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It’s actually a pretty complex situation: a user sees their data as their own, wanting some empowerment over what they choose to do with their allotment. AT&T wants to control the experience of data usage by limiting FT usage over 3G, as it will provide an overall improvement to the network by making it so that FaceTime only works on a small portion of customers’ data plans. Sometimes what people want isn’t the best option, at least according to AT&T.

The last paragraph points to this compromise:

We will be monitoring the impact the upgrade to this popular preloaded app has on our mobile broadband network, and customers, too, will be in a learning mode as to exactly how much data FaceTime consumes on those usage-based plans. We always strive to provide our customers with the services they desire and will incorporate our learnings from the roll-out of FaceTime on our mobile broadband network into our future service offerings.

Allowing FaceTime on cellular data through shared plans is an experiment. This could lead to opening the floodgates to all plans in the future, or it could lead to an even more limited use of FT on cellular data plans. The fact is that Apple has actually made video calling prevalent, so AT&T needs to brace for a future filled with this communication.

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This is the second high-profile acknowledgment of a “mistake” on Apple’s part in recent weeks, with Apple just last month having backpedaled on removing its products from the EPEAT environmental registry. In that case, Apple senior vice president Bob Mansfield posted an open letter apologizing for the company’s error.

There have been other mistakes in the past as well, like “Antennagate,” but having two happen so recently is interesting to note.

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Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever.

And by incredibly successful, he means 1 million sales in 24 hours. So it seems that ML downloads have had sustained growth, whereas Lion downloads must have tapered off.

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The first is the deeper iCloud integration you are going to get from the OS. If you are a Pages, Numbers, or Keynote user you will find Apple’s newest OS to be a delight. If you create a document on your iPad or iPhone and want to begin to work on it from you OS X machine, the document is just sitting there waiting for you. When you make edits to the document from any of those devices, it will instantly push to the other devices. Personally I think this is one of the best new features. Apple has opened this up to developers as well, so hopefully we will be begin to see more applications that work this seamlessly across all three platforms. One common complaint I’ve read and heard from people is the worry that Apple is trying to move away from the traditional file structures we’ve been use to for so long. This is absolutely true, but I think that we are going to see more of this across all platforms.

Gatekeeper is another feature that makes Mountain Lion a worthwhile upgrade, especially if you have kids, or folks you don’t want installing potentially harmful applications to you machine. Apple’s new security feature, Gatekeeper, is designed to keep malicious applications from being installed on your machine. Starting now, developers who want their applications to work on OS X 10.8 must have a developer certificate through Apple. It is worth noting that Apple is not forcing developers to become part of their Developer Program and register their apps in the Mac App Store, they are simply requiring them to apply for a certificate that OS X will look up when installing an application from outside the Mac App Store. Many bloggers have expressed concern over the new feature saying Apple is gaining way too much control of the user. However, this feature can easily be turned off in the System Preferences menu.

I mentioned earlier Apple “borrowed” a number of additional features from iOS for 10.8. Some of those features are great additions. iMessages was previously available as a beta in 10.7, but it is now officially out for 10.8! In case you’ve forgotten iMessages for Mac allows you to read and send iMessages across all your devices now. In the fall Apple is allowing you unify your phone number and your email address. Twitter is now deeply integrated into the OS X platform. When you use System Preferences to setup your mail, contacts, and calendar accounts, there is now a Twitter option available as well. By signing into Twitter you will be able to share photos, websites, and more with the click of a button. OS X gained a “Notification Center” as well. Notification Center on Mountain Lion works just like it does on iOS. When you receive a message, email, etc they will come up on the side of your screen, with a quick preview. Developers will be able to use Notification Center as well. Conveniently there is a “Click to Tweet” button at the top of Notification Center. This is just like in Apple’s newest iOS software which is scheduled to launch Fall 2012. Apple also announced Facebook integration which will work exactly like Twitter. The Facebook integration is not currently available, but will be coming in a software update later this year. Another nice, new iOS feature available in Mountain Lion is Airplay and Airplay Mirroring. Now, if you have an AppleTV (2nd or 3rd Gen) you can Airplay Mirror to your AppleTV, just like on iOS. Apple not only took some iOS features, but a few iOS applications as well. Notes and Reminders are now available on OS X. They work just like they do on your iOS device so there is no learning curve. If you are using iCloud, all your Notes and Reminders will be pushed to your devices OS X or iOS.

Two final features that I think help make this update worthwhile are Power Nap and Dictation. Power Nap allows your computer to go to sleep, but it will continue to receive all of your iCloud information (photostream, email, contacts, documents, etc).  What’s really great is that when you get home with your laptop, you can plug it in and put it to sleep and TimeMachine will still do backups and all of your software updates will be done for you without having to leave the lid of the machine open. The final feature I’m going to discuss is  Dictation. Again, it was borrowed from iOS, but it is a great addition to OS X. The feature is exactly what is sounds like, it will dictate for you and is a speech to text feature. Supposedly the more you use it, the more it understands your voice and continues to get better. I’ve only used the feature a little bit, but so far it’s been awesome.

While this OS release is probably the most conservative release of OS X to date, apart from maybe 10.0 to 10.1, it is still one I’d say is worth while. Lion was a big jump from Snow Leopard and caused a few headaches for users. I feel as though Mountain Lion has fixed a number of those issues. Apple has really got a solid OS release that I think will be a delight for most users. If this were any more than $20 in the App Store it might have taken some more convincing, but it’s not so I’d suggest you make your way to the App Store and begin downloading!

• Coverage of the dock: Apparently Apple is trying really hard for you to not notice when an application is open. Also I love the detail here: “. An icon must be dragged about an inch (~60 points) away from the Dock—and held there for some minimum amount of time—before the cursor will gain its “puff of smoke” badge.”
• Double tapping the track pad reveals scroll bars.
• A gears icon for notification center has reserved space on the bottom right: I agree with John here — it is odd that they didn’t use a little animation trickery to reveal the settings when needed (or that they felt they had to have it visible at all times).
• Dictation apparently is welcomed, but not such an awesome feature.
• Calendar has been polished, but most of the improvements are in the back end. I am glad they got rid of the page flip when using arrow keys.
• The notes application’s UI alters when moved into full screen — dramatically. This is the first instance of an app that changes the UI aesthetic significantly when changing resolution. This not unlike Windows 8′s semantic zoom feature, except the app doesn’t take the next step and present the user with more features given the larger context.
• Safari drops RSS support entirely, and the button is missing. Big bummer for people like me who rely on RSS to get to the news.
• The reality of using iCloud as your primary way to store and retrieve files is a little disheartening. Particularly telling is the sharing scenario he describes with mail.app. Sounds like I’ll be sticking wtih Dropbox.
• The default Gatekeeper behavior is to allow for both Mac App store developers and “verified” ones.
• A detailed overview of how “Power Nap” works. Though I wonder when DarkWake support will be approved for 3rd party apps.
• Quicklook has a sharing option. Awesome.

As always, a great review and a must read. Also do check out Marco Arment’s review of the review.

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The U.S. government requires that 95 percent of its electronics bear the EPEAT seal of approval; large companies such as Ford and Kaiser Permanente require their CIOs to buy from EPEAT-certified firms; and many of the largest universities in the U.S. prefer to buy EPEAT-friendly gear, CIO Journal reports.

An issue that Apple will certainly have to deal with, either by creating their own green standard or making their recycling policies even more marketable/transparent than before. Either way has huge implications for the bottom line.

Update: An Apple representative responded to The Loop by Jim Dalrymple:

Apple takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy efficiency standards backed by the US government, Energy Star 5.2,” Apple representative Kristin Huguet, told The Loop. “We also lead the industry by reporting each product’s greenhouse gas emissions on our website, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials.

Jim goes on to talk about how Dell has zero projects on the Energy Star compliancy list, and that EPEAT themselves acknowledge that their standards are dated.

So apparently there is no need to wear tin-foil hats on this one, but the problem with governments and education is that when there is a standard, it is hard to not try and meet it. Either Apple’s statement will sway these two user groups to the firm’s side — causing them to vote off needing EPEAT, or the groups (more likely) will continue to adhere to EPEAT until changes are made.

Although Apple may right about moving away, it doesn’t change that they lose a big market of customers for now. Given that back to school purchasing is likely ramping up, any revert in standards by schools will take longer than the time it would take for either 1) EPEAT to revamp their standard and fit Apple back in or 2) Schools to abolish the need for it.

Update 2: Turns out, Bob Mansfield thinks EPEAT is important:

We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.

The compromise that Apple makes is to work with EPEAT in order to adhere to their latest standards, but it is quite silly (and rare) to see Apple backpedal like they have here.

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