I would imagine that being the CEO of Apple would be one of the most challenging but also most rewarding job in the technology industry at the moment. The company is enjoying such a tremendous run of success with their mobile and Mac products and have seen their stock price soar in recent weeks, but that doesn't mean that the position of CEO doesn't come with its fair share of stress. After being in the position full-time for the last seven months, it seems that Tim Cook is settling in rather nicely if the latest employee opinion polls are anything to go by.
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.
The ongoing patent disputes between Apple and Samsung are constantly subject to media attention, and at present, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh has the unenviable task of listening to the argument regarding Apple's U.S. Design Patents D558, D757, D618 and D678, related to the look and feel of its iDevice range.
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.
A couple of weeks back, Apple was dealt a lawsuit from a disgruntled New Yorker who claimed that the Siri voice-recognition software did not work as smoothly in reality as it appeared to on the advertisements.
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.
Did you have to deal with issues brought about the Antennagate scandal plaguing the first batch of iPhone 4 devices? If you were, or indeed still are an owner of an original iPhone 4, you can request a $15 settlement from Apple.
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.
Apple have responded to a number of complaints raised by users, who have been seeing their 10.6 version of iTunes crashing in random situations. It would seem that when Apple released iTunes 10.6 after the new iPad media event in San Francisco, they inadvertently introduced a number of bugs which became apparent when users were playing videos, changing artwork size whilst in grid view and synchronizing photographs to an attached iOS device.
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.
