As 2011 draws to a close, it’s time to take a look at the year that’s been. In this, the first in a series of ‘Year in review’ posts, I’m going to take a tour of the highs and lows of Apple’s year.

Apple’s year

Apple kicked off 2011 with an alarm bug that affected users who had alarms set for New Year’s Day and January 2nd, but this glitch was quickly sidelined by news that Apple had opened the Mac App Store, which promised to make the ownership of multiple Macs cheaper through less restrictive licensing terms which allow software bought for one system to be installed on multiple systems.

Also during January, Apple also announced the long-awaited Verizon iPhone 4. This new handset, designed especially for the CDMA network, opened up the iPhone to a whole new market.

The iPad continued to go from strength to strength, and in March the iPad 2 was announced. While the hardware update was evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary, it was more than enough to keep the competition at bay (although there were some teething troubles). This didn’t prevent rumormongers from claiming that Apple would release the iPad 3 featuring a ‘retina’ display before the end of the year. This didn’t happen because there was no need for it to happen. The only real competition to the iPad is Amazon’s Kindle Fire, but this device’s success is not linked to the iPad in any way as the two tablets appeal to a different market.

Another long anticipated Apple release this year was the white iPhone 4. Exactly the same hardware, but in a different colored shell. People went crazy over it.

2011 also saw the release of the iPhone 4S, which was initially expected to be called the iPhone 5. Apple broke with tradition and didn’t announce this at the WWDC in June, instead choosing to leave it until October, despite Apple pre-announcing what would be covered during the WWDC keynote, this didn’t prevent masses of speculation that there would be a surprise iPhone announcement during the keynote… there wasn’t! There were also no shortage of silly iPhone related rumors and nonsense (but as ever, most Apple rumors are garbage).

There was a lot announced at WWDC 2011in June 2011 - 10.7 ‘Lion,’ iOS 5 and iCloud. Lion was interesting not only because it was a long-expected release but also because Apple decided to make it available exclusively via the Mac App Store. Unfortunately, ease of access to the OS meant that a lot of people got their hands on a particularly buggy Mac OS X release and for me Lion was more painful than Vista was at its worse.

Also announced at WWDC was a new music service called iTunes Match which gave people the chance to convert their *cough … cough* dubiously-acquired music into legit versions for a small yearly flat-fee.

This year also saw Mac OS X targeted by malware, in particular a piece of malware called Mac Defender. Customers initially had to turn to Apple support, but by the end of May this malware had started spreading via Facebook. Apple responded to this threat by offering ‘Snow Leopard’ users a security update (anyone using an earlier version of Mac OS X was out of luck). Following a spate of updates from Apple, the malware scare subsided.

There was also sad news at Apple, as Steve Jobs, tech visionary and master at selling people things they didn’t realize they needed, passed away following a lengthy battle with cancer. Prior to this Jobs had stood down as CEO, handing the reigns of the company to Tim Cook.

Following the death of Jobs, his official biography was published. Walter Isaacson’s book gave us an insight into Jobs - how he saw Microsoft, what he thought of Google Android, and how he felt depressed following the announcement of the iPad. The biography also added fuel to the rumor that Apple is planning to sell TVs (it’s a nonsense rumor).

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