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WSJ: iCloud Getting Photo Sharing and Commenting, Video Syncing at WWDC→

WSJ: iCloud Getting Photo Sharing, Commenting, Video Syncing at WWDC

A new report by The Wall Street Journals claims Apple will be announcing a series of new features for iCloud at WWDC, including a revamped photo sharing system with support for user comments.

The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

The full report is available (behind paywall) at The Wall Street Journal. The publication also confirms iCloud.com will be getting support for Notes and Reminders web apps, as we previously detailed based on a “leaked” beta version of the service.

However, to say that “users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream” is incorrect. A feature of iPhoto for iOS called “Journals” and released in early March allows users to build sets of photos and share them publicly with a URL through iCloud. These Journals even support additional graphics such as backgrounds, text captions, and they can be viewed in any browser, allowing users to zoom in on single photos and download them. Here is an example of iCloud Journal.

Whilst it would make sense for Apple to simplify iCloud photo sharing and allow easier commenting especially from mobile devices, Photo Stream isn’t the only option to “store one set of photos”. Journals are limited to iPhoto, which is a separate app sold on the App Store that doesn’t come pre-installed on iOS devices, but they certainly show that Apple has been experimenting with iCloud-based public sharing for quite some time, even offering an API to developers for that (albeit limited to storage, with no display options as the WSJ implies here). With MobileMe approaching its deadline of June 30, it’s also worth keeping in mind that Apple’s existing solution to store and share photos, MobileMe Gallery, will stop functioning alongside the service, so it wouldn’t be a surprise for Apple to offer an alternative.

Apple’s WWDC is scheduled to kick off in San Francisco on June 11. Developers have been asking for more tools to integrate their apps with iCloud, and it’s very likely that Apple will announce additions to the service, as well as offer previews of iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion at its upcoming developer event.

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Sparrow 1.2 for iPhone Brings Landscape Support, Labels Management

Sparrow 1.1 brought minor enhancements to the best alternative email client for iPhone, including a built-in browser and a Send & Archive option. Sparrow 1.2, released today, adds much-requested support for landscape mode to an email app that, in this new version, also lets you manage email labels and folders.

I have been testing Sparrow 1.2, and while I am no fan of landscape mode on iOS (I never use such functionality on the iPhone), I recognize how some users are going to perform some serious typing for their email replies thanks to Sparrow 1.2. The whole compose interface has been updated to take advantage of the different orientation.

Two features that I have been enjoying in Sparrow 1.2 are proper label/folder management, and improved navigation between messages. The latter brings a nicer, cleaner design to the message “preview” you get when pulling a message up to reveal the next one. Folder/label management, on the other hand, now lets Sparrow directly create, edit, and delete labels or folders without leaving the app to use a web interface or desktop client.

I have tested the feature with Gmail (both regular and Google Apps accounts) and iCloud, and I was pleased to see Sparrow differentiated visually between labels (for Gmail) and folders (for iCloud mail). Because label management has been implemented in the mid panel – the one Sparrow uses to list an account’s mailboxes – you won’t be able to swipe-to-delete; instead, management has been assigned to a new “Edit” button that shows up in the Folders or Labels sections of a single account.

Meanwhile, the Sparrow team has also confirmed that Apple won’t allow them to implement push notifications through the VoIP framework, as they did in early betas of the app. Sparrow will have to build notification support on the server’s side, and the developers confirm this will require a yearly subscription for Sparrow users willing to use push notifications. Previously, the Sparrow developers said push support would be coming “with or without Apple”.

With proper label management, landscape mode, localization in 9 additional languages, and bug fixes, Sparrow for iPhone continues its march towards becoming the best email client for iPhone. You can find Sparrow 1.2 on the App Store today.

Review: World Atlas For iPhone

Good design certainly is not all to care about. Sometimes, a nifty UI can solve many problems or even hide certain failures in functionality. But it can be as perfect and unique as conceivable — if a product doesn’t work at all, good design cannot change that. Unfortunately, I came across a very good example for this: World Atlas by Technoplus. I only tested the iPhone version, so I cannot tell anything about the usability of the separately sold iPad app yet. But on the iPhone, it’s easy to sum up World Atlas as a well-designed, yet pretty useless app, coded without real care for good UX and features. Read more

Apple Starts Changing “iPad WiFi + 4G” Name To “WiFi + Cellular”

As noted by 9to5mac, Apple has started changing the “iPad WiFi + 4G” name to “iPad WiFi + Cellular” in some countries. Currently, the change is live on several international versions of Apple.com, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong. Other countries, such as Italy or France, still report the new iPad as “iPad WiFi + 4G” in the Tech Specs page of the product in what appears to be a gradual update of the device’s name. On the websites where the change has already taken effect, a version cached by Google shows the old “WiFi + 4G” product name.

The new iPad, available in almost 90 countries, comes with “4G” networking capabilities, albeit only in some countries, and on selected carriers with support for LTE. Because of Apple’s initial marketing of the device as “4G” regardless of country availability, the company came under scrutiny from Australian and UK regulators, who claimed Apple was falsely advertising the iPad as “4G” and misleading customers without properly specifying such feature was dependent on carrier support.

In Australia, Apple was forced to change its marketing for the new iPad by stating on its website the device wasn’t compatible with Australian 4G networks. In spite of the iPad still working with 3G networks, however, Apple decided to keep the “WiFi + 4G” name even after the initial clarification. This appears to be changing now as the company rolls out an updated product name across all its international websites.

Apple’s iPad Tech Specs page carrying the new name is available here.

Paperless→

Paperless

For the past year, I have been getting rid of paper to archive everything – from receipts to medical bills or business cards, everything – digitally, securely, online. In doing so, I found David Sparks’ Mac Power Users a great resource to learn more about apps and workflows I can use on my Mac and iPad to capture, organize, and archive documents I may need again someday. For the past few weeks, I have especially enjoyed using Scanner Pro on my iPad in combination with a Doxie Go for “bigger” documents and Notability, which is a fine app that lets me annotate webpages and documents and save them into Evernote. On the iPad, I keep a plethora of apps to work with PDFs, but my most used ones remain PDF Expert, PDFPen, and GoodReader.

This week, David published his first book about going paperless, aptly named The MacSparky Paperless Field Guide. Put simply, if you’re planning on removing paper from your life or you’re even slightly interested in this whole idea of digitalizing bits of paper, David’s book is the guide you need to achieve a state-of-the-art system. I have been reading the book, and it’s full of tips and broad recommendations to illustrate how you can capture documents, the apps you can use (both on OS X and iOS), and the best techniques you can rely on to future-proof your PDFs. I have already discovered a couple of new apps thanks to David’s book.

Even better, Paperless has been entirely built using iBooks Author, and it shows: it’s not exactly a “book” as much as it’s an interactive guide with support for two iPad orientations (with different layouts), image galleries, contextual menus, over an hour and a half of screencasts, and iBooks Author’s fancy touch-based navigation. This is the future of independent publishing.

Paperless is only $4.99 on the iBookstore.

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Astronut→

Astronut

One of my favorite iPhone games, Astronut by The Iconfactory, was released on the iPad earlier this week. In 24 levels fully optimized for the Retina display, you can enjoy Astronut’s well-known game mechanics (a floating astronaut jumps from planet to planet avoiding enemies and obstacles) with controls reworked for the device’s larger display.

Graphics and sound effects aside (they are both top-notch), I am liking Astronut for iPad even more than the iPhone version because of its control scheme. Astronut for iPad plays in portrait mode, with buttons to jump and activate boost placed at the sides of the screen where your thumbs typically are. This is extremely intelligent game and interface design. But there’s more: you can use Astronut for iPhone as a remote – this has allowed me to prop my iPad on a stand in my living room, and enjoy the game with my friends, sharing the iPhone as a controller.

Only $1.99 on the App Store. Don’t miss the video.

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New iOS 6 Maps App To “Blow Your Head Off”→

New iOS 6 Maps App To “Blow Your Head Off”

John Paczkowski at All Things Digital confirms a rumor published this morning by Mark Gurman at 9to5mac: Apple’s forthcoming iOS 6, set to be announced at WWDC, will feature a new Maps application based off Apple’s new mapping backend.

We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tent-pole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies.

That Apple was going to replace Google Maps with a different technology – and quite possibly its own – is nothing new, at least from a rumor perspective. In the past years, a series of tidbits of information and facts seemed to suggest that Apple was on track to deliver a different Maps application for iOS in the future. Last summer, a series of legal disclaimers pointed at various mapping technologies being used by Apple in iOS, but the rumored new mapping tech that was allegedly meant for iOS 5 didn’t ship with the major update in October, as Apple and Google renewed a deal to use Google Maps in iOS.

In April 2011, Apple confirmed they were “collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database”, although without specifying whether such service could see a public implementation in a new Maps app for iOS. More than a year ago, we wrote how “in the past years, several job listings on Apple’s website hinted at open positions in the iOS team for map engineers and navigation experts, suggesting that Apple was working on its own proprietary solution to ditch Google Maps on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The acquisitions of mapping companies Placebase and Poly9 in 2009 and 2010, respectively, gave some credence to the reports that pointed at Apple willing to become the next major player in the mobile mapping scene.”

Most recently, Apple officially acknowledged they are using OpenStreetMap data in iPhoto for iOS.

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iCloud “Beta” Website Briefly Shows Reminders, Notes Web Apps

A few minutes ago, developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted a photo showing a “beta” login page for iCloud.com, Apple’s suite of web applications to access iCloud services like Mail and Calendar. The photo showed Apple’s icon-based navigation for iCloud.com, with the addition of Reminders and Notes icons in what appears to be an internal version of iCloud.com carrying future features. The login page clearly states the beta version of iCloud.com is available to developers running the latest versions of OS X and iOS.

Available at beta.icloud.com, I managed to grab a screenshot before Apple quickly pulled the website and started redirecting it to iCloud’s public website. The beta page showed a testing environment, and I was able to see the Notes icon in the background, as tweeted by Troughton-Smith.

The accidental availability of iCloud’s beta webpage seems to suggest Apple will announce more web-based functionality for the service at its upcoming WWDC event in June. Just last week, a series of web notifications were briefly showed on iCloud.com.

Update: Courtesy of reader Benjamin Crozat, here’s a larger screenshot showing the just-pulled iCloud.com website. It appears Apple also had a testing website available at developer.icloud.com, which has started redirecting to the company’s public iCloud product website as well.

Update #2: As noted by Tom Klaver, strings in website’s code suggest a beta of iOS 6 will be necessary to use the new web apps. The icon Apple was using for Reminders is also available on Apple’s servers here.

Update #3: Interestingly enough, other code strings from developer.icloud.com point to a new developer icon on Apple’s servers. Currently, Apple offers a developer portal for iCloud at developer.apple.com/icloud with links to downloads and documentation. As several developers have wished for Apple to provide more debugging tools for iCloud-enabled apps, however, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see new web-based tools for iCloud being unveiled at WWDC.

Image via SlideToLock: