Apple CEO Tim Cook has published an open letter apologising for the frustration that’s followed the recent launch of Apple Maps.

The company’s new Maps application, which forms part of the iOS 6 operating system used by the new iPhone 5, has been criticised for a lack of detail and poor accuracy in some cases.

James Rosewell writes:

The last time I used a Microsoft based mobile phone was 2008 in the form of the HTC Hermes. Since then Apple and Android have dominated my mobile life. It was therefore with more than a little trepidation that I switched over to Windows Phone 7.5 in the form of the Lumia 800 in July this year. Since then I’m continually being asked what I think of the phone and the operating system. Here are my experiences and thoughts.

It's a good week for Yahoo! as it appoints Marissa Mayer - previously Google employee number 20 - to the role of CEO. However, things aren't as cheery at Research In Motion, which has been ordered to pay over $147 million in a patent case.

Meanwhile O2 UK is recovering from a network problem that left around a third of its customers disconnected for almost a day.

Pointing and waving your hands are set to become widely-used ways of interacting with mobile phones, according to a new study from ABI Research.

It says the detection of vision-based gestures - physical movements identified by a camera or other sensors - will offer an additional input method for 600 million smartphones in 2017.

Senseg, the Finnish company that enables smartphone and tablet screens to offer different textures when touched, has appointed Paul Costigan as its Chief Executive Officer.

Mr Costigan was previously the chief operating officer and Asia-Pacific region president for video processor business Movidius, although he’s probably best known as co-founder and CEO of fabless semiconductor firm Massana.