Tim Cook’s first year as CEO at Apple

Replacing a legend in personal computing is no small task — particularly when that legend’s looms as large as Steve Jobs. Apple COO Tim Cook, a longtime member of Jobs’ inner circle who’d stepped into the CEO role on several occasions on an interim basis during Jobs’ health battles, took the role permanently in 2011; 2012 was his first full year at the helm.

Has Cook truly put his imprint on the company, or is this still Jobs’ baby, merely being shepherded by a shrewd captain?

Record quarters of revenue combined with the (mostly) successful launches of the iPhone 5, iPad mini, two generations of retina iPad, OS X Mountain Lion, and a slew of new MacBooks and iMacs suggest that Cook has a firm grip on day-to-day operations in Cupertino, but questions remain: has Cook truly put his imprint on the company, or is this still Jobs’ baby, merely being shepherded by a shrewd captain? And is the Apple Maps debacle — combined with the fallout in the executive ranks that ensued — a reflection on missteps in Cook’s leadership?

A flagging stock price late in the year suggests that investors still aren’t sure what to make of the Tim Cook era, but he’s not staying quiet: a recent media blitz has him positioned front and center, the new public face of perhaps the most closely-watched company in the world.

Apple-Samsung trial

Apple’s patent war against Android came to a head this year with the company’s historic billion-dollar jury verdict against Samsung. The evidence offered by the companies at trial offered an unprecedented look at the internal development processes of both companies — everything from early design studies of the iPhone and iPad to detailed Samsung comparisons of the Galaxy phones to Apple products.

After nearly three weeks of trial, the jury took just two days to deliberate and decide that Samsung had willfully infringed several of Apple’s utility and design patents on the iPhone and iOS — but not any of Apple’s design patents on the iPad. Samsung is set to appeal the decision in the coming year, but the trial itself was an important inflection point in tech history: the smartphone patent wars may soon be over.

Twitter the media company?

At the beginning of 2012, CEO Dick Costolo denied that Twitter was becoming a media company, at least in the traditional senses. His moves over the next eleven months revealed something else entirely, though: Twitter has changed significantly and has become a "broadcasting (social) network."

Twitter has become the the place to discuss live events as they happen. A big partnership with NBC for the Olympics kicked things off, but Twitter’s prominent place in the 2012 presidential election solidified Twitter’s position as the de-facto app on the second screen.

While the average user has noticed Twitter’s new media role, power users have run into a more troubling consequence of the company’s decisions: it’s no longer as open as it used to be. In August, Twitter ignited a controversy by limiting many of its third party developers, many of which helped to create Twitter's key features in the first place. Twitter's official app saw some improvement, but nowhere near the creative innovation shown in its original iPad app and in countless third party apps.

So far, despite the emergence of a for-pay competitor called App.net, it doesn’t look like Twitter’s new, restrictive rules have hurt the company at all — 2013 could well be the year it finally has its IPO and goes public.

The little carriers strike back

While 2011 was all about AT&T’s failed attempt to buy T-Mobile, 2012 was about the smaller nationals making the huge plays. In October, Sprint tied up with new corporate parent SoftBank in a deal valued at $20.1 billion, later purchasing longtime partner Clearwire outright for $2.2 billion; the SoftBank acquisition is expected to close in mid-2013, giving Japan a huge piece of the complex pie comprising the American wireless industry.

In the same month, Deutsche Telekom signed the paperwork to merge T-Mobile with MetroPCS, a deal that gives the nation’s number four carrier desperately-needed spectrum to help widely deploy LTE service in 2013. For a company that seemed on the ropes throughout much of 2011, T-Mobile is profitable and looking resurgent; next year could be a turning point if the LTE rollout goes as planned.