Posts Tagged ‘iCloud’

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

In Facebook IPO, Frenzy, Skepticism (The Wall Street Journal)
Facebook’s coming initial public offering has set off a frenzy of anticipation among Main Street and Wall Street investors desperate to get their hands on the stock. Late Monday, the social network raised the price range for its IPO to $34 to $38 a share, from $28 to $35 a share, said a person familiar with the matter, in a sign of investor appetite for the offering. Inside Facebook Facebook has announced a new design for its mobile newsfeed that displays posts in individual boxes similar to how they appear on timeline. As part of the redesign, photos now appear three times larger than before, which could make browsing more efficient since there is less need to tap to see an image full-screen. Yahoo! News/The Lookout Is Facebook a flash in the pan? Nearly half of Americans think so, according to a new AP/CNBC poll. Forty-six percent of those polled said the social networking giant is likely to “fade away as new things come along,” while 43 percent predict it will be “successful over the long term.” CNBC The poll also shows that 57 percent of Facebook users say they never click ads or other sponsored content when they use the site, with another 26 percent saying they hardly ever engage in such activity AllFacebook Recent college graduate Suleika Jaouad found out that when she opened up about having leukemia on Facebook, there was a community ready to embrace her as she faced this new challenge in life. Caretakers and fellow cancer patients, friends and family all were there waiting to offer support and share advice. Read more

Apple laid out features, use cases and pricing for its iCloud service during yesterday’s iPhone 4S announcement. The service is scheduled to roll out on October 12 (next week Wednesday) along with the iPhone 4S and new iPod models. Here are the details of the service.
Read more

Apple’s iCloud promises to provide the network glue between Macs, PCs and iOS (iPhone/iPad) devices that .Mac and Mobile Me could not. 9to5Mac provides an overview of what those with developer account can see today.
Read more

If you bought and downloaded an app directly on your iPhone or iPad a week ago, the app would not show up on your PC or Mac until the device was synced with iTunes. Until then losing your iPhone or iPad also meant losing your purchase or free download.

However, a week after Apple announced iCloud at its Worldwide Developer Conference, we are seeing its features even before it fully rolls out later this year when iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion are released. Last week I noted that iTunes gained the ability to re-download songs, apps and books.

iTunes/iCloud Ability to Re-download Songs, Apps & Books is Up and Running

This week I noticed a new behavior for apps downloaded directly to an iPhone or iPad. You do not need to tether your device to a PC or Mac with a USB cable for iTunes to be “aware” of the purchase. Here’s the sequence of events that I noticed.

1. I downloaded and installed a free app using the iPad’s App Store app.
2. Later that day I started iTunes 10.3.1 on my Mac.
3. I noticed that iTunes was downloading something.
4. Looking at the iTunes download queue, I saw that it was the app that I had downloaded to the iPad earlier that day.

This happened even though I had not synced the iPad to iTunes with a USB cable. This new sync process should provide a better backup situation for iOS device users and reduce sync times if you frequently purchase apps directly on the device instead of through iTunes.

And, finally (for today), we come to Apple’s much anticipated iCloud. Apple’s less than stellar MobileMe service, which Steve Jobs described as “not our finest hour” during the keynote, is MobileGone. And, so is its $99 per year fee (for the most part). In its place, we have iCloud. Apple describes it like this:

iCloud stores your music, photos, apps, calendars, documents, and more. And wirelessly pushes them to all your devices — automatically. It’s the easiest way to manage your content. Because now you don’t have to.

It works on iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch) as well as the Mac OS X and even Microsoft Windows desktop. It provides cloud storage for music, apps (including re-installing), photos, and device settings information. Singing up for the service (when it becomes available later this yaer) gives you 5GB of storage at no charge. Photos, purchased (key word) music, apps and books are stored in iCloud outside of the 5GB limit. All of Apple’s major apps will be iCloud enabled in iOS 5: iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream, Apps, Books, Documents (iWork), Contacts, Calendar and Mail. The iCloud API will be available for Microsoft Windows software as well as Mac OS X and iOS.

Photo Stream works with iCloud. It stores your most recent 1000 uploaded photos and keep them in the cloud for 30 days. The iCloud Photo Stream appears as a album in the iOS photo app. This is a lot like how Android and Picasa are tied together.

iTunes in the Cloud lets you download purchased music to up to 10 devices. There is an auto-downloads option too. Make sure you have the bandwidth and storage to deal with this option if you buy a lot of music. The service can also scan and match your library using a paid service named iTunes Match. iTunes Match is a $24.99 per year subscription. Here’s how Apple describes its operation:

iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

If it finds a match to a song on your computer, it will match it in the cloud service without uploading the file. This is a lot like the old MP3.com service and unlike Google Music or Amazon CloudDrive.

In a recent article on the status of the could music battle between Amazon, Google and Apple, I tendered my opinion that victory wouldn’t be based on chronological order, but on a litany of factors. I also touched on the fact that Apple has a storied history of entering the market later than competitors with a superior product and almost immediately leaving said competitors to fight for a very distant second place. Well I’m not one who revels in saying ‘I told you so’ (that’s an absolute lie, I love it) but a recently unearthed patent application strongly suggests that Apple’s cloud-based music service could be a game changer.

Read more

I don’t care if you’re a war buff or what sport you’re into, you’re going to be hard pressed to find a more back and forth battle than that for supremacy of the cloud music market right now. Increasing definitive headlines all proved to be premature: “Amazon wins cloud war”, “Google and Apple will acquire licensing before releasing music lockers” and “Apple to beat Google on cloud music.” Now that the dust is somewhat beginning to settle, the only thing that can be said with complete surety is that the enormous number of variables involved promises a very interesting future for the business of cloud computing.

Read more