February 2012 In Review

February sure went by quickly, but that certainly doesn’t mean there was a shortage of news, reviews and editorials - in fact it was quite the opposite. After a pretty big January with their education announcement and financial earnings, Apple didn’t slow down in February. They released new ads, previewed Mountain Lion, continued the PR battle over supplier responsibility and confirmed the (presumed iPad keynote) media event for March 7th. February was also a big month for Apps with an updated Tweetbot for iPhone and new Tweetbot for iPad, Clear, Photoshop, Vimeo 2.0 and VLC amongst others. Whilst we continued to focus on providing you, our readers, with great editorial content we discussed topics such as the iPad as a PC, supplier responsibility, greed and iOS 6 wishes amongst others.

Jump the break to view the full review of February 2012. You can also view January 2012 in Review here.

iPad 3 announcement confirmed for March 7th

Early in February came the rumour from AllThingsD that Apple was planning a media event in early March to hold the iPad 3 announcement. A little bit further on in the month, iMore gave us a specific date for the rumoured announcement: March 7th. Then, just a few days ago on February 28th, Apple sent out invitations to selected members of the press, confirming that it was holding an event on March 7th. The invitation teased that they “have something you really have to see. And touch.”. It is widely expected that the iPad 3 will feature a Retina Display, but other reports such as one from the Wall Street Journal are suggesting it may also feature LTE.

Discussion of supplier responsibility continues

One of the big topics in January was the issue of working conditions in Apple’s supplier factories – particularly Foxconn. That discussion continued in February, and whilst it was a little quieter, there were still some big developments. The Fair Labor Association began its inspections of Apple’s suppliers and whilst initially they were impressed, subsequent reports suggested they found some disturbing things. A full report with the findings from the FLA is expected early this month – which could be very interesting timing with the iPad 3 also supposedly coming this month. Meanwhile, the ABC’s Nightline program was given exclusive access to the Foxconn factories by Apple and they aired a 20 minute episode investigating the plant, talking to employees and interviewing senior Foxconn management as well as the head of the FLA. Those in the US can view the full episode online.

Apple surprises us with Mountain Lion

Right in the middle of the month, Apple announced OS X 10.8 (note that the word ‘Mac’ has been dropped from the title of operating system), and this version is associated with a Mountain Lion. In coordination with the release of a developer build of Mountain Lion, Apple also released a public beta of Messages (the app that will replace iChat in Mountain Lion) for anyone on Lion – although it was revealed shortly after that Apple currently plans to make Messages a Mountain Lion-only app after the beta concludes. Some of our other coverage on Mountain Lion revolved around Gatekeeper (a big part of the new OS), Tim Cook’s comments on it and the new software update system that is included in Mountain Lion.

The iPad continues to bust the “only for content consumption” myth with two new apps, plus another rumoured one

We started off the month with prosumer video editing app Avid arriving onto the iPad App Store, giving those who want to edit video on the iPad a more powerful and flexible app than Apple’s iMovie. Then later in the month came the rumour of Office for iPad again (it initially arose last November) – this time The Daily claimed to have even used the app for a short time and posted a photo of the app running (unfortunately it didn’t show much). Curiously though, Microsoft sort-of denied it, The Daily responded and then Microsoft responded again, it ultimately was a weird battle of words that just muddied the waters over whether or not Office for iPad is real. Finally, Adobe released Photoshop Touch, a version of Photoshop for the iPad that we reviewed in the last week of February. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple launches another new iPad app like they have in the previous two iPad keynotes - our own Gabe Glick makes a case for Aperture arriving on the iPad.

Everything Else

Localized Flipboard Content Guides Come To UK & Ireland, Australia and Canada

Apple Releases OS X 10.7.3 [Direct Links]

Apple Warns Developers Against Using Services That Manipulate App Store Rankings

Details Of Adobe Creative Cloud Revealed: $49.99 Per Month, Includes CS6, Lightroom 4 & 20 GB Cloud Storage

Twelve South Wants To Elevate Your iPad with HoverBar

MacBook Air, iMac, MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Updated With Internet Recovery Support for 2010 Models

Sprint Q4 2011 Results: 1.8 Million iPhones Sold, 45% Of New Customers Bought iPhone

Apple’s White MacBook Reaches “End Of Life”, Educational Sales To Stop

“Okay, I’ll Remind You”

Transcript of Tim Cook’s Q&A at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference

Apple Responds to Contact Data Access, Will Now Require Explicit User Approval

Apple Adds Screenshots And Promo Codes To The iBookstore For Publishers

Apple Counting Down to 25 Billion App Downloads

China Telecom To Offer The iPhone 4S From March 9th

Things Cloud Goes Public Beta

Apple Extends Mac App Store Sandboxing Deadline to June 1

Apple Purchases Land In Oregon For Another Large Data Center

Clear Sells 350,000 Copies In 9 Days

Apple Acquires “Search Engine for Apps” Chomp

Apple Airs New iCloud Commercial: Harmony

New Turin Apple Store To Become Italy’s “Most Important” One

The Really Big Reviews

Tweetbot 2.0 Review

Tweetbot for iPad Review

Clear: A Delightful and Clever Todo App

Review: Osfoora for Mac

VLC 2.0 Released: What’s New, And An Interview With VideoLAN Developers

Screens 2.0 Review

Adobe Photoshop Touch Review

Exploring MoneyWiz: Complete Personal Finance Control On Your iPad

Vimeo 2.0 for iOS Review

Everything Else

Launch Center 1.2 Gets All-New App Detection

Reader X for iPad Is A Different Take on Google Reader

Favs: An App For Your Internet Favorites

Dropzone 2.0 Gets Path-like Radial Menu

Evernote For iOS Gets Some Nice Improvements In 4.1.8 Update

Smartr Contacts

Instagram 2.1 Released: Updated UI, Lux, New Sierra Filter

Alfred 1.1 Released: Address Book, Filter Actions & More Improvements

Tweet Library 2.0 Review

Rovio Teases Angry Birds Space, Launching March 22

Storify for iPad Review

Buzz: My New Phone App Replacement and Contact Hub

OmniOutliner 1.2 for iPad Sets the Stage for iCloud Sync

February Quick Reviews

Quick Review: RankIt Checks On iOS & Mac App Store Charts

Quick Review: Remarks

App Journals

App Journal, Episode 10: Daedalus Touch, Lovely Charts, Inside the World of Dinosaurs, Skip Tunes

To Be Or Not To Be, Is The iPad A PC?

On iPads and Personal Computers: A Post-PC Retrospective

The Case for an iOS Aperture

Apple, China, and Doing The Right Thing

Greed and Entitlements

iCloud File Sharing

The iOS Permission Dialog Dilemma

iPad 3 Variables

Tip: Handle iMessage Notification Overload with Contact Settings

iOS 6 Wishes

February Reading Lists

MacStories Reading List: January 29 – February 5

MacStories Reading List: February 5 – February 12

MacStories Reading List: Special Mountain Lion Edition

MacStories Reading List: February 19 – February 26

MacStories Interviews

Interview: The Omni Group’s Ken Case

Interview: Tapbots’ Paul Haddad Talks Tweetbot for iPad Launch