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July 2012 In Review

July was an interesting month for MacStories as we covered the launch of the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, and launched our first eBook. Containing all our Mountain Lion coverage from the site in addition to exclusive articles, the book was a challenging but immensely rewarding project. With the exception of some advice from a few trusted people, we handled the book’s creation entirely by ourselves and are very proud of the end result. If you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, it’s not too late to change that — and remember that 30% of all proceeds will go directly to the very worthy cause that is the American Cancer Society.

Besides Mountain Lion, the other notable pieces of news were Google’s acquisition of Sparrow, and the all-but-confirmed rumour that the next iPhone and iPad mini will be announced on September 12th. Apps-wise, July was a quiet month as developers readied theirs for Mountain Lion, but we did see the release of the Tweetbot for Mac alpha along with Rovio’s new franchise, Amazing Alex. For stories, we had two great interviews, an excellent piece on discovering and making music on the iPad, talked about the apps and tools we use to write more efficiently, and created some hands-on examples of what the rumoured 7.85” iPad would look and feel like.

Jump the break for the full month in review, and feel free to read previous ‘Month in Review’ editions from 2012.

 

Mountain Lion Coverage

iPhone, iPad mini to be unveiled in September?

Reported by iMore and confirmed by AllThingsD, The Verge, and The Loop, the next iPhone is rumoured to be unveiled at an event on September 12th. iMore also believes that the new iPhone will be released on September 21st and that the iPad mini and new iPod nano will be unveiled at the same event. Meanwhile, Chuck Skoda made a roundup of all the rumours surrounding the next iPhone and reported iPad mini.

Apple’s App Updates

This month Apple pushed out a number of Mountain Lion updates for their Mac apps. At the top of the list was an update to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote that added support for iCloud and the MacBook Pro with Retina display, but Aperture, iPhoto, iMovie, and Xcode all received updates as well. Even the iOS iWork apps and iTunes U received updates.

Google Acquires Sparrow, Facebook Acquires Acrylic

The acquisition of two notable independent iOS and Mac developers by two tech giants were also announced literally within hours of each other. The developers behind the popular email client Sparrow were acquired by Google in order to work on Gmail and “accomplish a bigger vision”, followed swiftly by the announcement that they would cease all further development on Sparrow. Meanwhile, Facebook acquired Acrylic, makers of Pulp and Wallet, and announced that the developers will join Facebook’s design team.

Corrupt App Store Updates Cause Problems For Users & Developers

Early in July a number of app updates became corrupted on Apple’s CDN, which lead to problems when users updated the apps only to find they would just crash on launch. Apple rectified the issue in about a day, and took steps to alleviate the situation by re-issuing the app updates so that those affected could update the app again without deleting and reinstalling it. This also had the happy side effect of reseting app ratings for the affected versions, helping  developers who had been burned by the problem.

Apple Cracks Down On Sites Selling Access To iOS Betas

After Wired reported in June about websites that had been selling access to iOS betas by activating device UDIDs from a developer account, we followed up on the report and found that some of the sites Wired cited had been shut down. Contacting some of the people behind the sites, it was revealed that Apple had sent DMCA take-down notices to many of the sites selling beta access.

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Former MacStories contributor.

graham@macstories.net