Appletell

The Superior Court of California in Santa Clara is summoning your favorite CEO, Steve Jobs, as well as other Apple officials back to court for a new lawsuit from the Boston Retirement Board.  This group is claiming over $105 million was lost on backdated stock options granted to Mr. Jobs.  Technically speaking, backdating is legal, but can harm other shareholders involved with the company.  Also, it must be declared Securities and Exchange Commission beforehand, which is the part these officials are accused of disregarding.

The BRB also claims that is has specifics to back up the charges, but they have not released the details yet because the court has yet to figure out how to handle the confidential information.  These types of cases have been coming to various Apple officials for about two years now, but have been stalled or dismissed due to a lack of evidence and rulings that the backdating did not clearly affect Apple’s stock price.  What are all your thoughts on this?

It seems that Maine will be getting it’s first Apple Store soon.  Although an Apple spokeswoman would not confirm or deny this, it is fairly obvious after seeing listings for jobs at the store on Monster.com as well as Apple’s official job listings page.  This is great for Apple lovers in Maine, butMacNN points out that this new Maine store opening could also, unfortunately, reduce sales from local Mac resellers such as Best Buy.

On top of this, there is a rumor that yet another Apple store may be opening in New York.  Located on either 15th Broad Street or 23 Wall Street, this will be New York’s 13th Apple Store.  Lastly, the Third Street Promenade in southern California may be closed for a while to undergo a remodeling, including a new glass spiral staircase.  Hopefully all of these new Apple stores help Apple’s market share raise even more in upcoming quarters, so keep up the good work Apple and thanks for providing a shopping experience like no other!

California citizens could soon see their iTunes song prices rise from the usual $0.99 to $1.07. iTunes is the USA’s second-largest music retailer, shortly behind Wal-Mart. The current California laws limit taxing goods to only real-life objects, e.g. a CD - digital music files obviously aren’t real-life objects and can’t be taxed. The state is currently facing an $8 million deficit, and is looking to iTunes to get some income.

I agree with MacDailyNews’ take on this issue - is it really Apple’s fault that California is facing this deficit, or did they do it themselves by spending way too much. They shouldn’t be taxing the citizens for something that’s the democrats’ own fault. Is this another reason not to buy music from the iTunes Store?

Photo credit [mumbleyjoe/Flickr]
Via [MacDailyNews]