A Couple Bumps in the Road for Apple

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) may not be the greatest company to work for nor may it be immune to the woes of technology as so many think.  The company is set to hand out raises for workers in its retail store formats, and news is out that the iCloud is not working properly.

CNBC reported that the iCloud service was out and that users were not able to log in to the cloud and other services under Apple.  That will certainly not kill Apple’s business, but it could be a reputation issue that the company has to watch closely to make sure there are no defections as new technologies come out.

It sounds good on the surface that Apple is giving raises to its retail workers.  The problem is that employees have been complaining about worker pay rates.  It apparently got bad enough that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) had poached away at least one Apple worker to help with its own retail efforts.  The retail changes come under the new tenure of John Browett.

Apple shares are down marginally more than the broader markets today.  Shares are down 0.5% at $584.50 ahead of the closing bell versus a drop of 0.3% in the DJIA and a drop of 0.1% for the tech-heavy NASDAQ.

JON C. OGG