Sam Radford talks about Apple’s 5GB of iCloud storage space and how the company has to increase the limit. I agree with Sam. Years ago 5GB was a lot of space, but if Apple wants users to utilize iCloud and all of its services, they are going to have to increase the limits.
icloud
Forbes is just trying to piss me off
If there was any doubt at all how pathetic Forbes has become, just take a look at the latest bit of drivel posted to the Web site.
Apple’s services challenge
Ben Bajarin:
The fallacy most make when critiquing Apple’s service challenge is to believe that Apple needs to out-innovate competing services. The truth is, all they need to do is out-integrate them.
Integration is a huge part of Apple’s advantage, but it’s services still need to offer what users want. For instance, I was impressed with the OS X Maps demo where you can look up an address and send it to your iPhone. That type of integration will win people over. However, you still have people that use Dropbox because they feel it’s better than iCloud.
When Apple gets iCloud right
Gus Mueller gives us a list of four points when we’ll know that Apple got iCloud right.
Apple’s iCloud problem
Ellis Hamburger wrote a great piece about why we haven’t seen more app developers supporting iCloud.
Apple takes password reset offline
Earlier Friday, The Verge reported on a significant security exploit with Apple’s “reset password” functionality for Apple IDs. Armed with only your email address and date of birth, a hacker could tweak a specific URL to reset the password for your account.
Wow, that is not good. I’m glad to see they took it offline quickly.
How-to enable iCloud two-step verification
Cody Fink wrote a nice article on what two-step verification is and how to enable it.
Two-step verification for iCloud accounts
Apple has joined the growing list of companies offering two-step verification to secure user accounts. By enabling two-step verification, whenever you attempt to log in on a new device with your Apple ID, you will be asked to enter a 4-digit verification code. This code will be sent to a device that you have registered as a trusted device, such as your iPhone, via a Find My iPhone notification or SMS.
Apple beats Google, Amazon in cloud war
Apple is dominating the cloud storage wars, followed by Dropbox, Amazon and Google according to Strategy Analytics ‘Cloud Media Services’ survey.
In a recent study of almost 2,300 connected Americans, Strategy Analytics found that 27% have used Apple’s iCloud followed by 17% for Dropbox, 15% for Amazon Cloud Drive and 10% for Google Play (see chart).
Dropbox CEO criticizes iCloud
Houston called out iCloud’s “bizarre limitations,” saying that no iPhone or iPad user can easily share iCloud documents with an Android device.
I see iCloud and Dropbox as different types of services — maybe they shouldn’t be, but I think they are. There are plenty of things I could say that iCloud does better than Dropbox, but it wouldn’t make sense to do so. Just like this doesn’t make sense in a some ways.
Between Dropbox and iCloud
As much as iCloud is the right idea still not realized, Dropbox is the wrong thing done brilliantly well. And at the end of the day, that still amounts to the wrong thing.
Interesting article by Rene Ritchie.
Privacy policies: Google, Dropbox, iCloud, Microsoft
Nilay Patel takes a look at the privacy policies of some of our favorite online services.
Pissed with iCloud
iOS developer Justin Williams is not happy with iCloud and the services Apple offers that rely on it. While I’ve heard other people pick iCloud apart, I haven’t had any problems. iTunes Match is fantastic, downloading apps works great and syncing is very fast.
Set default address to iCloud.com
A reader sent a note today letting me know that you can now set the default email address in your iCloud account to @mac.com, @me.com or @icloud.com. I don’t know how long it’s been like that, but I hadn’t noticed it before.
Just sign-in to iCloud, open the Mail app and go to Settings > Composing.
Apple extends complimentary iCloud storage
As a thank you to our former MobileMe members who moved to iCloud, we have extended the complimentary storage upgrade they received until September 30, 2013. This extension applies to accounts moved to iCloud between October 12th, 2011 and August 1st, 2012.
Thanks Apple.
Access iCloud files from the Finder
iCloud documents are cached on your local machine so that you can open them even if you don’t have Internet access. The files can be accessed in the Finder in addition to the Apple application dialog boxes.
Great tip.
Hacked. Hard
Mat Honan:
At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I didn’t use elsewhere. When I set it up, years and years ago, that seemed pretty secure at the time. But it’s not. Especially given that I’ve been using it for, well, years and years. My guess is they used brute force to get the password (see update) and then reset it to do the damage to my devices.
I’ve known Mat for a lot of years and he’s a really smart guy. This should be a lesson to all of us.
How Apple’s iCloud data center got built
Apple’s new $1 billion data center — one of the highest-profile new data centers in the world — has put the town of Maiden, North Carolina (population: just over 3,000) on the tech map. But it almost didn’t get built.
Maiden took a chance and it worked.
This is why iCloud isn’t in more apps
Kyle Baxter:
…naturally I’ve also been thinking through how syncing should work. This seems like an easy question to answer: iCloud. If only. I wish it were that easy, but it’s not.
As a user, I want iCloud implemented in everything I use. However, for developers, there are reasons why iCloud doesn’t make sense yet.
Steve Jobs is the definition of vision
Dustin Curtis transcribed one of Jobs’ keynotes where he described the cloud 15 years before it happened.
iCloud push email
I received an email from a reader today about push email being broken on iCloud. I was sure he was wrong, but when I sent myself an email to my Cloud address, it arrived immediately on my Mac, but didn’t arrive on my iPhone until I opened the Mail app. Weird 1.
It’s not a new issue though. People have had intermittent problems from at least last October.
I have no idea when this started for me. ↩
iCloud
Ben Brooks:
A widely adopted, seamless, fast, robust iCloud is the greatest threat to Apple’s competitors — and this time around I think Apple knows it.
iCloud is becoming the center of everything Apple wants to do with it’s devices, whether it’s a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.
Apple planning photo sharing upgrade to iCloud
Eric Slivka:
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 original story is at WSJ, but that story is for subscribers only, so enjoy it at Mac Rumors.
Reminders and Notes on iCloud
Federico Viticci:
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.
With iCloud being at the center of Mountain Lion and iOS, this shouldn’t be a big surprise.
Developers on iCloud’s first six months
Federico Viticci:
With third-party developers, however, adoption of iCloud sync and storage features has turned out to be a bit tricker, and possibly less intuitive than Apple’s own implementation due to the early nature of the platform.
I’m hoping this gets easier for developers. I rely on iCloud and would like to use it even more.
iCloud: The center of the universe
Here is my latest column for TechPinions where I look at iCloud:
iCloud is not just a syncing service — it’s a content delivery mechanism that will play an increasingly important roll in future products.
Apple to shut down iWork.com, pushes users to iCloud
Apple said it’s closing down iWork.com and is encouraging users to switch to iCloud instead.
Apple forced to deactivate iCloud push notifications in Germany
Florian Mueller: It appears that Motorola Mobility, which is in the process of being acquired by Google, has sent Apple an enforcement letter demanding compliance with a permanent (but appealable) patent injunction that was handed down three weeks ago by … Continued
The State of iCloud-enabled apps
Federico Viticci:
In 107 days since iCloud went live, and 235 since Apple’s announcement at WWDC ’11, it appears the majority of third-party developers are still considering whether or not iCloud is something worth investing their time — and customers’ money — or not.
An interesting read.
Motorola seeks an injunction against iPhone 4S and iCloud
Foss Patents:
The latest hostility is a new lawsuit filed by Motorola Mobility, with green light from Google, in the Southern District of Florida, seeking an injunction against the iPhone 4S and the iCloud over a package of six patents previously asserted against older Apple products in the same court.