April 2012 In Review

April was a little bit of a slower month, with no keynotes or big announcements from Apple - with the exception of yet another huge earnings call. However, MacStories did celebrate its third birthday on April 20th, and welcomed our seventh MacStories writer, Lukas Hermann, who is focused on reviewing some great apps with Inspiring UIs - you’ll see a list of those articles below the break. In news, we did see the announcement of WWDC this month (it sold out in less than 2 hours) and some incredibly successful Kickstarter projects. On the apps front there continued to be a number of app updates for the new iPad, two Tweetbot updates, Clear 1.1 and Read It Later relaunching as Pocket. Lastly, we had a number of great stories this month including a great one on iCloud in which Federico interviewed some of the developers who have implemented it and what their thoughts on it are.

WWDC 2012

On April 25th, Apple “finally” announced WWDC 2012, to be held over June 11th to 15th this year in San Francisco. The $1599 tickets went on sale immediately at around 8:30am EDT and promptly sold out in less than 2 hours. Along with the WWDC dates and tickets, Apple also announced that nominations for the 2012 Apple Design Awards were open - so if you are a developer an want to suggest an app for the award you can do that here. If you’re a student and missed out on WWDC tickets (or they were too expensive), you have until tomorrow May 2nd to lodge an application for a WWDC Student Scholarship.

Apple’s Q2 2012 Earnings Call

Yet again, Apple had a stunning quarter - its second best ever, only beaten by the last (holiday) quarter. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, 11.8 million iPads and saw $39.2 billion in revenue for the quarter. Our full post includes the usual graphs that really highlight the growth Apple has had in nearly all aspects of their business over the past few quarters and even years.

Flashback

April saw what was perhaps the most serious malware incident the Mac has ever seen with ‘Flashback’. Apple, after taking some time to respond, eventually revealed they will provide a Flashback removal tool - which they soon did, as well as provide a Java update to remove various Flashback variants. F-Secure also released an automated Flashback removal tool (and did so before Apple released their tool).

Kickstarter Projects

The Pebble e-paper watch saw an absolute explosion of support when it launched on Kickstarter this month. As of today, about $7.5 million has been pledged to the project - far exceeding the initial goal of $100,000. Then there is the Bydge, an iPad dock that’ll turn your iPad into somewhat of a MacBook look-a-like. Not everyone is a fan of the premise, and it hasn’t set the world on fire, but it has also easily surpassed the $90,000 goal on Kickstarter with about $360,000 pledged so far (and there’s still a month to go).

Everything Else:

Instagram’s Rise To 30 Million Users Visualized

Sparrow 1.1 for iPhone Available, Push Coming “With or Without Apple”

Apple Releases iAd Producer 2.1

Apple Informs Australian WiFi + 4G iPad Owners Of Refund Offer, Tells Resellers To Update Marketing

Second Apple Store in Rome To Open On April 21

Tim Cook To Speak at D10 Conference

Apple’s London Stores Prepare For Olympic Visitors And Journalists

Apple Loses A Few Legal Battles, Wins One And Responds To DOJ Allegations

Apple Confirms 10th Retail Store in Italy

iPad Launches In 12 Additional Countries This Week

Apple Removes iWork, Aperture Trials From Its Website

Samuel L. Jackson and Siri Star in New iPhone 4S Commercial (Update: Zooey Deschanel Too)

Apple Set To Open Second Perth Store Later This Year

Google Officially Launches Google Drive

The Really Big Reviews

Drafts Review

Tweetbot Gets iCloud Sync for Timelines, DMs, and Mute Filters

Everyme Review

Marked 1.4: A Little Something for Everybody

Scanner Pro Combines “Post-PC” and “Paperless” In A Single App

Clear 1.1: Refining the User Experience

Read It Later Reborn: Pocket Saves Everything “For Later”

Tweetbot 2.3 Adds New Gestures, Integrations, UI Refinements

Everything Else

Tweet Marker Launches “Plus” Version To Sync Timeline on the Web, Index Tweets

Air Display Gets HiDPI Mode Support on iPad Retina Display

Shazam 5.0 Brings Faster Tagging

World Contacts+ Is A Quick Dial App with a World Clock

Layer Cake Adds Sugar To PSDs

The iPad As A GPS Speedometer with Speed

Adobe Updates Revel with Retina Support, Better Photo Management

DragonDrop Simplifies OS X Drag & Drop

Iris: A Beautiful and Simple Instagram App for iPad

Adobe Announces Creative Cloud Subscription Service for CS6 Desktop Apps

Airfoil Speakers Touch 3.0 Review

Lukas’ Inspiring UI Series

Gemini Lovingly Finds Duplicates Of Your Files

Keep An Eye On Your Twitter Followers With Detective

Produce Morse Ringtones With iToneMaker

TeleTweet: Tweeting with Morse Code

National Parks By National Geographic: A Beautiful Guide To American Nature

StockTouch: Monitoring Stock Values With Style

BangTidy2: A Beautifully Animated Growl Notification Theme

The Heist 1.1: Highly Addictive Puzzle Fun

Assistant: Older iPhone Generations Just Got Their Own Siri

Typeli Is A Questionable OS X Note-Taking App

Organize And Investigate Your Mobile Screenshots with Screenshot Journal

DevRocket Is A Photoshop Plugin To Boost Your iOS Design Workflow

Happy 3rd Birthday, MacStories!

When It Comes to 7.85″ iPad, The Question Is “Why”

“Bartending” by Stephen Hackett Shows The Human Side of Apple Retail

Understanding The Agency Model And The DOJ’s Allegations Against Apple And Those Publishers

The (Big) Numbers Of The App Store Platform

iCloud’s First Six Months: The Developers Weigh In

MacStories Reading List: April 8 – April 15

Interview: Nate Weiner Talks Pocket Launch, Read It Later Evolution

Interview: Justin Williams

Promoting Software

Insanely Simple

My Dropbox Writing Workflow