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Posts tagged with "iCloud"

Fantastical 1.1 Brings Editing, Deleting, Notes and Full iCloud Support

With the release of the iPhone 4S and Siri, Apple is putting much focus on natural language input and the concept of “personal assistant”, a technology the company first explored almost two decades ago, which was impossible to implement until today. With faster processing power, persistent Internet connections and better voice recognition, Siri is perhaps the most impressive feature of the iPhone 4S and one that Apple will undoubtedly promote heavily in the next months.

On the Mac, of course, the situation is quite different. Whilst one of the new functionalities of Siri on the iPhone is being able to create and schedule calendar events, on OS X we’ve had calendar apps with natural language support for quite some time, such as Fantastical and QuickCal. And today Fantastical, which I first reviewed here, has received a major update that adds two of the most requested features: event editing and deleting.

With Fantastical 1.1, you can edit and delete events without jumping to your main calendar app, like iCal. Now, instead of having to launch iCal to make edits to something you entered through Fantastical, you can simply double-click on an event to start modifying it in a separate popup window. The interface is the same you already know for calendar events; you can also delete an event and add notes, which will be synced across all your devices and, if configured, iCloud. Option-double-clicking an event still opens it in your favorite calendar app – remember, Fantastical supports BusyCal as well – and anchor mode can now be toggled with a keyboard shortcut.

Another big improvement in Fantastical 1.1 is full iCloud support. The app already supported iCloud calendars, but now that Apple’s service is public the app has been specifically optimized to take advantage of its new push technology for calendars and events. And because Fantastical features direct CalDAV integration, everything you enter in the app will be immediately synced back to the cloud, without having to open iCal (or letting it run open in the background). In my tests, iCloud integration has been extremely reliable, allowing me to enter an event (or make edits) in Fantastical and see the results appear in real-time on iCloud.com and all my iOS devices.

Fantastical was already a great app, and now that it’s gained editing, deleting and notes it really can be used as a calendar replacement, which thanks to natural language input will also act as your personal “calendar assistant”. Fantastical is available at $19.99 on the Mac App Store.

Apple: 4 Million iPhone 4S Units Sold In First Weekend

With a press release, Apple has just announced that iPhone 4S sales have already topped 4 million since its debut on October 14th in seven countries. Apple also reported 25 million users are already using iOS 5, and 20 million have signed up for iCloud. According to Apple’s Phil Schiller, quoted in the press release, this is the most successful launch ever for a mobile phone, doubling the number of units sold by the iPhone 4 in three days last year. In June 2010, Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4s in just three days.

That Apple was on track to deliver an impressive launch weekend with the iPhone 4S was clear since the company announced that over 1 million units had been pre-ordered in the first 24 hours of online availability. Following Apple’s announcement, US carriers AT&T and Sprint reported 200,000 pre-orders in the first 12 hours and a “very pleased” reaction to the iPhone 4S, respectively.

Apple today announced it has sold over four million of its new iPhone® 4S, just three days after its launch on October 14. In addition, more than 25 million customers are already using iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, in the first five days of its release, and more than 20 million customers have signed up for iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices. iPhone 4S is available today in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK, and will be available in 22 more countries on October 28 and more than 70 countries by the end of the year.

“iPhone 4S is off to a great start with more than four million sold in its first weekend—the most ever for a phone and more than double the iPhone 4 launch during its first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPhone 4S is a hit with customers around the world, and together with iOS 5 and iCloud, is the best iPhone ever.”

Since its launch, the iPhone 4S has collected largely positive reviews that focused on speed, camera improvements, and better 3G signal of the device. With iOS 5 and iCloud (our launch coverage here), the iPhone 4S is providing a combination of hardware and software (some iOS features are exclusive to the iPhone 4S, such as Siri) that has managed to capture the customers’ attention, as proved by the long lines around the world for the device’s launch.

Apple’s next iPhone 4S rollout is on October 28th, when the device will be launch in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

iOS 5 & iCloud Tips: Sharing an Apple ID With Your Family

With the launch of iOS 5 and iCloud on Wednesday, Apple took another huge step towards the Post-PC era. They have increasingly made the PC less important and iCloud has meant that it is no longer the ‘hub’ to which your devices sync to - iCloud is now that hub and importantly, it is all tied to an Apple ID. As many are realizing as they update to iOS 5 and begin to use iCloud, this can be somewhat problematic when iCloud is used with the Apple ID that is shared by their whole family.

Prior to iOS 5, sharing an Apple ID wasn’t really a problem because its main purpose was for purchasing content on iTunes, using it for support purposes and purchasing items on the online Apple Store - all tasks that worked fine when sharing an ID. Now that Apple ID is tied to a bunch of services, a lot of which involve personal and private data that you don’t necessarily want to share with others - even family members. The other issue is that iCloud involves a lot of data synchronization and this doesn’t work well with multiple people as it results in data conflicts and devices syncing data (such as calendar events) that are meant for another person in the family.

Fortunately there are a number of ways to resolve these issues, whilst still benefiting from all of the new iOS 5 and iCloud features. Jump the break to see all of our tips in dealing with this issue.

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WSJ: Apple Negotiating with Hollywood Studios Over Movie Streaming

According to an article published by The Wall Street Journal last night, Apple is reportedly in talks with Hollywood studios to add streaming of movies to the iTunes Store.

Apple Inc. is negotiating with Hollywood studios for deals that would let people who buy movies from the iTunes Store watch streaming versions of those movies on Apple devices such as iPads or iPhones without manually transferring them, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Los Angeles Times has a similar report:

Representatives of the iPhone and iPad maker have been meeting with studios to finalize deals that would allow consumers to buy movies through iTunes and access them on any Apple device, according to knowledgeable people who requested anonymity because the discussions are private. The service is expected to launch in late 2011 or early 2012.

With the just-launched iCloud platform for media and data syncing, there are a few differences to consider when covering the subject of “streaming” and online storage. Whereas the WSJ mentions “streaming versions” of movies, the LA Times (at least initially) simply refers to access on any device. Considering the current iCloud model, the rumor seems to fall in line with the LA Times’ report – iTunes in the Cloud, a feature of iCloud for iTunes Store content, lets users buy once, re-download at any time, and store previously purchased items in the cloud. With iTunes in the Cloud there’s no “streaming version” of a song or TV show, as iCloud is effectively enabling users to access items on any device from a unified interface (you can read more in our iCloud overview). However, in the same article, the LA Times also states:

Under the plan Apple is proposing, users could stream movies they buy via iTunes on any device the company makes, such as the Apple TV, iPhones and iPads, as well as on PCs.

You may remember that ahead of iCloud’s announcement in June, a number of reports suggested Apple was working on a music streaming service – such service didn’t materialize at WWDC as Apple unveiled iTunes Match, a music service that scans & match music, but doesn’t allow for streaming in a way companies like Rdio or Spotify do. iTunes Match matches songs with Apple’s servers and uploads the rest to a cloud locker, enabling users to download their music on any device.

Technically, the difference between streaming and access shouldn’t be taken lightly. Whereas devices like the iPhone and iPad can store downloads in their local storage after they’ve pulled media from iCloud, the Apple TV, which works with iCloud but has no local storage, streams everything from Apple’s iTunes Store, keeping small portions of data in a local cache.

There is a lot of confusion surrounding the technical difference between streaming and download. Movies in iCloud have been rumored since May, and Apple went ahead and launched a service with online storage for apps, music, TV shows and documents but no movies. It’s unclear how movies will be stored in iCloud when a deal between Hollywood and Apple eventually happens, but when it does, the technical aspect of the system shouldn’t matter to the end user.

Safari 5.1.1: iCloud Ready, Performance Heavy

For persistent fans, it’s the features you likely already know about that make Safari a keeper. While I could blabber on about how Safari’s design far outpaces Google Chrome or Firefox in terms of both good looks and usability, Safari’s main assets are simply iCloud related.

The Reading List, revealed as a hidden side pane coated with a fresh paint of white linen, syncs saved websites to your iOS devices almost instantly over iCloud. Added to Safari earlier this year, Reading List is a sort of quasi-replacement for bookmarks. Bookmarks are useful for certain things: recipes, websites with code snippets, or perhaps a photography tutorial you came across online. References. But for things like articles and news you intend to read later, saving those pages as bookmarks often means they’ll be forgotten about and get lost in the clutter. Reading List attempts to alleviate this problem. If you’re reading an article in Safari on the iPad on the train and need to jump off at the next stop, you can save the page to the Reading List and it’ll be available on your iMac once you reach the office. I’ve always said it wasn’t an Instapaper killer — it’s a temporary container for items I want to read now, but am expecting some sort interruption during. Instapaper items are of course read in the evening, either on the iPad or Kindle. Talking about bookmarks, those get synced over too.

One feature I do want to see in the future is the ability to sync open tabs across OS X and your iOS devices. This seems like a no brainer to me, especially if Apple can work their magic in remembering what tab you had open and your page position.

Outside of iCloud, it’s the same ol’ Safari you’re used to. Safari 5.1.1 includes a slew of stability fixes and improved javascript performance, alleviating a lot of the bugs introduced with Lion and 5.1. Still, there’s room for improvement. More importantly, Apple needs to kill automatic tab refreshing. There’s just no need for it on a desktop OS.

Safari has a warm place in our hearts as Mac users, but the recent iOS-ificiation of the browser is turning away once loyal fans. The animations are fluid, page sliding is unique and thoughtful, and iCloud integrations carry over bookmarks and ‘read later’ items for consumption on any device of your choice, but it’s the automatic tab reloading and poor performance that overshadows great features for fear of lost productivity. I was hoping that Safari, improved in 5.1.1 with several bug fixes, performance enhancements, and iCloud integration, would be worth returning to to take advantage of everything Apple has to offer between iOS and the desktop. Unfortunately, the basic problems (or perhaps principle) of Safari’s mirroring with iOS features remain.

iCloud: The Future of Apple’s Ecosystem

With the launch of iCloud, Apple is fundamentally challenging the old concepts of computing and “file”, changing the way people interact with computers and devices.

iCloud as a service presents itself as a very straightforward idea: iCloud stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices. iCloud works with the apps you use every day on your Mac, iPhone or iPad, so you don’t have to worry about syncing your music, photos, documents, contacts and calendars again. iCloud is the evolution of MobileMe, rebuilt from the ground up and re-engineered to take advantage of persistent connections and the concept of “push”, rather than visible, sometimes manual sync. iCloud is not just a big hard disk in the sky, as Steve Jobs joked at WWDC ‘11: iCloud is an invisible service that’s just there, and is now allowing Apple to virtually connect more than 200 million iOS devices.

It just works. Read more

Aperture 3.2 Gets iCloud Integration with Photo Stream

Following the release of iOS 5, OS X Lion 10.7.2 and iPhoto 9.2, Apple has also released Aperture 9.2, an update to the desktop photo editing software that adds iCloud capabilities and a number of new features. As Apple details in iCloud’s Help section, the new Aperture allows users to drag photos into the app’s library to upload them to Photo Stream. You can drag one or more photos from your library (Events, Photos, Places, or Faces) to your Photo Stream. Users can enable Photo Stream in Aperture’s Preferences -> Photo Stream and, similarly to iPhoto 9.2, choose whether they want to enable Automatic Upload and Import.

Other new features and fixes from the changelog:

  • Resolves an issue that could cause the “Loading” indicator to reappear in the Viewer when cropping a photo
  • Aperture now automatically relaunches into Full Screen mode if the application was in Full Screen mode when last quit
  • Pinch-to-zoom gesture now automatically activates Zoom mode in the Viewer
  • Left and right swipe gestures can now be used to navigate between photos in the Viewer
  • Microsoft Outlook can now be chosen in Preferences as the application used by Aperture for emailing photos
  • Fixes a problem that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to quit unexpectedly when using brushes to apply adjustments
  • Loupe now correctly displays magnification levels between 50-100%.
  • Fixes an issue that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to display the incorrect color profile on externally edited images
  • Import window now includes an option to delete photos from iPhone and iPad after they have been imported into Aperture
  • The Lift & Stamp tool now displays the correct cursor icons when being used in Split View and Viewer only modes

You can find Aperture at $79.99 on the Mac App Store.

Apple Releases iPhoto 9.2 with Photo Stream Support

Apple today released a new version of its desktop photo management and editing software, iPhoto 9.2. The update, available now, brings a number of bug fixes and improvements to iPhoto, but more importantly it brings full compatibility with iCloud’s Photo Stream for iOS devices, Macs and PCs. Photo Stream is a new service that enables users to store their last 1,000 photos in the cloud, and have them automatically pushed to all devices configured with iCloud. Photo Stream stores new photos for 30 days, and it’s not possible to edit photos stored in Photo Stream. iCloud’s Photo Stream is a continuously updated “album” with all your most recent photos, which doesn’t need to be synced or manually copied to a Mac.

From the changelog:

iPhoto 9.2 supports compatibility with iCloud and iOS 5. This update also addresses minor stability, performance and compatibility issues, including:

Left and right swipe gestures can now be used to navigate between photos in Magnify (1-up) view

Previously imported photos are now displayed in a separate section of the Import window

Book/calendar themes and card categories can now be selected using a pop-up menu in the carousel view

Resolves an issue that could cause some pages of books to print incorrectly

Rebuilding a library now correctly preserves saved slideshows and books

With the new iPhoto, users can enable Photo Stream directly in the app’s Preferences. Photo Stream can automatically fetch photos from the cloud, but there are two additional options to automatically import photos in Events, Photos, Faces and Places, and send all new photos from a Mac to iCloud. If Photo Stream photos are set to be automatically imported in Events, iPhoto will create single Photo Stream events as shown in the screenshot below; alternatively, users can also browse all photos in the Photos tab. Additionally, iPhoto will recognize Photo Stream items that have been already imported, and ask the user to edit the imported version upon trying to hit Edit in Photo Stream.

Photo Stream is located in iPhoto’s sidebar, and it offers the same set of controls of any album view. Users can play a slideshow of Photo Stream photos, zoom in/out, search, pinch to zoom, and quick look items by hitting the spacebar. An info panel on the right reveals additional metadata of a photo, such as location, size, file format and camera. Photo Stream items can be manually dragged out of iPhoto and onto the Finder – OS X will preserve the original file name, size, and metadata when copying photos from Photo Stream.

In my tests, iPhoto 9.2 has been fairly reliable at fetching photos and screenshots taken from an iPhone or iPad. On my home network, a photo snapped with an iPhone 4 (weighing 2 MB or less) would take around 20 seconds to appear on my Mac’s iPhoto; I assume on faster Internet connections an iPhone would take less to upload a new photo to iCloud, and even less seconds to push a photo back to the Mac.

iPhoto 9.2 is available now on Software Update. The new version is expected to be available shortly on the Mac App Store as well. You can find more iOS 5 coverage here. Read more

iWork for iOS Updated with iCloud Integration

The iWork apps for iOS, available for the iPhone and iPad at $9.99 on the App Store, have been updated today with iCloud integration, which will allow users to store their documents in the cloud, and have changes pushed instantly to all their devices, as well as the iWork document interface on iCloud.com. You can find the updated versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote in the App Store now.

I have been testing iCloud support in iWork for iOS in the weeks prior to iCloud’s launch, and it works flawlessly. As Apple demoed at WWDC in June, you can create a document on Pages for iPhone and that document will be stored in iCloud and pushed to other devices; as you start editing the document, changes will also be pushed to the cloud, and back to the devices configured with your iCloud account that have iWork installed. Unfortunately Apple isn’t providing a new version of iWork for OS X with iCloud support built-in, but users can visit iCloud.com to download and upload documents created with iWork on iOS. iCloud integration works with the folder-based system that was introduced in iWork for iOS earlier this year: you can create folders, and manage documents inside them.

iCloud makes it easy to move Pages, Keynote, and Numbers documents between your computer and your iOS devices. Just sign in to icloud.com/iwork in any modern web browser, and all your iWork for iOS documents will be there — complete with your most recent edits. Click a document to download it in iWork ’09, Microsoft Office, or PDF format. You can also drag and drop any iWork ’09 or Microsoft Office document from your computer into one of the iWork apps on icloud.com, and it automatically appears on all your iOS devices, ready for you to review, edit, or present.

Full changelogs below. Pages also received support for dictation through iOS 5 and iPhone 4S.

Keynote

  • Automatically store your presentations in iCloud and keep them up to date across all your iOS devices.
  • Download your presentations to a Mac or PC at icloud.com/iwork as Keynote ’09, PowerPoint, or PDF files.
  • Drag and drop Keynote ’09 or PowerPoint presentations to icloud.com from your Mac or PC to have them automatically appear on your iOS devices.
  • Use AirPlay to present wirelessly via Apple TV. Navigate slides, view presenter notes, and use the laser pointer while presenting from your iOS device.
  • New builds and transitions including Anvil, Blinds, Color Panes, Comet, Confetti, Diffuse, and Sparkle.
  • Advanced presentation controls including looped slideshows and autoplay.
  • Support for slide-to-slide hyperlinks.
  • Improved compatibility with Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote ’09.
  • Includes improved support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language input.

Pages

  • Automatically store your documents in iCloud and keep them up to date across all your iOS devices.
  • Download your documents to a Mac or PC at icloud.com/iwork as Pages ’09, Word, or PDF files.
  • Drag and drop Pages ’09, Word, or plain text documents to icloud.com from your Mac or PC to have them automatically appear on your iOS devices.
  • Use your voice to create and edit Pages documents with dictation in iOS 5 on your iPhone 4S.
  • Create footnotes and endnotes in your documents.
  • View improved word counts with character, paragraph, and page counts.
  • Improved compatibility with Microsoft Word and Pages ’09.
  • Includes improved support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language input.

Numbers

  • Automatically store your spreadsheets in iCloud and keep them up to date across all your iOS devices.
  • Download your spreadsheets to a Mac or PC at icloud.com/iwork as Numbers ’09, Excel, or PDF files.
  • Drag and drop Numbers ’09, Excel, or CSV files to icloud.com from your Mac or PC to have them automatically appear on your iOS devices.
  • Use sliders, steppers, and pop-ups to easily enter data and explore results.
  • Use Merge Cells to format your tables.
  • Hide and show rows and columns.
  • Improved compatibility with Microsoft Excel and Numbers ’09.
  • Includes improved support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language input.