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As part of the Mountain Lion preview last week, Apple put out a beta of its revamped chat application, Messages. If you spend a lot of time connecting with other folks on iOS devices, Messages is a must-have. If not, it doesn't really add much to the mix.

Installing Messages is simple enough, though it does require a system reboot. If you've been using iChat, Messages will automatically import your accounts and you're good to go. If not, it's simple enough to set up your accounts. Like iChat, Messages supports AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber accounts. To get the most out of Messages, though, you'll need an Apple ID and Messages on the desktop and/or an iOS device.

Depending on how you look at it, your smartphone is either egregiously violating your privacy or just trying to improve your user experience in a not-so-transparent way. Either way, it turns out, some apps are leaking personal data, like your address book.

The controversy erupted when a hacker discovered that mobile social network Path was uploading users' entire address books to their servers. As many have pointed out, Path isn't alone. Twitter does it too. Our own Jon Mitchell points out that these kinds of privacy issues may just be the cost of using a free app. Still, not everybody is willing to pay that price.

It's official. The next version of Apple's desktop operating system is due out this summer, and it's going to move Mac OS X closer toward the look, feel and functionality of iOS. Mountain Lion, much like its predecessor, adds features to desktop that users of the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch are already quite familiar with. And it will make the integration between all of these devices much tighter.

Of all of the new features coming in Mountain Lion, most of them either port something from iOS over to Mac OS X or otherwise bridge the user experience between the two operating systems.

Whenever user privacy comes into question, the reaction is predictable. The tech media will flare up with outrageous and accusatory headlines, the mainstream media will pick up on it and put a couple talking heads on air to decry the practice and users will start talking in bars about how "company xyz" is spying on them. If we are lucky, the controversy will get tech writers sniping at each other and there will be a Congressional investigation.

The tablet revolution. The post-PC era. The smartphone explosion. Whatever label you want to apply to it, personal computing is changing. People are spending more time with smaller devices like tablets and smartphones and less time on desktops and laptops. This been evident for awhile, but the trend is still relatively young and the data points are only just beginning to trickle in.

For evidence of this shift, look no further than Apple. The company just reported an absolutely bonkers financial quarter, in which it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. The two products now make up 72% of Apple's quarterly revenue and the consumer demand shows no sign of letting up.

2012 started with a flourish of new apps across iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The holiday season is the busiest time of year for app publishers but the follow up in January was equally impressive. That is a testament to the growing app ecosystem and the number of developers starting to program for mobile platforms. We take a look at some of our favorite new apps from last month below.

The app update section returns for the its fifth month and we found that fewer of our existing apps issued updates for new features or bug fixes than in months past. We also have a new treat in the Apps of the Month: a limited Staff Picks section where some of ReadWriteWeb's writers picked the apps they found most interesting during the month.

The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.

Apple really does not like it when you mess with its finely tuned systems. Especially when it is the company's cash cow iOS platform. In a short statement yesterday, Apple warned developers not to game the rankings system in its App Store, threatening the loss of Apple Developer Program membership to those who are found using services intended to artificially raise the profiles of their apps in Apple's store.

The first untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 dropped two weeks ago, much to the excitement of the hundreds of thousands of people who rushed to download it.

Despite its recent growth in popularity, jailbreaking is still not a mainstream activity among iPhone and iPad owners generally. It's more for the tinkering type and those who want to customize their device's functionality and UI design. Whether it's done to download unauthorized (yet often quite useful) apps from Cydia or customize the look and feel of the OS, there are a lot of reasons why people jailbreak their devices. For iPhone 4S owners, that list is made all the more compelling by one thing: hacking Siri.

It's only been three months since Apple unveiled Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant built into the iPhone 4S. Although the product is technically in beta, it has already spawned imitations and Web video parodies. What is perhaps most exciting about Siri is not what it does now, but in its potential future uses.

The latest clues about that future come from a newly-published patent, which hints at some of the things Siri may be able to do after its first iteration.

Whether or not jailbreaking or rooting one's smartphone is a legal act isn't something most of us in the U.S. have had to think about for some time. That's because, in 2010, the U.S. Copyright Office declared that jailbreaking devices is not a violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Fine, said Apple, but it will still void your warranty and we bet it will screw up your phone.

Despite the company's official disapproval, jailbreaking iOS is still big among a certain subset of users, as evidenced by the popularity of the A5 Absinthe tool that was released last Friday. But should people in the jailbreak community continue to rest easy, assured that freeing their devices will forever remain legal? Probably not.