— FORTUNE COVER STORY — How Tim Cook is changing Apple [FORTUNE]A 14-year veteran of the company, Cook is maintaining, by words and actions, most of Apple's unique corporate culture. But shifts of behavior and tone are absolutely apparent; some of them affect the core of Apple's critical product-development process. In general, Apple has become slightly more open and considerably more corporate. In some cases Cook is taking action that Apple sorely needed and employees badly wanted. It's almost as if he is working his way through a to-do list of long-overdue repairs the previous occupant (Jobs) refused to address for no reason other than obstinacy.
Yahoo launches Axis ‘search browser’ [CNN]Yahoo has joined the browser wars with Axis, its very own tool designed to enhance its search with a clear eye toward the rapidly expanding mobile Web.
Zynga Defends Acquisition [WALL STREET JOURNAL]The San Francisco-based company on Thursday plans to announce an agreement with animation studio DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. DWA +0.17% to place additional advertising in the game. Zynga believes it's the start of new revenue-generating possibilities that will justify the controversial acquisition [of Draw Something].
Google didn’t infringe on Oracle patents, jury rules [FOX NEWS]Wednesday's verdict comes about two weeks after the same jury, with two additional members, failed to agree on a pivotal issue in Oracle's copyright-infringement case against Google. As a result, Google Inc. faced maximum damages of only $150,000 - not the hundreds of millions of dollars that Oracle Corp. was seeking.
Don’t crucify Facebook’s CFO — yet [FORTUNE]"It's way too early to judge," says Lise Buyer, about the Facebook IPO. Buyer is an IPO consultant in Silicon Valley who played a central role in Google's IPO, while she worked for the search company in 2004. "Ultimately, what matters is how effectively the company deploys the cash that it raised. If it uses the extra dollars to build a stronger business, Ebersman will have done right by both the company and its shareholders."
Siri-like Voice Dictation coming to OS X Mountain Lion? [9TO5MAC]Voice is Apple’s next important field of computer-input, and Siri on the iPhone 4S and voice-dictation on the third-generation iPad makes this clear. Siri, in its current implementation, seems perfect for mobile devices like the iPhone 4S, but many of its features don’t make sense on larger screens such as those found on tablets and computers. However, Apple has brought a component of Siri called Dictation to the iPad, and the company appears to be planning on bringing this Dictation feature to Macs as well.
What HP’s Meg Whitman must do now [FORTUNE]Former HP exec who declined to be named
"HP needs to figure out if it's a consumer-oriented business or a commercially oriented tech business. Doing both is incredibly hard and the company's too big. Maybe the move Meg has made in combining the PC and printer groups is the first step—you can see the lines beginning to be drawn. She could split the company in two, the PC and printing business and the software, services and compute business. Smaller and simpler is probably better. Apple's proved that you can dominate the world with two dozen SKUs. Walk into a Best Buy and how many different kinds of printers can you buy? I worked there and I couldn't even tell you. This is a company that's bigger than Portugal. It's a big, large complex business. It doesn't need to be."
Why LinkedIn fiddles as Facebook burns [FORTUNE]Will the hundreds of millions of social media users grow up? Investors seem to be betting they will. They are – this week at least – pinning the future on LinkedIn.
Apple VP: New project is ‘most important,’ ‘best work we’ve done’ [MERCURY NEWS]Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of industrial design, said that despite the iMac, iPhone, iPod or iPad, Apple's current project is its best. Ive, who was in England this week for his knighting Wednesday, told that to The Telegraph after being asked which project he would like to be remembered for if he could only pick one. "It's a really tough one. A lot does seem to come back to the fact that what we're working on now feels like the most important and the best work we've done, and so it would be what we're working on right now, which of course I can't tell you about," he said.
— BONUS THINK PIECE — The Facebook Fallacy [MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW]For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web.
