Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to testify Tuesday morning at a Senate hearing about offshore taxes. He will propose a “dramatic simplification” of tax laws to help bring more corporate profit back to the United States, according to the Washington Post. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and Phillip Bullock, head of the company’s tax operations, are on the witness list to join Cook on his first appearance before Congress.

“If you look at it today, to repatriate cash to the U.S., you need to pay 35 percent of that cash. And that is a very high number,” Cook told the Post. “We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable.”

By the way, although Apple has more than $100 billion in cash, it recently decided to borrow money to give back to its shareholders in a tax-saving move. (See Apple’s Dilemma: So Much Money, So Much Of It Overseas.) The New York Times reported last year that Apple legally shifts about 70 percent of its profit overseas. The NYT also said the Cupertino company established a subsidiary called Braeburn Capital — in Nevada, where there is no state corporate income taxes and no capital gains tax — to invest its cash. Like other companies that have set up subsidiaries in that state, Braeburn also allows Apple to bypass taxes in other states.

Photo of Tim Cook by Gary Reyes/Mercury News archives

Put your wallet away Rockefeller. Some as-yet-unknown got-rocks just placed the winning bid for a cup of coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook: $610,000 — cream and sugar included.

Here’s CNN’s take. My take? I left my $610,000 in my other pants. We all knew this was going to be a blowout auction — a chance to sit down for coffee in Cupertino with the leader of the free economy.

But at least Cook can take a deep breath. He was nearly beat out by a Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster as the highest bid item in Charitybuzz history. But as the bidding closed, someone stepped forward digitally and matched the record bid of $610,000 on the site that connects charities looking for cash with whiz-bang experiences.

Say, you don’t think Cook popped for the honor of having coffee with himself, do you? It would have saved him from having to endure some fan boy’s (mind you, some rich fan boy’s) inane chatter about Apple products. Think this spoof on Joy of Tech, pointed out to me by Yoni Heiser on tauw.com.

Actually, it turns out that Apple, in its gracious way, has pretty much taken care of any potential annoying behavior from Cook’s coffee buddy. From the Charitybuzz auction listing:

“We expect all winning bidders and their guests to conduct themselves appropriately when attending an experience won at Charitybuzz. Polite manners and respect for the generous donor and adherence to any rules or parameters are a must.”

CNN says those rules and parameters include: “Visitors will be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement and are subject to a security screening. Also, they can’t liveblog or tweet during their meeting.”

Calling Miss Manners. I mean, really.

Charitybuzz, which takes a 20 percent cut from winning bids (Ka-Ching) says it will distribute a formal press release on Wednesday. The bulk of the money will go to The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. It’s not clear if Charitybuzz will say just who was crazy enough, I mean lucky enough, to land the coffee summit.

Hey, maybe it was Scott Forstall, the one-time Apple wonder-boy who Cook apparently asked to leave in a very convincing way after the Apple map disaster. That could get awkward.

Or maybe Forstall went halvsies with Ron Johnson, the guy who launched the wildly successful Apple Store and then went over to J.C. Penney and suffocated a retailer that was already gasping for air. He’s looking for work again.

Turns out the auction terms do allow the winning bidder to bring a guest. (I like mine black.)

Whoever the winner was, he or she beat out 85 other bidders.

There is a whole story behind the  coffee with Tim Cook auction on CharityBuzz, which coincidentally is creating a buzz (here, here and here) not seen since America discovered Nutella.

The thing is, we’ll never know it — the story, that is.

“There is a story, of course, about how (Apple CEO) Tim Cook got invovled with the RKF center,” CharityBuzz’s Glenda Felden said Thursday, referring to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, which will benefit from the truckloads of cash the auction will raise. “I’m not sure I have permission to share that story.”

Felden said she was seeking an OK from the RFK center, which could happen, and from Apple, which also could happen — when hell freezes over.

Apple don’t tell nothing to nobody. The company lives in a cone of silence that would put the CIA to shame.

No matter that the auction is burning up the blogosphere, seeing as some coffee fan had (by Thursday morning) bid $180,000 to have coffee with Cook at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters. (At that price, I’d sip my coffee nice and slow.)

Here’s what we do know: The auction item, which went up yesterday, already has attracted 52 bids. It was originally valued at $50,000, but how do you put a price on having a crappy cup of company cafeteria coffee in a CEO’s office? (I wonder if it’s served in Styrofoam cups?)

We also know that 180 grand is a real, real lot for a cup of coffee, even with the leader of the free economy. How over the top is $180,000 (with 20 days of bidding to go) for a CEO sitdown? Consider Elon Musk, who’s CEO of a bucketful of companies. A meeting with Musk is currently at $7,500 on CharityBuzz.

But, hey, it’s not a competition. (Can you imagine a couple of high-tech CEOs behaving competitively about something like who’s worth more?)

Speaking of which, also up for auction to benefit the RFK  is actor Robert De Niro ($2,000), Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning ($5,250), Alec Baldwin ($2,000) and country singer Carrie Underwood ($500). (You can get them as a package deal for a fraction of what it will cost to meet Cook.)

So how did this whole thing come about? If history is a guide, chances are Ethel Kennedy, RFK’s widow, or some other center rep approached Cook and asked if he’d put himself up for sale.

“Each year we work closely with the center to craft these incredible auctions,” Felden said. “And because it’s Ethel Kennedy and (daughter and center president) Kerry Kennedy, and they have this stellar reputation, we get a lot of top celebrities and business leaders and politicians to support them.”

A cynic would say the charity auction provides a nice glow for Apple, which has come under harsh criticism for poor working conditions in its contractors’ factories in China. (The company also has been cheered recently for improvements there.) And given its super-secret culture, Apple doesn’t have to face questions about the connection.

Or  it could be that Cook just likes a good cup of coffee.

Taking a quick lap around the tech world this morning:

• There’s a war going on over domination of the cloud, and Palo Alto-based VMware is making no secret of who it sees as its No. 1 enemy: Amazon. In a speech earlier this week, CEO Pat Gelsinger took a swipe at Amazon’s public cloud computing services, according to a CRN report, telling an audience at VMware’s Partners Exchange Conference that if “a workload goes to Amazon, you lose, and we have lost forever.”

Gelsinger continued with his version of cloud Manifest Destiny: “We want to own corporate workload. We all lose if they end up in these commodity public clouds. We want to extend our franchise from the private cloud into the public cloud and uniquely enable our customers with the benefits of both. Own the corporate workload now and forever.”

VMware President and COO Carl Eschenbach continued the verbal attack: “I look at VMware and the brand reputation we have in the enterprise, and I find it really hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books.”

Spending on cloud computing will surpass $24 billion a year by 2016, according to a new IDC report, a growth rate of more than 50 percent from 2012. But while VMware is a leader in the private, enterprise cloud field, it has good reason to be concerned. Amazon is making strong headway in both the public and private clouds, and has the resources to be a dominant force.

IDC’s report said cloud companies have no time to lose: “Not even the largest technology incumbents can sustain IT market leadership without achieving leadership in cloud services. Quite simply, vendor failure in cloud services will mean stagnation,” said Robert Mahowald, IDC’s research vice president of cloud services. “Vendors need to be doing everything they can – today – to develop a full range of competitive cloud offerings and operating models optimized around those offerings.”

VMware may want to tone down the rhetoric, though. As ReadWrite’s Matt Asay writes, “One big reason for enterprise adoption of . . . the cloud, is precisely the flexibility to get things done without being locked into any company whose guiding principle is to ‘own the corporate workload now and forever.’ ”

• Apple is requiring CEO Tim Cook to hold company stock equaling at least 10 times his base salary, according to a Bloomberg News report. Other Apple executives must hold three times their salary in stock, the report says, as an effort to ensure Apple’s leadership is in step with its shareholders.

Cook’s base salary will be $1.4 million this year, and he received 1 million shares of Apple stock when he took the reins from the late Steve Jobs in 2011. Apple shares have lost about a third of their value since reaching an all-time high in September, and rogue investor David Einhorn is pressuring the Cupertino tech giant to share its enormous cash hoard with shareholders.

• Who are the most popular sports teams on Twitter? The Wall Street Journal has broken down the numbers of followers of the official Twitter accounts for all 122 teams in the four U.S. major-league sports. The most popular? The Los Angeles Lakers, with 2.9 million followers. The Orlando Magic, Miami Heat and Boston Celtics were next, all around 1 million followers. The New York Yankees came in fifth overall, with 822,000. The New England Patriots were the top NFL team, with 556,000, edging out the New York Jets.

Despite being at the epicenter of social media (and Twitter headquarters), Bay Area teams don’t rank particularly highly. The San Francisco Giants were the most popular, with 390,000 (3rd among baseball teams); the San Francisco 49ers had 356,000 (7th among NFL teams); the Oakland Raiders had 229,000 (13th among NFL teams); the Golden State Warriors had 163,000 (15th among NBA teams); the San Jose Sharks had 126,000 (a mere 18th among NHL teams); and the Oakland A’s barely had enough to fill the Coliseum for a weekend series, with 90,000 (23rd among MLB teams).

OK, so Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t take my advice and use his State of the Union visit to Washington to announced the location of Apple’s U.S.-based Mac factory.

I was listening. Crickets.

Silicon Valley Congressman Mike Honda, however, heard something that made his ears perk up: “manufacturing innovation hub.” He wants one, which likely puts him in line with 434 other House members.

“As you know, Silicon Valley is the epicenter of technology and innovation in the United States,” Honda, a Democrat, wrote to President Barack Obama, in case the president was hunting around for spots for the hubs. “What may not be recognized is the extent to which Silicon Valley is also experiencing a manufacturing resurgence. Nearly 18 percent of Silicon Valley’s jobs are in manufacturing, and the number is growing — the local manufacturing sector is projected to grow by five percent by 2018.”

It is a surprising cluster of facts. I laid out some of the reasons behind it in a series on Bay Area manufacturing.

In his State of the Union address, Obama said the federal government would establish three hubs to bring together universities, government and private industry to come up with new and better ways to make stuff.

And Obama said he’d like to create 15 of the hubs, but that idea hasn’t been embraced by Congress. (Honda says he’s on board, by the way.)

The idea of hubs — clusters of industries and their support structures — is widely accepted as a good idea. Brookings Senior Fellow Mark Muro wrote about it last summer and UC-Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti put forth a similar analysis in his book “The New Geography of Jobs.”

My first thought on reading Honda’s letter was: Silicon Valley hardly needs a government-sponsored manufacturing hub. It already is a manufacturing hub on its own.

But Honda saw that reaction coming. In his letter, he suggested that the valley would be an ideal place to explore new ways to manufacture semiconductor chips. Chip makers are moving to larger wafers — more chips per wafer — and they’re going to need new machines and methods to make their new chips.

Makes sense. Not to mention that would be one way to put the silicon back in Silicon Valley.

(Photo by Mercury News photographer Gary Reyes)

It was Apple CEO Tim Cook’s turn to join first lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union address, exactly one year after Steve Jobs’s widow sat at Obama’s side for the president’s annual speech to Americans.

A new term for President Obama, and a new era of leadership for Apple. But Cook’s appearance at the State of the Union on Tuesday could signal the start of a cozy relationship between Apple and the White House – the kind of relationship that may never have been possible under Jobs.

“Cook will be more susceptible to arm-twisting by the Obamas than Jobs was,” said Prasad Kaipa, a professor and entrepreneurship expert with more than 30 years’ experience coaching Silicon Valley business leaders.

Cook sat in the first lady’s box as the president announced that Apple will start making Macs in America. Cook’s smiling face was captured on camera for a moment, and then the president moved on to talking about wind energy and the minimum wage.

It just so happened that Kaipa, who used to work as a senior manager for Apple, was discussing Cook’s leadership skills at a Mountain View business event at the very same time. Kaipa’s new book “From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom,” due out in March, explores in part the differences between Cook and Jobs.

Obama’s announcement wasn’t news to most tech watchers; Cook said last year that Apple would spend at least $100 million to manufacture one of its Mac lines in the U.S., a response to criticism for outsourcing manufacturing to China. But Cook’s name on the first lady’s guest list and Obama’s plug for the company during one of the most-watched presidential speeches suggest a closeness that Jobs could not have cultivated with authority figures, Kaipa said.

Cook, 52, has humility and deference than Jobs didn’t – qualities essential in doing business with the President of the United States.

“He would listen a lot. He would probably be more deferential than Jobs,” Kaipa said.

Jobs may have been one of the greatest innovators of our time, but was often seen as callous and offensive. His biographies describe an arrogance that, while it helped him achieve the closest thing to corporate perfection in the tech world, was a roadblock to building relationships with dignitaries.

“Cook can be authentic and appropriate,” said Kaipa. “Not Jobs.”

Cook’s habit of rubbing elbows with the Obamas may serve Apple, and the planet, quite well. Kaipa said Apple’s move to bring manufacturing, however small a percentage, back to the US could be just the start of the company’s investments in social and environmental causes. Cook, a runner-up for TIME’s 2012 Person of the Year, genuinely cares about the country’s welfare and may start to display the type of grand philanthropy we’ve seen from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Recently named the second-most charitable American, Zuckerberg has donated hundreds of millions to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and Newark Public School System.

“With proper help and guidance,” Kaipa said,  Cook “could make a tremendous contribution to this planet.”

Oh, the drama. Both Apple and Tesla Motors are embroiled in some. Apple is catching flak from shareholders who want the Cupertino company to share more of its wealth. And Tesla is dealing with a negative New York Times review of its Model S sedan.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook, who spoke this morning at a Goldman Sachs tech conference in San Francisco, called hedge fund manager David Einhorn’s lawsuit over the company’s proposal to require a shareholder vote before issuing preferred stock “a silly sideshow,” and said, “I find it bizarre we find ourselves being sued for doing something that’s good for shareholders.”

Other points of note: Cook took issue with Einhorn’s claim that Apple has a “depression-era mentality” because it has a huge cash hoard. He said the company regularly buys small companies, and that it has “enormous momentum.” He also said tablets are “a huge opportunity,” and downplayed the company’s recent stock decline, stressing that he’s focused on the long term. Cook said he has “never been more bullish” about other products Apple is working on.

Apple shares were down about 2 percent to $469.90 as of this post.

• As for the drama between Tesla and the New York Times, which published a review of the Model S describing a road trip marred by battery problems, it has affected the electric-car maker’s stock and raised nagging concerns about the viability of all-electric cars.

CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter and elsewhere to blast the review, calling it “fake” and “ridiculous.” He also retweeted other Tesla owners. Among other things, Musk said Tesla would release a log of John Broder’s test drive, which Musk said will show that Broder took an unscheduled detour and drove too fast. That promise is raising another question about how much Tesla knows about its drivers, and whether it will protect their privacy. Musk says on Twitter: “Tesla data logging is only turned on with explicit written permission from customers, but after Top Gear BS, we always keep it on for media.”

Musk has been known to take umbrage with media coverage in the past. As GMSV has mentioned, he has engaged in a war of words with tech writer Owen Thomas, and Tesla has sued the BBC over a “Top Gear” review that brought up battery issues and that it also called fake. But he told Bloomberg TV today he has only felt the need to “speak up” a few times.

Shares of the Palo Alto company were off more than 1.75 percent to $37.70 as of this post, after falling 2 percent Monday.

So, the first man of gee-whiz technology will be sitting with the first lady of the United States for the big State of the Union address.

Love the state of the union. Anyway, seems to me it would be the perfect opportunity for Apple CEO Tim Cook to announce just where in the United States the Cupertino company will start making Macs.

Well, I mean, before or after the speech would be the perfect opportunity. The last guy who actually interrupted the speech got some bad press.

You can be sure that whenever, if ever, Cook does say where he plans to make good on his promise for made-in-the-USA Macs, that it won’t be as spontaneous as Joe Wilson’s outburst heard ’round the world.

Apple doesn’t do anything unplanned, as was evidenced when Cook first talked publicly about bringing some Mac production back to the U.S. He carefully orchestrated an appearance with Brian Williams and a long interview with Business Week.

In fact, couple Apple’s choreography obsession with the choreography obsession of the White House and there is zero chance anything is going to slip out. So Tim, why not just blow it out big on the international stage?

Me? I’ve been saying Silicon Valley would be a logical place for Apple to make its Macs. It’s a manufacturing hot-bed, packed with the kind of tech-savvy brainiacs who can come up with innovative ways to manufacture products.

Chances are Apple has come up with some innovative process that means making Macs here won’t cost much — or any — more than it would cost to make them in China. The company will want that experiment to go on close to home, so top engineers and top executives can keep an eye on things.

Or heck, Tim, why not just let the president make the announcement for you?

I’ll be watching. Not holding my breath, but watching.

Time flies. Last we checked, Apple was in the news because of a shareholder complaint that it isn’t giving back enough to shareholders. The news brought up nagging questions about Apple’s shares, which have recently fallen from their spectacular rise, and about whether the company is losing its luster. Now, there’s new speculation about what Apple has up its sleeve: a watch. Apple shares are up about 1.5 percent to $481.80 as of this post.

The rumored watch could be like a wearable iPhone with thin, flexible glass, according to reports in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. Is it Apple’s next big thing? Could it possibly be like a Pebble smartwatch, the Kickstarter hit that started shipping late last month? Would it be another wearable computing development, like Google Glass?

Analysts cited by the NYT say it only makes sense that Apple would move next into wearable computing. In fact, Forrester’s Sarah Rotman Epps says Apple has done a lot of hiring “in that area.” She also says “Apple is already in the wearable space through its ecosystem partners that make accessories that connect to the iPhone.” And Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster says cheaper wearable computing devices “could ultimately be Apple’s best answer to addressing emerging markets.”

In other Apple news:

• A Reuters article on Apple’s complicated relationship with business partner/courtroom foe Samsung says the companies’ epic patent battle may be coming to a stalemate. Both companies’ products continue to sell well, and Apple has largely failed to show it has suffered greatly from any real or alleged infringement by Samsung. In addition, Reuters says the two companies continue to have much in common, including potential competition in the mobile industry.

By the way, CEO Tim Cook was opposed to suing Samsung, says Reuters. It’s something other reports have suggested for a while. As we’ve mentioned before, it was late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who vowed to go after Android. (See Quoted: An end to Apple’s ‘thermonuclear war’? and ‘Destroying’ Android, and other Apple vs. Google news.)

• Speaking of Samsung, the New York Times examines how it has emerged as a formidable rival not only to Apple’s sales, but also its cool factor. The two successful companies have different ways of approaching market research: Samsung does it, Apple doesn’t. Samsung studies trends and creates products; Apple devotees would say the company creates products that set trends. Except, the NYT article notes, things seem to be shifting a tiny bit. Samsung started selling smartphone bigger screens before Apple enlarged its iPhone screen. And Samsung, whose products go beyond computing-focused devices, has a head start when it comes to smart TVs.

We already knew China was big. One point three billion big. Much bigger than the United States with its 311 million.

And while each and every one of those 311 million seemingly now owns an Apple product of some kind,  the iPhone maker so far has been scratching the surface among Asian consumers. As global markets go, China remains one big fat juicy landscape for Apple to get even more of its shiny new gadgets into the hands of the digital masses.

Now, in what could go down in the annals of overstating the obvious, CEO Tim Cook has told the Chinese press that America’s days as Apple’s top market are numbered. He’s been quoted as telling Xinhua News Agency:

“China is currently our second largest market. I believe it will become our first. I believe strongly that it will.”

Cook didn’t say how and when this tectonic shift might occur, and Apple declined to comment further on the boss’ sound bite. But Cook did tell Xinhua that new Apple products could be unveiled in China in the future, saying:

“I would love that to happen. China is a very important marketplace for us.”

Meanwhile, Apple is steadily gaining retail-sales traction and boosting its presence in China, recently opening its 11th Apple Store there.

“We are growing very fast. We are continuing to invest in retail stores here and will open many more over the next several years. We have some great sites selected, our manufacturing base is here, and we have incredible partners here. So it’s a very very important country to us.”

The addition of the multistory flagship on a busy corner in Beijing’s bustling Wangfujing shopping district provides Apple another product-pushing fire hose in a country whose booming smartphone market has been dominated by cheaper handsets using rival Google’s Android system. In fact, as Bloomberg points out, Apple is sixth in market share.

And while its sales in China have cooled a bit of late, Apple has reported sales there more than doubled in 2010 and 2011. To juice that growth even more, Cook has made his second trip in less than a year, meeting with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as well as managers of state-owned China Unicom Ltd., the first Chinese carrier to support Apple’s iPhone.

In a tantalizing addition to his current itinerary, Cook also pow-wowed this week with the chairman of China Mobile Ltd. The world’s biggest phone carrier has more than 700 million subscribers, but no partnership with Apple to support its iPhone. Teaming up with China Mobile would be a huge step toward the marketing future that Cook  now envisions.

True to form, Cook was upbeat in his interview, heaping equal praise on China and his own company:

“People around the world, regardless of culture, really want the best products. I think they love that people at Apple create products that make their lives easier and better. That’s what we try to do. I feel really good about our progress in China.”

And if there’s any doubt that the Chinese are hungry for more Apple goodies, consider this: In the first three days since its December 14, 2012 launch, the iPhone 5 was snapped up by 2 million people in China. At the time, Cook said:

 ”Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a record with the best first weekend sales ever on the mainland”