a commercial). [Windows Video]

The mega-valuable company that makes your laptop is under congressional scrutiny this week for offshore tax-dodging. It all started in 1980, when Apple's California execs moved their operation to Ireland with a fake company with the codename "Waldwill Limited."

When pressed on the Ireland debate, Tim Cook revealed himself to be quite the slippery southern gent this week. He's always been deft with press and presentations, but Cook sidestepped questions and "disagreed with characterizations" with the ease of Capitol Hill greats. Much of the railing honed in on Cook's insistence that Apple is an American company. He made the statement—verbatim—over and over again, mantra-like. The patriotism by volume was maybe Cook's only hope of countering the unflattering truth: Apple keeps billions of dollars away from the IRS by stowing cash reserves in Ireland, which levies a 2-percent tax rate (or less). One of these shell firms, Apple Operations International (AOI), retains ownership of Apple's fantastically valuable intellectually properties—the formalized ideas that've made it the most valuable company in the world.

It started here, in August 1980, with a generic memo signed off by the Irish government. These papers gave Apple an inconspicuous home away from home—only two shares in "Waldwill Limited" were issued.

Thirty years later, Waldwill Ltd. is AOI, with over 700,000 outstanding shares, shareholders that include a shadowy British Virgin Islands firm Apple taps to move money, and executive "directors" who are actually in California.

"Byzantine" plots like this are fairly standard for a company of Apple's size, says an attorney I spoke with who's familiar with similar tax strategies. "Companies like Apple use code names for acquisition vehicles and then don't bother to change the name after the acquisition, particularly if the entity is only holding assets, so the stranger the name, the more likely it's an Apple affiliate." Strange names, geographical tricks, and flattened taxes: Apple really is an American company.

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com

When I stepped off the plane in Mexico I got that sinking feeling. My iPhone wasn't going to work.

I mean it was, but, you know, it's expensive to use a cell phone abroad. It's even more expensive to use a smartphone abroad. A few years ago, I took a work trip to Paris and did a dumb thing. Long story short, I get off the plane, forget that both my voice and data plans are standard and end up with a four-figure phone bill. AT&T was actually really great about getting the number down to around $50, but they told me very clearly that this was my one get out of jail free card.

I've not been back to jail. Every year, at least once a year, I try to leave the country. I like traveling and have spent a decent amount of time living abroad. So when I go now, I still don't get the data plan. I either forget or can't be bothered. This is more or less what happened when I went to Mexico. It was a hastily planned trip, and I was on my own. I was even thinking about quitting the Internet the whole time I was there. "You're just gonna wanna lay on the beach and read books made of paper," my friends said. My friends were wrong. I love technology*.

So after one expensive phone call to sort out a rental car situation (Pro tip: Don't buy the insurance, through Kayak. It's a ripoff.), the iPhone went into airplane mode. It was the only time I used my data plan, and I didn't miss it one bit.

My first survival instinct was also probably the most obvious: I basically spent every free minute I had hunting down Wi-Fi hotspots. Luckily and quite surprisingly, the tiny beach town where I was vacationing was pretty damn wired. So Internet wasn't hard to find, and it was almost always free.

It was not, though, available on the beach, or in my rustic little cabana. But that's where a little ingenuity—and a few handy apps—came in.

I developed a nice little routine of using Wi-Fi at the bar and loading up things to do offline when I went wandering. If I really needed to call someone, I would take the phone off airplane mode and try to talk fast. If I really needed to check my email, I couldn't because my carrier is Sprint (don't ask) and Sprint is horrible. Data wouldn't work at all.

So when I was out of Wi-Fi zones, my life was full of offline playlists and preloaded longreads. Spotify is buggy lately, but it's still the best music app, in my humble opinion. Pocket, my go-to save for later app, fixes everything you find frustrating about Instapaper. And it's free.

There are obviously other apps that work great offline.

If you're going to a city, you're definitely going to want a map, especially one that includes public transit. (Google Maps doesn't work very well abroad, even if you have a data plan, and Apple Maps, well, don't get me started.) Try the iTrans family for transit maps. There's a handy offline app for most major American cities, and they cost between $0.99 and $3.99 each.

If you like words—who doesn't!—download Dictionary.com's fantastic app. It's handy if you'll be somewhere that you don't know the language (you can get a translation upgrade for a buck), but dictionaries also make for surprisingly entertaining beach reading. If you need a straight-up translator, go with Jibbigo. It's slick, and ten times better than the lame Lonely Planet translator apps that cost $7.99. Jibbigo is free free free.

If you're going abroad, you'll also want a currency convertor. Get XE Currency. It comes in a free version and an ad-free pro version. Don't waste your money on the pro version unless you really really hate ads, in which case, you should probably not have an iPhone.

If you get all of these apps, there's really no need to buy and expensive data plan. I met a couple from Los Angeles, while I was down in Mexico and one of them had gotten the data plan and the other hadn't. We had a fun debate about the perks and perils of staying totally connected while on vacation. Basically what we ended up agreeing on was that it depends on your personality. The man was a total surfer and said he like unplugging because, well, it is really relaxing. The woman used to work in the media, so she liked to be able to keep up with what was going on. In a way it would've been more stressful for her not to have a phone. (I'm the same way.) If you plan ahead, it's not that expensive either.

Oh and one last thing. Get Star Walk. Whether you're picnicking in Paris or lying down on the powdered sugar sand in Tulúm, stars are still amazing, and it's really such a blast to use. It's best on a retina iPad, but the iPhone version is excellent.

When I stepped of the plane at JFK, it was raining. I flipped the Airplane mode off, dropped my phone into my pocket laughed as it rattled with all the missed calls and texts that I didn't let myself see while I was away. It felt good.

* But not as much as you and me.

An old Mac G5 case, some scrap aluminum—and you have the perfect geek's grill. OK, so there may strictly be more efficient ways to cook outdoors, but this scores maximum nerd points. [Imgur via Macgasm via Ubergizmo]

A Congressional investigation found that Apple has avoided BILLIONS in taxes. Senator John McCain said, “Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale, it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders.” [NY Times]

iPhones are now military equipment, kind of. The Pentagon just cleared Apple devices running iOS 6 for use on all its networks, so iPhones are officially joining the ranks of BlackBerrys and Samsung Android devices. Windows Phone 8 fans are still out of luck.

Most people have sold at least something online at this point in their lives. It's an easy way to get rid of crap you don't need and make a little cash in the process. But there's inevitably a dip in the joy of your newfound wealth when you realize that your chosen platform has taken their fair share of your reward. Pay.me for iOS wants to make sure you receive the exact amount you're after.

Why do we like it?

Could you do the calculations on your own? Yeah, sure (at least we hope), but the thing is, you're probably not going to. A few dollars off the top might not seem like a lot at first, but if you're someone who sells items online a lot, those dollars and cents are going to add up. This easy-to-use, simple app will take seconds of your time, and could end up making you a decent little profit in the long run.

pay.me, Download this app for: iOS, $1

The Best: Saving money

The Worst: Ideally would have more platform options

Apple just released the newest version of iTunes with some very welcome improvements. When you download version 11.0.3, your MiniPlayer will be getting a lovely new design in addition to a more compact way to view albums that come as multiple discs.

The MiniPlayer itself is relatively new, first appearing in iTunes 11, but now you'll be able to see both album artwork and the song's progress bar, which you will be able to adjust. Viewing multi-disc albums as one singular album and "performance improvements when searching and sorting large iTunes libraries" should also help make the overall iTunes experience far more pleasant. You can download the update now through your computer's Software Update. [9to5Mac]

If you've ever been on the set of a professional photography shoot, you'll notice the photographer doesn't just rely on a single camera-mounted flash. Instead, they use a series of strategically positioned flashes, all tethered together so they function as one, to precisely control where and how much light is hitting the subject. And that approach is very similar to a patent Apple originally filed back in 2011 that could dramatically improve your iPhone's photography prowess.

But instead of wirelessly connecting the phone to a series of dedicated external flashes, the patent actually sees the iPhone connecting and controlling the flashes on other nearby iPhones. So not only would it increase the amount of light available to an iPhone photographer depending on how many other phones are around, but it could also let them get more creative with their shots.

A method for capturing an image with an image capture device, such as a camera or mobile electronic device. The method includes initiating a master-slave relationship between the image capture device and at least one secondary device. Once the master-slave relationship is initiated, remotely activating one of an at least one light source of the at least one secondary device.

The patent goes one step further describing tools that automatically analyze the lighting in a sample shot, and then tweaking the intensity or timing of the flashes on the other iPhones to improve the photos. It even suggests a method of passing along instructions to people holding the other iPhones as to where they should move or stand to improve the overall lighting.

Of course, the patent doesn't necessarily mean we'll be seeing this technology included on the next iPhone—or any iPhones down the line for that matter. As with most patents it's most likely a move by Apple to control another technology or feature—whether they intend to implement it themselves one day, or go to court when another company tries to. [US Patent & Trademark Office via AppleInsider]

Google Hangouts is live now in the iOS App Store, which means you can now Gchat from your iPhone. Go and get it right here.

Apple's proprietary note-taking app is mediocre at best. You can make new notes, write things on them, and that's about it. So if you're one of those people who uses his or her phone to jot down pretty much anything that strikes your fancy, you're going to need something a little different. Thinglist carries the same minimalist looks as the stock note-taking app but packs way more of a punch.

Why do we like it?

The concept is wonderfully simple and surprisingly useful. Scrolling through an endless list of effectively unidentifiable notes can be as tedious as it is frustrating, but it seems like a necessary evil unless you're willing to switch to a more complicated service like Evernote. Thinglist, though, maintains the simplicity that lets you jot things down quickly and without much thought while forcing you to keep your many disparate thoughts beautifully organized for easy accessibility. The only thing it seems to be lacking is some sort of reminder alarm, but as the app is still in its first incarnation, hopefully that will be soon to come.

Thinglist, Download this app for: iOS, $2

The Best: Pre-set categories that cover everything

The Worst: No reminder alarm

Real-time chat has been everywhere for, you know, forever now and has swallowed everything in its path. Integrating chat platforms and finding a way to coherently deal with texting vs. chatting has become a major issue. Other than venting here in hallowed Gizmodo chatroom posts, how do you manage all the Google chat options, Facebook chat, Skype and everything else? Chit chat below.

What's the point of owning an iPad if you're not going to let yourself get a little artsy with it? Good thing we've got plenty of apps down here to let your creativity roam wild. Plus a little inspiration if you need it, as well.

iFontMaker: While designers may suffer this the most, pretty much anyone who's typed anything, well, ever has struggled to find the perfect font to suit their means. Normally, you'd be forced to settle for something that only approximates your vision, but rarely will you find exactly what exists so clearly in your imagination, which, let's face it, may vainly just be your very own handwriting. But with iFontmaker for iPad and now Windows 8 or Windows RT, you can take total control of your typographical needs. [$7]

The Doors: Doors fan or not, their new iPad app created by Warner Music Group is a fascinating journey through the rise of one of the most iconic bands in history. You get detailed accounts of 275 major events along a timeline, intimate looks at the kind of equipment they used, tidbits about all the people in their lives, and of course, lots and lots of music. With 44 video commentaires and six full-length Doors videos all held within the app, this should keep you busy for a while. [$6]

Adobe for iOS: Hot on the heels of Adobe's announcement yesterday that Creative Suite is going to get a lot more cloud, they've made Adobe Ideas, a vector-based drawing app for iOS, absolutely free. The app also received a hefty update, adding several of the Creative Cloud features announced yesterday and a slew of new brushes. Of course, there's also a few new in-app purchases to unlock full pro-level functionality, but the app was $10 yesterday, and now it's free. And if you bought it in the past three months, you can get a refund here. [Free]

It's no secret that the police aren't very good at breaking into encrypted iPhones, but they've been asking Apple for help. A lot of help. According to reports by CNET the government asks for so much help that the "please decrypt this iPhone for me" waiting list is at least seven weeks long.

Law enforcement is getting increasingly fond of performing forensic analysis on mobile devices that were involved in crimes, but pulling it off ain't easy. According to a search warrant affidavit CNET dug up, an ATF agent spent three months last summer "[attempting] to locate a local, state, or federal law enforcement agency with the forensic capabilities to unlock [an iPhone 4s]" before he turned to Apple. But the turnaround was far from zippy and took a couple months.

It's not impossible to brute force into an encrypted iPhone. If the pin is just four or five digits, it can be done in under an hour with specialized tools, but passcodes nine or ten digits long take years. Apple's got a better trick, though. What it is isn't exactly clear, but it's in high demand. Seven weeks is better than nothing, but you can bet that list is only going to keep getting longer unless Apple shares its goodies. [CNET]

With Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference just a month a way, rumors continue to surface that iOS 7 could see a major UI overhaul. Word on the street is that Jony Ive and his team at Apple are going for a very “flat” look. Since then, many designers have put together some interesting mock-ups and concepts together speculating on how a flat iOS 7 might look. Some are a bit radical, others seem more realistic. Here are a few of our favorites.

The first is a possibly one of the more dramatic changes we’ve seen. In this design, Dámaso Benítez elects to go with three icons per row, rather than the current four. If we’re being honest, we think this is very unlikely. With that being said, the design aesthetic has a nice playfulness to it.

Kyle Adams offers his version of a “minimal and flat UI” for the lockscreen. Compared to the current lockscreen, not much has change functionally, but a lot of the UI chrome found in iOS 6 is gone. Clean.

Jesse Head re-imagines the app switcher allowing users to see more information. Rather than just seeing an icon, his concept introduces previews that allow users to see what they were doing in that app last. He’s even put together a video showing the concept in action.

Alex Iv puts together something that we think is more realistic by simply de-chroming iOS. Though he takes away the text labels, it still retains a fresh, clean look without changing much of iOS.

Pieter Goris offers his take on the Messages app by stripping out the messaging bubbles we’ve all come to know with both Mac OS and iOS. He also replaces they keyboard with a darker, more subtle look. Very clean.

Anton Kovalev‘s mockup looks very much like a flatted iOS 6 without any gloss. Some of the icons have a slight drop shadow giving them a bit of depth, too.

This rendition by John Menard remind us of Windows Phone and looks very much like Dámaso Benítez‘s concept above, but with sharp corners. The big, bright boxes offer a different approach that’s not very iOS-like. Probably the most radical concept we’ve seen.

Finally, this concept by Manu Gamero, which is also remisant of Alex Iv‘s, takes a lot of the current iOS look and feel and removes the glitter. It actually looks similar to what we saw on the WWDC invitation with the brighter colors.

All-in-all, we’ll have to wait a month to find out what Apple has in store for the next version of iOS. If the rumors are true, it should be pretty exciting.

Related Stories:

The little magnets sure make the iPad's Smart Covers useful—but they could switch off pacemakers, too, if a new series of experiments is anything to go by.

When 14-year-old Gianna Chien set out on a science fair project earlier thus year, she decided to test if the magnets in the iPad Smart Cover were strong enough to interfere with implanted defibrillators. Testing her hypothesis on 26 participants she found that 30 percent of the time the magnets caused the devices to stop working. Since, she's started getting attention from medics—and soon she'll be reporting her findings to 8,000 doctors at a Heart Rhythm Society meeting in Denver.

They're certainly taking her research seriously. "The research offers a valuable warning for people with implanted defibrillators, which deliver an electric shock to restart a stopped heart," said John Day, head of heart-rhythm services at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah. While the small magnets are relatively weak, they still seem to be able to interfere with the defibrillators. If a patient with a pacemaker were to fall asleep with an iPad Smart Cover on their chest, for instance, the device could be switched off. So be careful when you hand grandma your tablet. [Bloomberg]

We've heard that Apple was supposedly close to locking down two major music labels for its 'iRadio' streaming music service and that Cupertino was waiting on Sony to finish off the trifecta. Unfortunately, Apple is still waiting on Sony. The Financial Times reports that Sony is holding firm because it wants Apple to pay more than Pandora does.

According to FT, Sony's reasoning is that Apple should pay more because of its "broader ambitions for iRadio" when compared to Pandora. I'm guessing, Sony wants to get a better deal just in clase iRadio becomes the next iTunes. Apple is offering music labels a royalty per song streamed, a share of iRadio's ad revenue and a guaranteed minimum sum (just in case iRadio doesn't take off).

Apparently, Apple first offered 6 cents for every 100 tracks streamed but has raised that offer to 12.5 cents for every 100 tracks. That's what Pandora's rate is set at. And until Apple and Sony figure out how many cents they're both willing to give each other, it looks like iRadio needs some more marinating before it's ready. [Financial Times via Verge]

So your trusty laptop is starting to show its age. No one can blame you for wanting a new one, but we've got just one piece of advice: WAIT. This is a horrible, horrible time to get a new rig. If you can hold out for just a few months, you're going to do a whole lot better for yourself.

Sure, there's almost always something better right around the corner whenever you buy anything, but this time it's different. Mac? PC? It doesn't matter. In just a few weeks, the guts that power pretty much any laptop you would buy are going to get a serious upgrade, compliments of Intel. The new chip, called Haswell, brings a drool-worthy list of improvements and features with it that are worth the wait. Stuff like:

Power-efficiency that keeps you running all day

Battery life is absolutely key in smartphones, and it's damn important in laptops too (doubly so if you're interested in one of those fancy new tablet-laptop convertibles). And we're about to get a bunch of it. Thank to Haswell, this next generation of laptops will not only have more battery power, it'll have a ton of it. We're talking ultrathin ultrabooks that last 24 hours on a single charge, or up to ten days of standby power. Nothing on the market today comes close.

Pumped up performance

That increase in battery life doesn't mean you're going to be sacrificing power; quite the opposite. Haswell chips will let new laptops do way more with way less. The specifics of all this is still very hush-hush, but suffice it to say that the top-flight ultrabooks that will be rolling out these next few months will be significantly faster and more powerful than the one you have, with a longer battery life to boot. It's two bonuses for the price of one.

Integrated graphics that are actually awesome

Speaking of performance advancements, Haswell is also bringing an awesome new brand of integrated graphics to the party. Iris graphics, as Intel is calling them, are twice as good as those wrapped into last year's chips, which were already a few times better than the plenty respectable ones that came a year before that. Just like with battery power, this isn't just a jump; it's the biggest jump ever.

In short, Iris will let you play new, current games—like Modern Warfare 3 or Bioshock Infinite—on your ultrabook without getting a separate graphics card. And it can handle 4K video output, which is going to be important a few years down the line once this new ultra high definition tech catches on, and the monitors that support it get a little bit cheaper. Future-proof!

For Mac maniacs

Don't hold your breath for a MacBook Air with an Retina display any time soon, but chances are both the Pro and Air lines will get updated with Haswell goodness at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this June. You should be able to order them right when they're announced.

And PC people

The release of Windows 8 last year spawned a wave of innovative tablet-laptop convertibles that hasn't let up since. Those won't be going away, but Haswell's power-efficiency will make tablet-modes much more dependable, especially for the ones that physically detach from their keyboard base. Laptops that turn into tablets are finally going to have tablet-like battery lives.

And that's not all: this next crop of ultrabooks will be thinner and have touchscreens, so no more grabbing at unresponsive displays out of habit. And even if a touchable display isn't something you're into, the good ol' fashioned non-touch screens will get the Haswell boost as well.

And even if you couldn't care less

You should still wait! Even if you've got no use for the new hotness and would rather get your hands on some slightly out-dated hotness, the introduction of new-laptop-kids on the block will shove prices down for previous generations. Apple users will see an influx of heavily discounted refurb store stock, and last year's PCs will be on perma-sale at any big box you go to.

So unless you have no patience and actively hate your money, cooling your jets for just a month or two is the right choice, no matter what you want. It'll be worth the wait.

We’ve been managing our photos together for almost a decade now. Things were nice and simple at the start and we both knew what to expect from each other—I pulled my photos off my camera on the computer, imported them into iPhoto and arranged them. Life was good.

But then you came and gave me the great iPhone camera and I started taking more photos like that of this lovely cow. Also you give me a wonderful wireless sync facility so I didn’t ever need to plug my phone into my laptop so I didn’t. So then the photos on my phone and the decade of photos in my iPhoto library started to diverge because I didn’t get round to syncing them.

Then you gave me a beautiful iPad which would looked so perfect for curating my iPhoto library. I couldn’t wait to edit and organise photos from the comfort of my sofa except that you didn’t give me any way to save things back to the library. So I couldn’t. So things just kept piling up on my camera roll.

Then I thought you’d heard my pain and figured it out - you gave me “photo streams” which put every photo on every device. Unfortunately the only way to get photos into iPhoto was still through my desktop so the fact they were available on the iPad was academic because I still couldn’t save them to my library. Also when I pulled them off the photostream they still existed in the camera roll. Two copies (three if I edited them) and you also occasionally told me to delete some because I ran out of space.

To be honest, I got a little confused at this point. Have I transferred them into iPhoto? I’m not sure I’ll check the photostream - ack, no, I remember you told me to delete photos off my photostream because there were too many. Hmmm, check the camera roll again. Hang on a minute - where are my videos?! Turns out photostreams don’t stream videos. Man, these things are not cool.

Just so as you know by the way and don’t freak out but, I’d like to sort my photos when I’m sat on the loo. Or in the bus, or anywhere else I want to kill time with my phone. I don’t want to edit them when I’m sat at my desktop - that’s work time. It really pains me that I can’t do that and so my photos just pile up in a big heap while I waste time reading things I don’t care about on Twitter.

Finally, to add insult to injury, when we moved to your lovely little MacBook Air you kyboshed my disk drive. All of a sudden, after 10 years of taking high-res photos and videos I couldn’t even fit them onto my laptop. Not only that but you insist on keeping a cache on my Macbook of my entire decade of photos at just the right size for each iDevice. Did you know that I’m using 7% of my entire Macbook disk drive just caching photos for my iPhone and iPad? That’s crazy! I paid a lot of money to you for that flash drive—I don’t want to waste it on a photo cache.

So Apple, I think you’ve got a bit confused. Don’t worry about sharing, we don’t need you for that. Your job is to take photos, organise them and make sure they don’t get lost. So let’s talk about how you can do that.

What I would like from Apple to manage my photos

1) I want the canonical copy of my iPhoto library in the cloud. One iPhoto library in the cloud, many devices with access to it. I want to edit, organise and delete photos on any device and see the same changes on all other devices. No master/slave setup - just straight cloud access.

2) You can charge me for this. I suggest $5/month. Maybe that’s a bit more than it costs you at the moment but that’s what I’m prepared to pay and we both know that you’ll do very well out of this in the long run. However for that I want unlimited space including for all of my videos. FYI that’s not what really I’m paying you for. I’m really paying you for the peace of mind that you’ve got my memories safe-guarded. I’m technically paying you for insurance. The utility this offers just the carrot that gets me over the hump of paying you.

3) Get rid of photo streams. Make the camera roll a single photo stream that shows up in iPhoto (on all devices). I want a single camera roll that all devices feed into. I want to take photos, queue them in my camera roll then pull them out as I organise and sort them into my library. Let me explain: photos and videos have two phases 1. on the camera roll 2. in my photo library. Nowhere else.

4) I’d like you to create API for my iCloud camera roll so any camera I own could hook into it - I want to be able to buy an SLR with wireless capabilities and simply connect it as a new source to my camera roll.

5) Make iPhoto on the iPad and the iPhone work well. Make them do clever things to give me fast access to my photos from the cloud. You did it for iTunes, let’s bring the magic a second time. Let me harness power of that splendid little device direct from the loo.

This opportunity won’t last forever by the way. Most people haven’t got a good backup strategy and don’t spend any money on backup but by the time they do they won’t be prepared to give you yet more dollar to take care of their photos. When the inevitable time comes that they’re paying Dropbox or Google $10/month for unlimited backup they won’t cough up another $5 for photos. However they’re not doing that now and you’ve got a window to bring some Apple magic.

I know Steve’s not around to crack the whip but you need to get your act together Apple. This could be a nice little $2 billion/year recurring revenue stream but the window will close. If it closes before you’ve been bothered to sort this mess out we’re all rodgered so chop chop!

Photo credits: My iPhone

Peter Nixey is a Rails developer, entrepreneur, and the former CEO of Clickpass. You can follow him on Twitter here. This piece originally appeared on his blog.

Until smartphone batteries last for weeks on end, carrying a backup charging cable wherever you go will be a necessary evil. But at least you don't have to deal with a perpetual tangle of wires if you import SoftBank's new Itomaki AC Adapters. They're shaped like a thread spool letting you wind your cable around so it's always neat and tidy.

Available mid-June with a Lightning connector for the iPhone 5, the Itomaki will come in a series of subtle pastel colors for around $36. A 2.1 amp version for the iPad will be available a little later in July, while a microUSB version is also on the horizon, but with an unspecified release date. Hopefully it won't be far behind; there's nothing as exciting as a spool used to prevent knots instead of creating them. [SoftBank via Akihabara News]

Sure, most cell phone carriers are more than happy to alert you to how much precious data you've been using up, but these little warnings usually don't come until you're dangerously near the monthly limit. Megabytes keeps track of your data usage for you, and makes sure you're always aware of exactly where you stand.

Keeps track of your data input and output. The app's icon even comes with its own little notification badge that will keep you constantly aware of how much data you've already used up or how much you've got left, depending on your settings preferences. A charted history displays your usage over a set period of time, so the longer you use the app, the more it gets to know you, projecting how much data it anticipates you'll be using in any given month.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we're constantly on our phones, gobbling up data without a care. It's easy to go over your limit when you're not readily aware of how much is left, and we all know that panicked feeling when our carriers let us know that we're about to owe a hefty overage charge. With Megabytes, though, the badge icon means you'll always know exactly how much data you have left, even when you're not actively seeking out that specific app. And if that number is all you care about, you never even have to open the app; it'll just sit on your homescreen as a pleasant, watchful reminder to proceed with caution. Plus if you download today, you can have it all your own without paying a dime.

Megabytes, Download this app for: iOS, $2/Free today only

The Best: Icon notification badge

The Worst: You can still go over your limit

We've got just about as much (or really as little) information about Apple's fabled iWatch as we ever have, but it never stops being fun to fantasize a little. This latest concept whipped up by designer Martin Hajek has got to be the best—and most Apple-like—we've seen yet.

Say what you will about stitched leather in your operating system, but it doesn't look half bad as a watch band. Like Hajek's last mock-up for MacUser magazine, the watch shies away from some of the most futuristic interpretations, instead leaning on pretty standard watch design. And this concept takes that to its beautiful extreme with a unified all-black look.

Of course, as with all concepts, this isn't based on anything more than rumor—the curved glass—and imagination. But guessing at the future is even more futile than normal, considering WWDC and Jony Ive's iOS 7 are right around the corner. Ive's first crack at iOS could very well strip away the skeuomorphic elements of the UI that would make a design like this make sense. Who knows what we'll be looking at on that face.

Still, it's a lovely little render of a nice piece of hardware. Hopefully if and when the iWatch does come out, it'll be equally viable as both a fashion accessory and a device. This design looks like it at least has that first part down. You can check out more awesome rendering over at Hajek's site. [Martin Hajeck]

Between work, leisure, travel, and everything in between, we've barely got enough time in the day to breathe, much less handle the little surprises life throws at us at the same time. Fortunately, you don't have to go through it alone. This week's set of iPhone apps are all about making your life easier, more organized, and with all the information you'll need just a finger swipe away.

Wikimedia Commons: The new Wikimedia Commons apps for iOS and Android make uploading pictures to Wikimedia's Creative Commons archive a piece of cake. By downloading and logging into the app, you can immediately start taking pictures and sending them off to that big Creative Common in the sky with just a quick title and description, and a few categories too if you feel like it. Granted, uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons from your computer was neverhard, exactly. Now it's just dumb easy. [Free]

Google Now: Google Now, for those not familiar, is a very slick app that debuted in Androidlast June. Its main selling point is that it gives you the information you want before you even ask for it. It can tell you when you need to leave for your next appointment, and give you directions for getting there. It can automatically track everything from your FedEx packages to your favorite sports teams in real time. You decide how much or how little of your personal information you give it access to, but of course the more access you give it, the more it can do. [Free]

Feed Wrangler: While yes, the grieving process takes time, if you're still too busy bemoaning the imminent death of your beloved Google Reader, you're going to find yourself in a bind when it finally gets put out of its misery later this summer. Replacements abound, and there's no question that $19 price tag is going to be a turn-off for some. But for those willing to buy their peace of RSS mind, you may have found a winner. [Free/$19]

Timeless: The stock selection on your iPhone is functional, sure, but it could be so much better. And Timeless may just be the timer replacement you're after. Create multiple, labeled timers that can run concurrently in a tabbed, easy to access row. Or put yourself in stopwatch mode simply by hitting the "play" button in the exact same screen you'd use to open a new timer. [$1]

ForeverMap2: Originally a Nook exclusive, the app pulls data from OpenStreetMap, a worldwide open source mapping project to create a totally interactive map with consistent, free updates. In addition to the same features you've come to depend on (directions, location finder, zoom, sharing, etc.), you can also chose from a variety of map styles to suit your needs (such as night and outdoor), all within a map that's accuracy will continue to increase as more people continue to use it. [$1, $3]

It's been a long week, so take a break. You deserve it. Whether you want to lose yourself in an impossibly simple, endlessly addictive game, take a shortcut to old-fashioned correspondence, or have your new AI friend do all the dirty work for you, we've got you covered. Enjoy.

Google Now: Google Now, for those not familiar, is a very slick app that debuted in Androidlast June. Its main selling point is that it gives you the information you want before you even ask for it. It can tell you when you need to leave for your next appointment, and give you directions for getting there. It can automatically track everything from your FedEx packages to your favorite sports teams in real time. You decide how much or how little of your personal information you give it access to, but of course the more access you give it, the more it can do. [Free]

Felt: Real, physical, handwritten mail is a dying breed. And sure, most of us love that feeling we get when we see a piece of mail written special, just for us, but with keyboards being shoved into our faces at every turn, it's just so much more damn convenient to tap out an email. Now you can, at least, sort of get the best of both worlds with an iPad app that turns your own notes written out on your iPad screen into sealed envelopes that will get sent off to its destination the old fashioned way. Your recipient gets those all-too-rare butterflies, and you barely had to life a finger. Everyone wins. [Free to download/$4 per print out]

Dots: If you've made it through elementary school, chances are you already know how to play. Simply connect the horizontal or vertical rows of matching colors and watch as they disappear from the screen while new ones come tumbling in. You have 60 seconds to kill as many rows as you can. Simple? Sure. Addictive? Well, just don't say we didn't warn you. [Free]

When you're a company as big as Apple, saving on tax bills is important—especially when they're in the billions. Fortunately its team of accountants has just managed to save it a cool $9.2 billion.

The trick—I think we can call it a trick—involved financing a $55 billion stock buyback using debt instead of offshore cash. That means that the US government is unable to bill for tax on the deal. The bond offering, according to Bloomberg, is the "biggest corporate offering on record".

If the cash had been taken from Apple's offshore funds—which amount to around $100 billion—the company would have had to pay a 35 percent tax to repatriate the money. But Apple does what it can to avoid tax—and in fact it only stumps up about 1 out of every 40 dollars in corporate income tax to the US.

Still, it's tough to grumble too much: Apple is still one of—if not the—biggest corporate income tax payer in the country. [Bloomberg]