Apples’s next big thing was probably far from Tim Cook’s mind yesterday, when the technology giant’s boss received a senatorial grilling on its corporate tax affairs. But Apple’s alleged scheme to avoid paying taxes on billions of dollars of profits has deflected attention from a more fundamental issue facing the company: what’s next?

Few people in tech can recall the last time Apple went half a year without introducing new gizmos for the world to savour. According to Mr Cook, we will have to wait at least until the last quarter of the year for the latest devices. What’s going on? Part of the reason for Apple’s fallow 2013 is that the company released a new iPhone, two new iPads and a slew of Macs late last year, so it simply needs time to recover.

But there is a more troubling theory, too. Last year Mr Cook fired Scott Forstall, the group’s longtime head of iOS, its mobile operating system, and promoted Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s celebrated design chief, to oversee all hardware and software at the firm. Sir Jonathan is instituting a top-to-bottom review of its software, according to reports.