Posts tagged with "iCloud"

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.

Apple Releases OS X 10.7.2

As part of this week’s iOS 5 and iCloud rollout, Apple has released OS X 10.7.2, an update for OS X Lion users that brings full iCloud compatibility to the Mac, as well as various new features and bug fixes.

From the changelog:

The 10.7.2 update is recommended for all OS X Lion users and includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. It also includes support for iCloud, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that automatically and wirelessly store your content on iCloud and push it to all of your devices.

Getting started with iCloud is easy. After installing the update, OS X will automatically present an iCloud setup panel. Simply enter an existing Apple ID or create a new one and then follow the on screen instructions. To learn more about iCloud visit http://www.apple.com/icloud.

With 10.7.2, Apple is now allowing Lion machines to integrate with iCloud for email, calendars, contacts, Safari bookmarks and Reading List; these items will automatically be stored in the cloud, and pushed across all your devices. As Apple previous detailed in the iCloud transition Q&A, some features of the old MobileMe service have been maintained in iCloud, such as Back to My Mac (remote access to a Mac from another Mac on the Internet) and Find My Mac, a new feature integrated with Find My iPhone that will allow Mac users to find a missing Mac by locating it on a map through iCloud.com or the Find My iPhone app. Find My Mac works similarly to its iOS counterpart in that owners of a stolen or missing Mac can locate it, track it, and send messages to the Mac’s screen remotely. It’s also possible to lock a Mac and remotely wipe it. Read more

Apple Releases Find My Friends

Apple today released Find My Friends, a new iCloud-based application that allows users to locate their friends on a map, and share their location with them. The Find My Friends app enables you to share your location with selected contacts, and see where they are  and what they’re up to on a convenient map interface. Find My Friends is integrated with Maps and Contacts, so you’ll be able to find routes to a specific place or check on the location of someone that’s already in your Address Book.

One of the key features of Find My Friends is temporary sharing, a functionality that enables users to share their location with a group of people for a limited period of time. Users can share location for a few hours, days, or weeks, and when the time’s up the app will automatically stop sharing. Users can accept and decline friends requests easily from Find My Friends, and Apple has also implemented Parental Controls for parents who’d like to restrict access to location settings.

Find My Friends can be installed by visiting iCloud.com on an iOS device and tapping on the link to install the app. The iCloud.com website was updated last night, allowing access to everyone with an iCloud account, also removing the “Beta” label from the homepage.

iOS 5 is required for the Find My Friends app. iOS 5 is expected to become available later today. If Find my Friends isn’t showing up in iTunes search yet, here’s the direct link that should become available shortly: Find My Friends

More iOS 5 coverage here.

Read more

Apple to Developers: Submit Your iOS 5 and iCloud Apps Today

Following the release of the Golden Master seed of iOS 5, Apple has updated its developer portal with a new “iOS 5 Readiness Checklist”, asking developers to start submitting apps written specifically with the iOS 5 SDK. The checklist includes links to the iOS 5 SDK release notes, Xcode 4.2 for developers, and obviously detailed explanations of the various functionalities that will be introduced in iOS 5, such as Twitter integration, Newsstand, iCloud data storage, and more. Developers can head over this page to check out Apple’s resources for developing and submitting iOS 5 apps.

The next generation of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system will soon be in the hands of hundreds of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch customers. Test your existing apps for compatibility and submit your new apps that take advantage of the exciting technologies in iOS 5 today.

The next generation of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system will soon be in the hands of hundreds of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch customers. This major new release features more than 200 new features and an updated SDK with over 1,500 new APIs and developer tools.

Get your apps ready for the next generation of iOS. Install the GM seed of iOS 5 and build your apps with Xcode 4.2 GM seed. Test your existing apps for compatibility, review the iOS Data Storage Guidelines, and submit your new apps that take advantage of the exciting technologies in iOS 5 today.

iOS 5 and iCloud will be officially released on October 12th.

Update: Apple has sent two different email to iOS and Mac developers – the latter asking makers of software for OS X to submit iCloud-compatible apps today. Developers will be able to create apps that keep documents up to date across multiple machines thanks to iCloud, which automatically stores and pushes content to all your devices.

As a Mac Developer Program member you can now download the GM seeds of OS X Lion 10.7.2 and Xcode 4.2 and submit your iCloud enabled apps to the Mac App Store. With iCloud Storage APIs, your apps can store documents and key value data in iCloud. The documents are automatically kept up to date on all devices.

 

iCloud will be available on the next Lion software update, version 10.7.2, which has been seeded as GM today to developers for final testing.

Apple Announces Location-based “Find My Friends”


Previously rumored to be an upcoming feature of iOS 5 and iCloud, Apple has just formally introduced Find my Friends, a new service to “find” the people that have opted to share their location with you. According to the presentation, you’ll be able to invite friends to share their location with you for a limited time, so, for example, you’ll be able to see them in real-time as they’re driving to your house; there are privacy options and parental restrictions to make sure the user has control over what’s being shared and how location appears on a map.

Find my Friends will be available when iCloud launches – October 12th.

Update: Here’s a lot more information about Find my Friends available directly from Apple. First, the proper PR introduction:

Find My Friends is a new app available as a free download from the App Store that lets you easily share your location with people who are important to you. Friends and family appear on a map so you can quickly see where they are. Find My Friends also lets you temporarily share your location with a group of friends, whether it’s for a couple of hours for a dinner or a couple of days on a camping trip; when the time is up, the sharing ends. With Find My Friends, you get a notification every time you get a new friend request and if you give them permission, they can see your location. With a simple tap you can hide your location. Parental controls help you manage how your child uses Find My Friends.

Apple has also put up a dedicated webpage alongside Find my iPhone, detailing the features of Find my Friends. The new app is integrated with Contacts and Maps, has a preference panel inside Settings -> General, and will allow you to find friends on a map, but also control how your location is shared, and for how long. You can choose to “temporarily share your location with a group of people”, and when a notification for a new friend request appears, you can accept it to let the new friend see your location. Otherwise, flipping the switch to off will hide your location. And about the aforementioned parental restrictions:

Parental restrictions help you manage how your children use Find My Friends. Controls are quick and easy to set up and require a password to override your settings. That way your kids can have fun — and you can make sure they stay safe.

Apple Confirms: iOS 5 and iCloud Launch on October 12th

At its keynote in Cupertino, Apple has confirmed the next major version of iOS, iOS 5, will be available on October 12th for all customers.

iOS 5 is the next major release of Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, bringing new features like PC-Free setup, iCloud, Notification Center and direct Twitter integration to iOS devices.

Update: Alongside iOS 5, Apple’s new suite of cloud services, iCloud, will be available for free on October 12th.

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Apple To Announce International iTunes Match on Tuesday?

According to a report by Greg Sandoval at CNET, Apple may announce international support for its iCloud music service at the media event scheduled for next week. Apple is said to be in negotiations with record companies and music publishers to gain worldwide music rights for iCloud, although CNET reports nothing has been signed yet, but if negotiations wrap up in time there could be an announcement on Tuesday.

Whilst CNET mentions “access to iCloud”, iCloud music rights most likely refer to the specific iTunes Match service; however, another music-related feature of iCloud – iTunes in the Cloud – is also being tested in the US-only at the moment, as it can be seen on Apple’s international iCloud pages. It’s not clear whether CNET is referring to iTunes Match, iTunes in the Cloud, or both – thus bringing full iCloud access for music worldwide.

Managers at iTunes are trying to lock down worldwide cloud-music rights, CNET has learned.

[…]

Some of the countries that could receive access to iCloud include Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the sources said.

iTunes Match, originally previewed at the WWDC in June, is set to publicly launch this Fall in the United States. Apple hasn’t detailed a public plan for an international rollout of the service, which is currently in beta and requires a US iTunes account with credit card on file. The service costs $24.99 per year for 25,000 songs, but iTunes purchases won’t count against this limit. iTunes Match was previously rumored to be coming to the UK in 2012, however CNET has a solid track record in reporting Apple’s negotiations with the music labels and publishers, correctly predicting ahead of WWDC that Apple would announce a new cloud-based music service.

“Universal Save” for iOS Apps

Ted Landau at The Mac Observer covers an issue I’ve mentioned several times in the past, which Apple has partially fixed with the last releases of iOS: saving documents and moving them across apps. Specifically, Landau notes that the lack of a “universal save” option for documents that can be read by third-party apps (PDFs, text files, images) leads to an annoying and pretty much useless duplication of content. Apple has implemented an “Open In…” menu to send files to other apps, but the file that’s being sent is a copy. iOS apps can’t read and modify a source file from a single location.

Currently, iOS does not come close to matching the advantages of Mac OS X here. There is no way to have a unifying folder in iOS that contains related documents from different apps. There is no way to have a document easily opened in different apps, where any changes you make in one app are instantly accessible by all the compatible apps. You can come closer with Dropbox, but closer is not good enough here.

That’s annoying for me, too, as I constantly switch between apps to get my work done, and it’s not like I don’t enjoy trying new ones. This typically leads to some sort of geek frustration – why can’t Apple build an invisible layer that lets Elements edit a text document from Evernote and Pages access the same file?

For Ted and me, yes, being able to avoid file duplication and tedious exporting processes would be nice. But I do wonder how much does Apple care about such functionalities considering the underlying paradigms of iOS and the upcoming iCloud functionalities of iOS 5. For one, Apple really cares about application sandboxing: each app has its own controlled data environment and only a few items can be shared between multiple apps. Apple cares about sandboxing so much that they’re bringing it to the Mac App Store. Would iOS sandboxing allow for a source file to be edited and “saved” by multiple apps? Where does that file belong to, technically? Would iOS apps be able to write specific metadata to it? And what happens if, hypothetically, this “shared” file needs to be pushed back and forth with iCloud?

I’m no iOS developer, but I can see this proposed “universal save” model becoming an issue when on iOS, unlike the Mac, there’s no visible, centralized Finder location to write and read files from. In fact, Ted is right when he says that the convenience of a Mac is being able to create “a folder that will contain all the assorted files needed to put his column together”. That’s made easy by the Finder – but on iOS? Apple allows third-party developers to plug into the Music library or Camera Roll, yet there’s no Apple app to “create text file here” or “save webpage from Safari here”. Again, the lack of an iOS Finder would require “universal save” to work inside any app. iDisk could have been a centralized location for files – it could have even been Apple’s “answer to Dropbox” – but it’s not going to be supported by iCloud.

And then there’s the conceptual issue of an iOS device being the app that you’re using. When you use Pages on an iPad, the iPad is a word processor. When you browse the web with Safari, you’re holding the web in your hands. On a technical level, this app console model is represented by sandboxing and one-way “Open In” menus, and soon iCloud-based documents that allow multiple versions of the same app to access files. Would a “universal save” option somehow break the illusion that you’re holding an app, reminding us that we’re using a device with multiple layers of abstractions including a filesystem?

I don’t know. I believe I’d like this feature in theory, but I wonder if there would also be a considerable trade-off to accept.