Truth is, Apple assists in the ruination of any economy where it sets up shop, by taking the money and running... to any tax haven where it can't be touched by authorities trying to recover unpaid dues, etc.  In other words, Apple does not contribute anything of worthy of mention to the economies gracious enough to host it. 

As for my interest in the new Mac pro, while it is an impressive piece of equipment that would look good on my desk, I very much doubt that I'll ever be able to afford one at the over-inflated price being asked, so it's not likely that I will be contributing to Apple's ever growing coffers/exponential greed.

Clever marketing.

You stick an 'i' infront of a bucket of shit and 'I' MUST have it....

....and I ain't one of those 'millions' ....

Some would venture to say Microsoft is just as evil. Recall back when they would buy out their competitors just to force IE on the masses?

Yes.

It's a consumer society...

I have personally successfully avoided their products.  Not a penny of mine has contributed to their tax-free society, nor will it.

Meanwhile...if you took a minute to read each of the comments in this thread Rinehart has made onemillionandseventyseventhousand dollars in that time....

Look, Paul, I get it that you hate Gina Rinehart with a deep-seated and dedicated passion, I really do, but do you have to keep mentioning her name so often here in the forums?  It's not that I mind you expressing your absolute contempt/total disgust for the woman [term very loosely used for the want of a something better to describe it]... but every time you use its name, my lunch, dinner, breakfast, whatever, wants to regurgitate itself with the force of a projectile fired from a canon.  Now I wouldn't mind so much if I weren't trying to really hard to economise on the food bill, but I'm never going to afford that Mac Pro at this rate of mention

Now I don't wanna deprive you of your daily bitch, cos everyone needs one to relieve tension, so I've come up with a few variations that may delay the realisation of who you're speaking of long enough for me to settle enough to keep my breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever.... so here goes:

Gina Swineherdt

Gina Lollipiggida

Gina Blackheart

Gina Heartless

or Temporary Gina [and that hopefully she kicks the proverbial sometime soon]

MS did it on purpose just to make sure IE was the only browser out there. And they got in trouble for it as well.

Yes, that was inherently wrong.  There 'should' have been no issue with MS providing a web browser with their OS.  Afterall it's pivotal to an OS's functionality...

People like Nutscrape simply got their knickers in a twist and the faction-mad EU jumped on the bandwagon...

AND... when the press does not give ample coverage to this type of thing..

Seems it is more important to make a big deal out of something someone said on a reality show than to address REAL issues.

Yep, and that's 200 million people that have iTunes accounts with credit cards on file, that doesn't necessarily mean they use them. I had an iTunes account years ago too, but I never used it.

I don't know if they were dangling or not Doc, but making a gelding out of em would be easier if they were!!

So, 425 million in taxes paid to Australia for the past 5 years is not contributing? That's the amount the story you link to states they paid once you do the math.

You may say that's not enough but by their accountants, that's what they were legally obligated to pay. You can't blame them for looking for loopholes to avoid paying more than they have to. Matter of fact, they owe it to their share holders to make the company as profitable as possible.

I doubt there are others that would voluntarily pay more taxes than they are obligated to. If they did, I would wonder about their sanity.

If they were not fiddling their books and 'hiding' 6 billion a year in profits offshore they'd be paying about 5 times that much.

Call it 'clever accounting' others call it 'rorting the system'...no different to sneaking yourself OS to somewhere where there are no extradition agreements to avoid criminal prosecution.

ONLY the shareholders [and the well-paid accountants] are on the side of 'that's clever, Apple'.

HONEST people pay their dues.

isn't it common internet knowledge that the people that buy premium products are naive and uneducated, while the smartest people on the internet live on welfare?