The Daily Show host Jon Stewart ran a satirical segment (via Apple 2.0) on last night's show about Apple CEO Tim Cook's appearance in front of a U.S. Senate Committee examining the tax strategies of multinational corporations.

Stewart suggests that a number of Senators are Apple fanboys for praising Cook and his company, as well as questions asking Apple executives what they think should be done with the tax code.

Though the embedded video below is Flash-based, iOS users should be able to view the clip at The Daily Show's website.

This post was written by Jordan Golson from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories.
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Evernote has added the ability to set reminders and alarms to its note-taking and organizational app, a popular new feature request the company says.

For the millions and millions of people around the world that use Evernote everyday to achieve their goals, we’re excited to announce a new part of Evernote that will keep you on track every step of the way. Reminders are here. Our three most requested features rolled into one small package:

- In-app and email Alarms
- Quick note based to-do lists
- Pinning notes to the top of your note list

Evernote has additional details on how the new features work in a post on its blog.

Evernote is a free download for Mac and iOS, though premium subscriptions are available. [Direct Links: Mac, iOS]

This post was written by Jordan Golson from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Forbes reports that former Gartner research director Michael Gartenberg has joined Apple. While his exact position at Apple hasn't been revealed, Gartenberg is said to be working under Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller.

This isn’t Gartenberg’s first time jumping into one of the technology companies he tracks — though his last foray lasted less than a month. In Feb. 2007, he joined Microsoft as an “enthusiastic evangelist,” a job he described at the time as being designed to “engage and work with enthusiasts and other influencers and show them all the cool stuff that Microsoft is doing. In short, it’s our job to act as the bridge between Microsoft and end users.” But he left Microsoft in March 2007 and resumed his role as a tech analyst, saying “at my core, I am an analyst. It’s what I do and I do it well and after much thought, I realize I’m just not ready to stop doing that job just yet.”

Gartner is one of the highest-profile technology research firms tracking, and the firm's estimates of product sales are commonly cited by Apple in its presentations. Gartenberg has long been a fixture in the research and analysis community, and has served as an occasional contributor to Macworld and other publications.

This post was written by Eric Slivka from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories.
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Twitter has updated its Mac app today, adding notification support. When a Direct Message or mention is received, users will now be alerted with a popup notification. This option can be configured in the app’s Preferences window.

The update also brings a number of bug fixes:

- Fix for Growl notifications not working in Lion and Mountain Lion
- Fix for bug that prevented un-favoriting tweets
- Fix for missing account switcher in composer
- Fix for error message when posting a tweet with a pasted image
- Fix for enlarged avatar when dragging a tweet into an email
- Fixes for crashes and various other bugs

Twitter has been making an effort to improve the performance of its Mac app in 2013, releasing its first update in two years in April to add Retina display support, new photo sharing options, and additional languages.

Twitter for Mac is a free download from the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]

This post was written by Juli Clover from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories.
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Millward Brown today released its annual BrandZ study of global brands (via AllThingsD), which found Apple to be the world's most valuable brand for the third straight year.

Although Apple topped the list once again, its brand value only increased 1% to $185 million, which is not as impressive as the 84% increase (from $153 million in 2011 to $183 million in 2012) it received last year. Apple rival Google jumped back up to the second spot with a brand value of $137 million (a 5% increase) and Samsung clocked in a 51% increase and a $21.4 million brand value at the 30th spot.


Overall, Millward Brown said that the technology sector was "flat," declining after 5 years of growth:

Without the surge in Apple and Facebook brand value that helped drive category growth, Technology declined 1 percent in the BrandZ™ 2013 ranking, after five years averaging 8 percent annual category growth.

Among other top brands, IBM fell down to the third spot with a brand value of $112 million while Microsoft dropped 9% to $69.8 million and Facebook fell 36% to $21 million. Yahoo, which fell out of the top 100 years ago, returned to the 92nd spot with a brand value of $9.8 million.

While "brand value" studies can be difficult to compare, because of the use of differing methodologies used by those who gather the data can lead to much different results, they can be a good look at marketing and branding trends.

This post was written by Husain Sumra from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories.
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