Get Ready For A Seriously Huge Year From Apple In 2014

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Half way through 2013, it looked like a lost year for Apple. 

Apple had no product announcements. Its stock was cratering. As the stock fell, the media started writing stories about Apple losing its innovative spirit. 

But now that 2013 is over, it's clear this was not a lost year for Apple. In fact, it was really big year, one that set the table for the next 2-3 years of innovation from Apple. 

It's very likely we're going to look back at this year as the first one in which Apple fully entered the post-Steve Jobs era.

There's one event that really stands out: The introduction of iOS 7. Apple expert John Gruber writing about iOS 7, said, "it shows that the company is not afraid to boldly move forward from the Steve Jobs era."

Jobs loved the bubbly, glitzy, faux-realistic icons and design in iOS 6. His partner Jony Ive killed all of that in iOS 7, which had simpler icons and design with a brighter color palate. 

Breaking from Jobs' flavor for iOS 7 was a statement. "I’m not going to pretend to know Jobs’s taste — no one could, that’s what made Steve Jobs Steve Jobs — but I can certainly make a guess, and my guess is that he would not have supported this direction," said Gruber in October, adding, "I do think it’s a tangible sign that Tim Cook means it when he says that Jobs’s advice to him was never to ask 'What would Steve have done?' but instead to simply ask 'What is best for Apple?' and judge for himself."

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Angela Ahrendts

Beyond iOS 7, which was the boldest, most in-your-face move by Apple in 2013, there were a number of other, somewhat smaller moves that point to what it's planning for 2014:

• Apple hired Angela Ahrendts, formerly CEO of Burberry to run its retail operations. (Some people are so high on Ahrendts they think she'll be CEO one day. I'd like to see her work a day at Apple before making proclamations.)
• It bought 15 (!) companies this year. Apple has been criticized for not being aggressive on M&A. Seems like it got aggressive this year.
• • Of the companies it bought, it seems that at least 3 are mapping related.
• • One of them will help with search.
• • One of them could be used in Apple TV.
• It poached Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch to run a special project. At Adobe, Lynch talked trash about Apple, so this hire was surprising. He's supposedly leading a team of ex-iPod engineers on something.
• Yves St. Laurent CEO Paul Deneve joined Apple as a VP working on special projects reporting to Tim Cook. Think Apple is going to go down market? It hired people from Burberry and YSL.
• Apple scooped up a lot of the people that developed Nike's FuelBand. Cough *iWatch* Cough.
• It released iOS 7, a total remake of Apple's mobile software. (We just talked about this.)
• The iPad Air is an incredible product, and the iPad Mini with Retina ain't too bad. Two new iPads that keep it ahead of the competition.
• It added a fingerprint scanner to the iPhone in a simple elegant way that no other company has done for smartphones. 
• It added 64-bit, or desktop computing-level, architecture to the iPhone and iPad. This seems like one of those things that will be massive in the next year or two. Tablets as powerful as laptops are coming.