Apple products stole the spotlight during last night’s presidential State of the Union address. As political experts and commentators kept their focus on President Obama, tech fans kept their focus on how all the high-end notebooks prominently showed off the Apple logo in the press gallery for the event.
The sheer number of MacBook Pros and MacBook Air laptops made it look like an ad for Apple. This isn’t surprising given the fact that professionals in most industries tend to prefer Apple over other technology brands.
Apple stepping up its lobbying efforts
Apple also hopes to counter government scrutiny, which is why the tech giant is stepping up lobbying efforts. The company’s chief executive officer, Tim Cook, recently paid a visit to the United States Capitol. During the visit, he posed with a Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who is on the Senate Finance Committee this year. This was one of the many meetings Cook had during his trip.
Apple continues to fight against an increasing amount of scrutiny. As the world’s valuable company, it’s not surprising everyone, including the United States government, is keeping a close eye on it. Although the company’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, never paid visits to the Capitol himself, his company still lobbied Congress, the White House and 13 government departments last year. In 2009, the tech giant only lobbied Congress and six agencies.
The tech giant’s lobbying group focused its concerns on 39 issues, including copyright and patent reform, e-book publishing, online safety, mobile medical device regulation, health software applications and safe driving. The company is also putting a focus on growing sectors of the tech industry like cloud services. Last year’s iCloud breach involving the infamous celebrity photo hack put the company in a bad place. Online security is important, and it is necessary to find a way to improve security for all.
via: TUAW
