Apple Finally Fixes Developer Site, Takes Ellison's Jabs, Gets Icahn's Support

Apple finally fixed its developer website over the weekend, only to take a sucker punch from Larry Ellison and then get propped up by Carl Icahn within 24 hours later. Never a dull moment in Cupertino.

Today, billionaire investor Carl Icahn said via Twitter that he's taken a "large position" in Apple after speaking to Tim Cook, adding that he believes the company to be extremely undervalued. Apple is on the verge of a product launch, perhaps as early as next month.

Icahn's tweet comes on the heels of Ellison talking candidly about Apple's future in a CBS interview. The Oracle chief pointed out that Apple flourishes with Steve Jobs and falls precipitously without him. Thus, Apple is on the verge of another historical swoon. Here's the video.

Ellison's doomsday prophesy echoes rumored unrest among Apple's board of directors, which wants to see more innovation out of Apple. It's been a tough few weeks for Apple as the company barrels toward the ever-critical fall product launch.

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On the technical front, Apple had been struggling to restore its developer website, which was hacked on July 18-nearly a month ago.

Apple iOS developers have been scurrying to ready their apps for iOS 7 when it becomes generally available this fall. But, as an iOS developer told CIO.com, they've been stymied both by the hack and by Apple's stealthy responses to their queries.

The good news is that Apple apparently has righted the ship. Apple's developer website service was finally restored over the weekend. "It looks like they are all systems go after three or four weeks with an outage to those systems," the developer says.

Tom Kaneshige covers Apple, BYOD and Consumerization of IT for CIO.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn. Email Tom at tkaneshige@cio.com

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