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Throughout 2012 Tim Cook has continued to put his stamp on Apple and its culture. One move that we haven’t heard much until now is his decision earlier this year to allow certain employees to spend 20% of their work time pursuing new projects that may help Apple.

20% time has become a prominent employee incentive at other companies throughout Silicon Valley as it has been popularized by Google who got the idea from 3M. The incentive allows employees to spend 20% of their time on side projects, but it hasn’t been adopted by Apple until now.

With the absence of Steve Jobs looming in the background, Tim Cook and his team faced a mountain of questions as they marched into 2012. Who would be the visionary now? Would the iPhone continue to be successful? What’s going to happen to the Mac now that the iPad has become a beast of its own?

The most important question Apple faced going into 2012 was whether they could maintain their supremacy. With competitors closing the gap, Apple doesn’t have Steve Jobs’s vision, charisma, or negotiating prowess anymore, and 2012 has been the year to prove that Apple can endure. The challenges and adversaries Apple is facing in 2012 has made this single year the most important one ever for Apple, and yet they’ve been able to come through in the clutch and blow us away with an army of incredible products and strategic moves.

If you’ve found Siri to be completely useless, and you’ve decided it’s easier to avoid it than to shout at it, then why not replace it with Google Voice Search? If you’ve got a jailbroken iOS device, it’s as easy as installing a new tweak called NowNow.

No matter how long it spent waiting for approval, Google’s updated search app for iOS was worth the wait. Is it a shameless Siri-clone for web search? Yes, pretty much? Is it fast, instantly usable, and useful? Oh yes. Oh yes it certainly is.

Shortly after the iPhone 5 made its debut back in September, the team behind Sparrow announced that it would be updating its email client for the handset’s new 4-inch display — despite its decision to cease development of the app after joining forces with Google.

It seems we could be waiting some time for that update, however: Sparrow has revealed that Apple rejected its latest release for violating its App Store terms.

Thankfully, it’s been some time since I’ve written about an Apple patent lawsuit, however, that doesn’t mean they’ve magically disappeared. The latest in Apple’s crusade against Google (via Motorola Mobility), leads us to a U.S. District Court in Madison, Wisconsin. Apple was slated to go up against Motorola Mobility with allegations of unfair licensing practices, however, Judge Barbara Crabb has dismissed Apple’s lawsuit with prejudice — meaning the case is over at the trial court level.

For a brief period of time, iOS dominated Android in terms of marketshare in the U.S. But now that Android is available on many more cheap smartphones, Apple has watched as Android’s share has explode.

Over the last two years, Android has captured 70% of the smartphone growth while iOS has captured 30% of the growth. However, when you look at just the last twelve months of growth, Android’s growth has slowed while Apple’s has accelerated, opening the door for iOS to overtake Android in terms of marketshare in the future.

Liquid is a productivity helper for OS X. It comes in two flavors – free and paid. The idea is to speed up your information seeking workflow. You find something you need to research, and a few key presses later you’ve got some data. Or a unit conversion. Or, in the paid version, a language translation. It’s got a lot of features.

If you’ve had a horrible experience with Apple’s new Maps app, you’re probably anxious for Google to hurry up and get Google Maps back onto your iPhone. The Google Maps app is reportedly in development and should be ready for launch by the end of 2012, but some people at Google say they’re not optimistic that Apple will approve the app.

According to a new report, Google employees think that Apple will reject the app once Google submits it for approval because Apple will want to “keep moving forward in an effort to make its obviously inferior product better.”

During the fiscal year of 2012, Apple made more money than ever before and became the world’s most valuable company. But they also managed to pay only 1.9% of income tax on earnings outside of the U.S.  Of the $36.8 billion Apple earned outside the U.S. Apple only paid $713 million in taxes.

Some may see those numbers and cry foul, but Apple hasn’t done anything illegal. Like a lot of other Fortune 500 companies, Apple keeps their international profits stashed somewhere outside the U.S. rather than having to pay a heavy tax rate for bring that cash back to America. The strategy saves Apple billions on their tax bill, but it also limits what they can do with those profits.

The iPad mini is Apple’s answer to smaller Android tablets from the likes of Amazon and Google. But there’s a good reason why it doesn’t come with the same $200 price tag. A teardown has revealed that the new iOS device costs at least $188 to build, and that price rises when you add bigger storage options and 4G connectivity.

Now that the iPad mini’s been on sale a few hours, it’s time to address the issue you’re all itching to know about. I’m talking, of course, about the drop test. Apple’s new tablets have been put to the test against Google’s $199 Nexus 7, and the iPad mini does surprisingly well, only sustaining any real damage when dropped on its face onto concrete.

Even though the news that Apple fired Scott Forstall and John Browett was released on Monday, investors didn’t have an opportunity to react to the new changes in management thanks the the stock markets being closed due to hurricane Sandy.

The markets opened today for the first time all week and investors showed that they’re not feeling incredibly optimistic about Apple right now. Apple’s stock price dropped about 2.4% and was trading at $589.60 this morning, which is the lowest price the stock has seen since July.

The Kindle Fire/Fire HD and Nexus 7 have given birth to a small, yet powerful, sub-category of affordable 7-inch tablets. One that has been slowly eating away at a market that has been dominated by the much larger Apple iPad. To battle this growing trend, Apple decided to break down — after vowing to never to make a 7-inch tablet — and create a smaller version of their highly successful iPad line. Apple’s iPad Mini may not be a 7-inch tablet (it’s 7.9-inches), but it’s clear Apple’s intentions are to disrupt the sales of those pesky 7-inch competitors out there who keep chipping away at their market share.

Google’s updated search app adds lightning-fast voice-controlled search, just like you get on Android. It’s simple, impressively fast and will run on just about any iDevice you might have, not just the latest hardware.

But it has a long way to go to compete with Siri.

Google is still the champion when it comes to search, but their iOS app has lacked a lot of the neat features that you can use on Android. A big update to the Google Search app has fixed all that though and brought improved voice search capabilities to iOS.

The update is pretty significant for iPhone 5 users and can be downloaded free via the App Store. The biggest update to the app is that users can now can use natural language to control Google Search as well as listen to Google Search dictate the results of your query back to you.

Even though he was fired from Apple yesterday, Scott Forstall will still be an Apple employee until some point in 2013 and work as an advisor to Tim Cook. His new position is really just to prevent him from jumping ship quickly and going to another company, but Apple can’t keep him forever. At some point in 2013, Scott Forstall will be free to join any company he chooses. So which company should he go to?

Forstall’s brother works for Microsoft, but Scott’s penchant for skeuomorphic software might not fit well with Microsoft’s Metro UI. Google and Samsung are two other obvious choices because they’re big competitors with Apple. Or Forstall could choose to create his own company like Tony Fadell did with Nest after he left Apple. What company do you think would be the best fit for Scott?

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac Forums and talk about possible destinations for Scott Forstall

Since its debut back in 2008, Apple’s iOS App Store has held the crown for the largest library of mobile apps and games available. That’s no longer the case, however, as its biggest rival, the Google Play store, has now caught up. Today Google announced that it now offers over 700,000 Android titles.

Now that Google has unveiled its Trifecta of Nexus devices, I can’t help but feel underwhelmed. I can’t exactly pin-point why I feel this way, but alas, I do. Perhaps my perception of what a Nexus device should represent has become misguided. I’m not sure when I began to expect more than just a Vanilla experience, but the latest batch of Nexus devices has knocked me back to the reality that “Nexus” means nothing more than having an untainted Android OS with certain end-user freedoms and timely updates.

Today, Google announced two new Nexus tablets — the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 — which will go head-to-head with more established competitors like the iPad, the iPad mini and the Kindle Fire HD. But how do they stack up?

Microsoft’s new Surface RT tablet made its debut today, just three days after Apple announced the new fourth-generation iPad and iPad mini. If you’re not completely dedicated to iOS, you’re probably having a hard time decided which tablet to go for.

To help you make your decision, we’ve put together a handy chart that compares the Surface RT with some of the most popular tablets on sale right now, including the new iPads, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, the Google Nexus 7, and more.

You know what’s neat about Apple ditching things like Street View from its Maps app? What’s neat is the vacuum which it left, and the apps which have rushed to fill it. WhatsGoLa might not be the first Street View app in the App Store, and it certainly isn’t the best named, but it might be the cutest.

As is often the case with Apple products, feelings towards the new iPad mini were mixed following the Cupertino company’s special event in San Jose on Tuesday. Many were wowed by its good looks and tiny form factor, which still manages to run regular iPad apps just fine. While others were confused over its $329 price tag.

We had expected Apple to price the iPad mini along the same lines as cheap Android tablets, such as the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire, which sell for $200. We didn’t quite expect Apple to go quite that low, but we felt around $250 would be just about right.

Instead, Apple chose to ignore what its competitors were doing. You might say that this is a big mistake, and that the iPad mini doesn’t stand a chance against its 7-inch rivals. But many analysts feel the iPad mini will do just fine at $329.

The iPad Mini was announced today, and frankly, it missed the mark. The iPad Mini will simply have no effect on non-Apple users. Apple needed to go $299 or less to make the iPad Mini seep into consumers heads and play devil’s advocate. At $329, that simply isn’t going to happen.

Phishing emails are some of the most frustrating emails I have delivered to my inbox. While I’ve never fallen for one, the sheer audacity of the sender, who makes a lame and shameless attempt to steal my login and/or bank details (often using the name of a bank I’ve never dealt with in my life) really infuriates me.

There seems to be one going around at the moment that claims to be from Apple targeting iCloud customers. Unlike traditional spam emails, however, this one won’t attempt to steal your login details when you click on its link. Instead, it wants to sell you flowers.