Following month after excruciating month of rumors, Verizon and Apple finally got together in January and announced that the . that there was much pent up demand for the iPhone on an network other than AT&T's, which has been criticized by many for dropping too many iPhone calls. The said the news put an end out our long national iPhone nightmare.

While almost everything seems to be going right for Apple, the health of its CEO Steve Jobs has been a constant concern. Jobs that he would be taking a leave of absence for medical reasons and that COO Tim Cook would be handling day-to-day operations in his stead.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer as head of the company's Server and Tools Business, Windows Server 2008 generally gets high marks from customers, but Microsoft is still trying to prove itself in the virtualization and cloud markets, and it was the in particular where Ballmer focused in explaining the move. In February, Microsoft named : Satya Nadella, who led the company's technical efforts to launch its Bing search engine.

It turns out that the appeal of app stores isn't just for smartphone and tablet computer users. Apple's Mac App Store hit the on its first day upon opening in January. The opening wasn't without hitches, as a piracy vulnerability was spotted early on. Meanwhile, Apple hit the on its earlier App Store about a week after the Mac App Store opened.

during the summer of 2011. AT&T also announced that it would be launching around 20 different "4G devices" this year, although many of those devices will actually run on its 3G HSPA+ wireless network. Much like rival carrier T-Mobile, AT&T refers to both the LTE and HSPA+ wireless standards as "4G" technologies even though HSPA+ is most widely considered a faster and more reliable version of the 3G GSM-based HSPA standard. Separately, 10 LTE devices it would be selling in the first half of 2011. This followed in December, 2010.