Digital Trends – By its very nature, the first year in a new decade sets the tone for that decade. Last decade, the first year seemed to showcase a strengthening Apple, though it was still short of the first iPad.It also showcased the beginning of Steve Ballmerâs run at Microsoft and the post-dot-com run up of Google. In short, the evidence was there for the companies that would likely pull the most interest, and there was even the beginning of a hint that Yahoo and Palm would begin to slide, but RIM still looked unbeatable. There were a lot of early indicators of changes to come, but not all of them were evident yet. Letâs look at some of the early indicators from this last year.