One of the pitfalls of being a huge company is that you become less agile and more prone to slip-ups that perhaps wouldn't happen if there was more focus, or if it had a better understanding of a the market or territory it is operating in.
Apple makes a number of premium products, but it is mainly the iPhone and iPad that have stolen the limelight in recent years. Their smartphone and tablet range are clearly their most successful products in recent years, but one of their other media devices is starting to gain some traction now, thanks to recent hardware and software updates.
With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the once-popular iPod has become something of a dying breed. Although the world's number one music player continues to sell in good numbers, less and less consumers are looking for a standalone music player, preferring to utilize their smartphone's inbuilt music player.
Phil Schiller made sure to mention the A5X processor found in the new iPad performed 4x better than NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chip. With a quad-core GPU, the new chip was also said to boast twice the graphics output compared with the iPad 2.
According to Google's own numbers, the search and mobile technology giant is currently making four times as much money from iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, as it is from smartphones and tablets running its own Android mobile operating system.
When Siri was added to the iPhone 4S late last year, some would argue that the face of interactive computing technology was changed forever. Some would argue that Apple unleashed a gimmick that nobody in their right minds would use past the initial week of the novelty factor.
While Windows 8 has received plenty of mixed criticism regarding its user interface and the desktop, there's a more unanimous agreement that it is a pretty damn good tablet OS. But, is Microsoft's unique approach to tablets going to be enough to even get a foot in the door of the tablet market? After all, it isn't even so much a tablet market as an iPad market; Apple created this market, and are doing a great job at maintaining a firm grip on it. But, while nothing will kill the iPad anytime soon, it is possible for a product to gain decent share in an Apple-dominated market. Just look at Android.
From day-to-day, we see and hear many rumors and supposed 'inside information' regarding unconfirmed, unannounced, and unspecified products. Some are plausible, and make sense, if only vaguely, whilst others seem somewhat far-fetched.
Remember those rumors a few years back about the possibilities of Apple releasing some kind of magical and revolutionary touchscreen Mac contraption? If you do then you will no doubt remember that they were quickly squashed due to the fact that they believed using a touchscreen interface on a Mac-like machine would prove to be unnatural and offer a terrible user experience. The company quickly followed up with the launch of the original iPad, a device that has achieved phenomenal success.
Over the last few months a number of vulnerabilities have been found within the iOS platform that could potentially allow some ethically challenged individuals to gain access to certain parts of a user’s handset if it is lost or stolen, even if a passcode lock is enabled. The methods used have generally been long winded and allows access mainly to the device’s Camera Roll, recent call logs, as well as allowing the perpetrator to be able to make outgoing voice or FaceTime calls in some cases. Being able to circumvent the passcode lock and access that kind of minimal data is concerning, but on the grander scale of things hardly represents a massive breach.
