Wwdc2011
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WWDC Interview: Clickable Bliss
Victor Agreda, Jr. (Editor-in-Chief, The Unofficial Apple Weblog) interviews Michael Zornek of Clickable Bliss at WWDC 2011. Michael was kind enough to tell us about his thoughts on the announcements on WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward. Clickable Bliss makes ProfitTrain (an invoicing app for Mac) and Dex (a Pokemon browser for iPhone) and recently released a very clever and slick game called Twiz Show, a sort of game show based on your Twitter friends for iOS devices. If you're looking for a fun game that ties into your Twitter buddies, give Twiz Show a look. TUAW and MacTech Magazine teamed up to speak to developers at WWDC 2011 about the keynote announcements and how Apple's new technologies will help them and their customers. We'll bring you those videos here, at MacTech.com and at MacNews.com. Also, check out the free trial subscription offer for MacTech Magazine here.
Apple releases WWDC 2011 videos
WWDC 2011 session videos are now available in iTunes. These HD videos can be downloaded and viewed for your developing pleasure but require paid program credentials to access. All material in the sessions remains under Apple's confidential information NDA. Have fun, and we'll see you back in the real world in about, oh say, 300-hours. Thanks, Joshua Weinberg
How iTunes Match solves my obscure downsampling problem
I have a longstanding audio quality problem with iTunes -- but iTunes Match will finally resolve it for me. Hurray! Hopefully this post will help others in the same situation. It all starts with the sad fact that I'm a perfectionist idiot about audio quality, so I still buy CDs and rip them myself using Apple's lossless codec -- I can't quite bring myself to (usually) pay more on iTunes for a lower quality file. The lossless codec achieves about 50% compression, yielding files about three times larger than the iTunes Plus 256-kbps AAC setting that most people rip in and the iTunes Store uses. It is, however, a complete bit-for-bit copy of the original CD. Note that its not so much that I can hear the difference; more that I don't drive myself mad wondering if I can. I have occasionally, but admittedly not often, picked up the odd rough-sounding cymbal splash in iTunes Plus files when listening on decent headphones; but I am by no means one of those audiophiles who believes in spending thousands on speaker cables and $2000 on a power cord that defies the laws of physics. Still, though, by using only Apple lossless audio codec (ALAC), I know that I can avoid even thinking about sound quality issues. That's the appeal for me. Even if you're unconvinced by my reasoning here (and I admit it has more to do with my own eccentricities than strict logic), there's another reason to prefer ALAC format ripping -- down the road, if I have to change to alternative music formats, I won't need to rip the CDs again. I can turn the ALAC files back into pure WAV format and then transform them into any other format without any further loss of quality. I do this occasionally when I want to put more music on the USB stick that I keep plugged into my car radio, which will play mp3 and WMA files but not AAC. In contrast, running a lossy encoded format file like AAC through the encoding process to another one like mp3 results in a really muddy, horrible sounding file. However, whilst ALAC is fine for use on my Mac where disk space is cheap and for streaming around my house's Ethernet network where bandwidth is plentiful, it's not really much use for syncing to my iPhone, because it's too darn big. I'd prefer to compromise quality a little on the iPhone in order to fit a decent amount music in and because I mostly listen to the iPhone when walking the dogs or in my noisy day-job office, neither of which demand the highest fidelity. Sadly, iTunes really doesn't want to work with me. It has the "convert higher bitrates" option, which is teasingly close to what I want, but it's irritatingly locked to only output 128 kbit/sec AAC. That really is too low -- I can definitely hear annoying compression artifacts. So, for a long time, I've been maintaining two iTunes libraries. One is full of ALAC and I use it for playback in the house; the other is full of AAC and I use it to sync my iPhone with. Hence, when I rip a CD, I have to rip it twice (or do a second pass of conversion from the ALAC files to AAC), and if any track names, album art, or other metadata need adjusting, I need to adjust it twice. This is tedious and annoying. Enter iTunes Match, which might just solve this problem for me at a stroke. I'm hoping it will allow me to rip once as an ALAC file, and upload that converted file to iCloud. Apple says that: [A]ll the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality -- even if your original copy was of lower quality. which implies to me that even ALAC files going in come out at the lower quality 256 kbit/sec setting. I wouldn't even need to cable my iPhone to iTunes to get new music any more, let alone rip CDs twice or juggle multiple iTunes libraries. For $25 a year, I'm in, although it seems that we'll be waiting until 2012 to get iTunes Match in the UK. Although this problem is fairly obscure, I have seen others people post about this problem from time to time (one, two, and many of the comments below). I hope this post will reach those folk and prompt them to look at this little side-effect of iTunes Match more closely.
No comment: WWDC wristbands
We're pretty sure that these are for WWDC attendees who will be at the annual beer bash tonight, and not meant to be attached to devices that are loaded with REDACTED (iOS 5)... Somebody at Apple has a very good sense of humor. Overheard at WWDC: "How do I know if I'm drunk enough to wear it?" "As long as you can still redactulate, you're fine..." Thanks to everyone who sent in a photo, especially @shnhrrsn who volunteered his arm for this photo shoot.
TUAW TV Live: Steve and Rich talk Lion, iOS 5 and food
OK, maybe we won't get around to talking about food, although the two of us are both accomplished chefs, but we'll certainly be talking about the two new major operating system versions that will be shipping later this year. In July, of course, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is slated to drop from Cupertino. For just US$29.99, the new OS is the first Mac operating system designed to be distributed via the Mac App Store. With a load of new features and redesigned user interface, Lion is bound to both excite and frustrate Mac users. Later in 2011, iOS 5 will hit our iOS devices and bring a variety of new features to the mobile space. We still don't know all of the details about these two new operating systems, but that will be part of the fun of today's TUAW TV Live. My guest today is TUAW blogger Rich Gaywood, who will be joining me for an hour of discussion on the forthcoming OS upgrades. From your Mac or PC, go to the next page by clicking the Read More link at the bottom of this post, and you'll find a livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. If you're stuck in traffic and would like to watch TUAW TV Live, please don't -- keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream Viewing Application. If you're on an iPad, you should be able to use the Skyfire Browser to watch the stream, although you will not be able to participate in the chat. We'll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you're seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you'll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the new TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.
Wi-Fi Sync and Wi-Fi Sync: An amazing coincidence? You decide
About a year ago, we told you about Greg Hughes, a British university student and iOS developer. Hughes created the jailbreak app Wi-Fi Sync (US$9.99), which gives your iPhone the capability to "wirelessly sync with iTunes at the touch of a button." The app was turned down by Apple last May, at which time Hughes was given very little explanation as to why his app would not be making it into the App Store. Wi-Fi Sync has had very good success in the Cydia jailbreak store, with Hughes reporting in an interview today that the app has chalked up over 50,000 sales. Now fast forward to the WWDC keynote on June 6, 2011. Apple announced a number of new features that will be available in iOS 5 this fall. One of the big features is something called ... wait for it ... Wi-Fi Sync. Guess what it does? According to the description on the Apple website, Wi-Fi Sync in iOS 5 lets you "wirelessly sync your iOS device to your Mac or PC over a shared Wi-Fi connection." OK, so maybe Apple was working on this capability in April of 2010 when Hughes first submitted Wi-Fi Sync to the App Store. But is it a coincidence that the Apple Wi-Fi Sync icon is almost identical to the one that Hughes had a designer create for him last year? Check out Hughes' icon below at left, and Apple's new icon at right. Interesting... Personally, I like the Hughes icon design better. This isn't the only case of Sherlocking -- the apparent appropriation by Apple of features previously available in third-party apps -- that we've seen this week. Many features that were available only through Cydia apps in the past are now going to appear on iPhones in iOS 5. It seems to me that Apple, particularly in the case of some rather amazing "coincidences" like Wi-Fi Sync, would want to reach out to the developers who brought features to iOS well before the company did. Apple should reach out and reward the developers for showing the foresight and skill to demonstrate powerful new features, even if the company didn't "borrow" those features. Unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen. If you aren't opposed to jailbreaking your iPhone and want the Wi-Fi Sync capability before iOS 5 appears this autumn, be sure to reward Hughes by purchasing his app. Sales of the Cydia Wi-Fi Sync app are sure to plummet when iOS 5 finally arrives. So, TUAW readers, what do you think? Was Apple working on Wi-Fi Sync a year ago and that's why they turned down the Hughes app? Or did Apple borrow freely from his work? Leave us your observations in the comments.
2011 Apple Design Award winners announced
The 2011 Apple Design Award winners have been announced at WWDC. Although the Mac got left off the radar last year, in 2011 Apple's chosen to recognize greatness in all of its platforms. Winners get a MacBook Air, iPad 2, iPod touch and a snazzy trophy. They also get heaps of free coverage from sites like us, which means all of these apps can likely look forward to massive upticks in sales over the next week. The winners are below. For apps we've covered before at TUAW, we've got links to our reviews/first looks. For the few apps we haven't covered yet, we've linked you directly to the App Store. Many thanks to Steve Streza, who live-tweeted the results from the event. Student Grades 2 by Tapity Pennant by Vargatron Pulse News Reader by Alphonso Labs iPhone Cut the Rope by Chillingo Golfscape GPS Rangefinder by Shotzoom Infinity Blade by Chair Entertainment Mac Capo by SuperMegaUltraGroovy Pixelmator by... Pixelmator Anomaly: Warzone Earth by 11 bit studios iPad Osmos by Hemisphere Games Our Choice by Push Pop Press Djay by algoriddim Congratulations to all the winners! Enjoy your well-deserved spoils.
Why didn't we see a Nuance announcement during WWDC?
One major rumor missing from the WWDC keynote yesterday was voice control. It was just last year that Apple purchased Siri, a popular voice companion app for iOS. Apple was also rumored to be working with Nuance to offer some form of voice control in its software. References to Nuance were recently spotted in a developer version of Mac OS X Lion, and sources claim Nuance software is running at Apple's North Carolina data center. Even the Chief Mobile Technology Architect at Nuance was spotted in the WWDC audience yesterday. Despite this mounting evidence, voice control was a no-show at WWDC. Both TechCrunch and Robert Scoble heard from sources that Apple's voice technology was not ready for a WWDC demonstration. It's there, and Apple is still working on it, but it's not quite ready for prime time. Perhaps Apple will wait to roll out this feature and use it to drum up added excitement when iOS 5 finally arrives this fall.
iTunes (in the Cloud) 10.3 beta available for download, we go hands-on
If you live in the US or Canada then the iTunes 10.3 beta is ready to rumble on your PC or Mac. Automatic downloads and access to your purchase history is limited to iOS 4.3.3 users on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (GSM only, sorry Verizon subscribers), iPad and iPad2, and 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch devices. Once you meet those requirements, the iTunes in the Cloud beta promises to keep all of your newly purchased iTunes music in sync between devices while giving you the choice to download previously purchased tracks whenever you want at no additional cost. 10.3 beta also brings the Automatic Downloads feature to your apps and books, now allowing you to purchase tomes from your desktop while keeping them in sync with the iBooks app running on your iOS devices. Naturally, we couldn't help but test it out ourselves from both a Mac and iPhone 4, so click through for our first impressions.
Apple iOS 5 hands-on preview
<div style="text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.engadget.com/wwdc-2011/apple-ios-5-hands-on-preview/"><img border="1" hspace="4" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/06/ios-5-beta-eng-01.jpg" vspace="4"/></a></div> <a href="http://engadget.com/tag/ios5">iOS 5</a> won't be ready for the masses until this Fall, but lucky developers -- and eager tech bloggers -- are able to get in on the action right now. We just got done downloading the 730MB BETA, and have decided to turn our iPhone 4 and iPad 2 into guinea pigs for all the newness. Apple says that there are over 200 new features baked into the updated OS, and we've run through the biggies from Notification Center to Twitter to that oh-so-convenient split keyboard for you -- all you need to do is click after the break.<br /> %Gallery-125567%<br /> %Gallery-125568%
Doing the Math: At $29.99, Mac OS X Lion was WWDC's most expensive product
Our own Dave Caolo pointed out something that took the rest of the TUAW team aback: at US$29.99, Mac OS X Lion was the most expensive product discussed at WWDC today. It's not as though the next version of the Mac's operating system had a lot of pricing competition at the keynote. iOS 5 will be a free upgrade to users with supported hardware, and iCloud's services -- which used to cost $99/year under MobileMe -- are all completely free. In fact, other than Lion itself, the only thing Apple announced at WWDC that costs anything at all was iTunes Match at $25 a year. One of the major anti-Apple memes over the lifetime of the Mac has been that Apple's products are far more expensive than those of its competitors. While there are arguments both for and against that line of thinking for Macs and equivalently-configured PCs, the iPad's pricing compared to other tablets' blows that argument out of the water, and Apple's software prices undercut those of Windows by an astonishing margin, as demonstrated in the graphic above. Windows 7 comes in a spread of flavors, while Mac OS X Lion comes in only two: the standard $29.99 user edition and an upgraded server edition that costs $50 more. Both will be downloads from the Mac App Store, and while there's no official word yet, based on a cursory reading of the current terms and conditions, it seems that both Lion and Lion Server Edition will be installable on up to 10 machines associated with a user's iTunes account. So our graphic is wrong in one sense: while you could buy multiple copies of Lion for the same price as the equivalent Windows software, you don't actually have to. If anything, this makes Lion an even more economical prospect than Windows. Even if you want to make the argument that it'd take a Server Edition upgrade to put Lion's feature set on parity with Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (an assessment with which we'd politely disagree), Windows 7 is still only installable on one machine. Therefore, even with "Lion Server Edition" costing a total of $80, that's $80 for a 10-machine license under the current terms and conditions versus $220 to install Windows 7 Ultimate Edition on one. Put another way: for the amount of money you'd pay for a single-machine license for Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, you could install Mac OS X Lion and its server tools on 20 machines and still have 60 bucks left over. If you're like us and you think Lion doesn't need the server tools to be on parity with Windows 7 Ultimate, you could install Lion on 70 machines and buy yourself a six-pack for the same price as one Windows 7 Ultimate license. Apple charged $129 for Mac OS X Leopard and older iterations of its operating system, which were still considered bargains against the pricing of equivalent Windows packages. But Lion's incredibly low cost compared to that of Windows merely demonstrates what we've known all along: Apple is, at its heart, a hardware company. It makes money off of its hardware, but the only purpose of the software is to make the hardware sing. iTunes? Free. iCloud? Free. iOS? Free. Mac OS X? 30 bucks. Microsoft, on the other hand, is primarily a software company dependent on hardware makers to run its software. Xbox 360 and some minor pilot projects aside, Microsoft makes an overwhelming majority of its money off licenses of Windows and Office editions. With that in mind, it's little wonder that Microsoft's software costs so much more... or that Apple is currently cleaning Microsoft's clock financially.
What Mac owners need to know after today's WWDC announcements
With Mac OS X Lion coming in July and the free iCloud service coming in the fall, owning a Mac is about to get a whole lot more exciting. Today's WWDC keynote was full of announcements about the new services Lion and iCloud will offer, and whether you're a Mac newbie or an old hand, it's worth looking at a condensed list of what this means for the future of the Mac. Mac OS X Lion 1. Lion will be available in July, and it only costs US$29.99 for all your devices. Quite a few people expected the next version of Mac OS X to be cheaper than the $129 Apple charged for the first five versions, but we were pleasantly shocked to see it being offered for the same price as the current version, Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Not only that, but your OS X Lion install is valid for any Mac you own, meaning "family versions," the more expensive multi-user OS X versions Apple used to offer, are now a thing of the past. That's largely because... 2. Lion will only be available through the Mac App Store. Apple has made it so you no longer need to buy a retail box with a disc containing the Mac OS X installer. This makes it so you can install Lion on any Mac associated with your iTunes account. There are some unaddressed questions about this process (more on that later), but one thing is certain: if Lion is only available via the Mac App Store, that means it's only available to Snow Leopard users. The Mac App Store isn't available on Mac OS X Leopard or earlier versions, so if you haven't updated to Snow Leopard yet, it looks like a Leopard-to-Lion upgrade will actually cost you about $60. 3. If you have a desktop Mac, now's a good time to go get a Magic Trackpad. Apple has gone full-tilt on integrating Multi-Touch gestures into Mac OS X. The company started integrating such gestures in early 2008, but Mac OS X Lion is making them an integral part of the OS. If you want to get the most out of Lion, and you have a Mac mini, iMac or a Mac Pro, you'll need a Magic Trackpad to take full advantage of features such as Mission Control. Meanwhile, almost all Mac notebooks manufactured after early 2008 should be able to use the new gestures. 4. Mac OS X is taking some design cues from iOS. Launchpad, a simplified-app launcher, should be familiar to anyone who's used an iPhone or iPad. Apps can run in full screen if you choose, emulating the "one thing at a time" nature of working on the iPad. Mail is getting a new dual-column layout, with conversation views identical to what we've had in iOS for some time now. Also similar to the way things work in iOS, apps will resume right where you left them when you reopen them. Speaking of which... 5. Saving and backing up files will be easier than ever. The way Apple's described it, you might never need to worry about losing an in-progess file again -- or manually saving it, for that matter. Taking another cue from the way things have worked on iOS, applications will now automatically save your work as you go. The new Versions feature will also keep track of different saved versions of your work, similar to the way Time Machine's worked for file backups since Mac OS X Leopard. With this feature, one of the decades-long bugbears of the computing world has been addressed at last; now, if an app or your computer crashes out, your work will always be safe. iCloud 1. iCloud replaces MobileMe -- for free. If you were always eyeing up MobileMe's services but didn't want to shell out the $99/year Apple was asking for, worry no longer. Everything MobileMe used to do, iCloud will do for free, starting this fall. 2. iCloud wirelessly syncs data across all your devices. If you've got iOS devices or are a multi-Mac household, you'll find iCloud makes it easy to keep data synced from one device to another. This means you can keep your mail, calendar entries, and contacts synced across multiple devices, automatically and wirelessly. MobileMe has done this for years (and .Mac before it), but iCloud will do it free of charge, so there's no reason not to use it. 3. Photo Stream makes syncing recent photos manually a thing of the past. A thousand of your latest photos can be synced between devices immediately over iCloud. So if you take a photo on your iPhone or iPad 2, it'll show up on your Mac right away, without having to hook your devices together first. The latest 1,000 photos on your Mac can also be streamed to an iOS device over iCloud. 4. iTunes Music purchases now appear everywhere. Buy a song in the iTunes Store on your iPhone, and it shows up automatically on your Mac. Buy a song in iTunes on your Mac, and it shows up automatically on your iPhone. This is a feature people have been wanting for years now, and it's finally available. Unanswered questions 1. How can you install Mac OS X Lion on a new, empty hard drive? If the only way to install Mac OS X Lion is by downloading it via the Mac App Store, it's going to be very difficult to put it on a brand-new hard drive unless Apple provides us with workarounds. Maybe you'll be able to burn your copy of Lion to disc after downloading it or install it on a USB drive. At any rate, I hope Apple gives us an answer to this besides "keep your Snow Leopard disc handy" or "use Target Disk Mode with another Mac," because both of those solutions are suboptimal, to put it lightly. 2. Will Lion be available on disk for institutional use (schools, corporations) or for users with poor internet access? Some of us at TUAW think Apple might still offer Lion on disc for institutional use at schools or businesses, but it's too early to tell if that's the case. As for individuals with poor internet access, you're probably out of luck; the writing has been on the wall for those users ever since Apple stopped bundling iTunes installation discs with iPods. Mac OS X Lion will be available for download next month, and iCloud will debut in the fall. Put the two together, and the Mac becomes more powerful than ever before.
What iOS 5 owes to jailbreak developers
There are a lot of apps that will be replaced -- or at least have some very heavy competition -- from the new features in iOS 5. It's easy to look around the App Store and see developers that have been 'Sherlocked' by Apple's inclusion of their functionality in the core OS; Twitter clients in particular are going to have a hard road ahead, and no-frills reminder apps are pretty much done for. That's not the same thing as the wholesale borrowing that Apple has done from the jailbreak community with this new version of the OS, especially in the new notifications tools. Obviously, since JB devs tend to focus on new interaction methods and other system-level tweaks that would be off-limits to App Store products, there are more and different ideas about how the iPhone and iPad should work being tried and implemented there. That makes it fertile ground for Apple to see what does and doesn't work, and cherrypick the best ideas for internal use. That may not be cool, but it's certainly in character for Apple to leverage third-party innovation in OS development, both on the Mac and on iOS. Here are a few examples of some noteworthy 'flattery' from Apple's iOS team to the jailbreak developers who broke trail. One of the main reasons people jailbreak is to get better notifications and a useful lock screen; both issues Apple has finally addressed in a very big way in iOS 5. A few of the popular lock screen apps are David Ashman's LockInfo and Intelliborn's IntelliScreen, and both resemble (if they didn't inspire) iOS 5's new lock screen. In terms of notifications, Apple's taken aim at a couple of favorite JB apps: Notified and the recent MobileNotifier. iCloud syncing looks like a fantastic backup system, so much so that EvilPenguin already feels that its backup tool iBye is no longer necessary. In fact, James Emrich, the developer behind EvilPenguin told TUAW: "iBye was a backup/restore manager for content. Basically what iCloud does without auto backups."
Automatic Downloads now live for iOS devices
WWDC has just kicked off for 2011, but you can get a little bit of the Apple iCloud newness right now in the form of automatic Application, Music and Book downloads. Launch Settings on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, scroll down to Store and wait for the new options to load (you'll need to be connected to the internet to see them). Once you've checked them, the next time you purchase or download an app, a music track or a book, it'll automatically be pushed out to any device you've activated Automatic Downloads on. Brilliant. Be warned though, if you activate Automatic Downloads for one Apple ID on a device and then attempt to activate another Apple ID on the same device (US and UK iTunes accounts for instance), you'll get a pop-up notification saying: This Device Is Already Associated With an Apple ID. If you turn on Automatic Downloads with your Apple ID, you cannot auto-download or download past purchases with a different Apple ID for 90 days. A screenshot of said warning is past the break. You have been warned.
iOS 5 beta 1 ready for download. Kind of.
Developers, get your [REDACTED] on. iOS 5 beta 1 is now available for download from Apple's developer site. You must be a paid $99/year developer to gain access to this beta. Sign in with your dev credentials to gain access. The beta is, as always, released under the terms of Apple's NDA. For that reason, exploration of new APIs and features is left as an exercise for the reader. To access the new beta, you must sign an updated developer agreement. The site is a bit glitchy right now so be patient. Happy developing everyone!
iOS iTunes, App Store apps silently updated to add Purchased button (Updated)
While everybody was gawking at the news coming in from the WWDC 2011 Stevenote today, Apple silently slipped in an update to the iOS iTunes and App Store apps. The update, which was made on Apple's servers, adds a feature that was described in the keynote -- the Purchased button. As you can see in the screenshot at right, looking at Updates in the App Store app now displays a Purchased button. Tap on it, and you see a list (below) of every app you've purchased. There's a tab displaying all purchased apps, and another showing just those that have been purchased but are not currently installed on the iOS device. The apps that you've purchased and haven't installed (or that you've removed) display a little cloud button with a downward-pointing arrow, indicating that you can tap that button to install the app on your device. For iTunes, the Purchased button is located in the bottom toolbar (see below). A tap displays all songs that you have purchased, recent purchases, and then an alphabetical list of every song purchased by artist. When you find a song or album that you own, but that isn't currently on your iOS device, a tap on the cloud icon downloads it immediately. The change isn't immediately noticeable to the user who only occasionally visits these apps, but it is going to be very useful for owners of iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches who might need to remove apps or music to gain storage space, and then want to reload their content. Update: One more little detail. When you're in iTunes and music that you've purchased is being downloaded, there's a small red indicator that appears down in the bottom right of the toolbar (below) and counts down as the songs appear. Cool!
Seven things iPhone users should know about today's announcment
Short of time? Intimidated by a huge sprawl of WWDC news? Here are the most important things for iPhone users to know about what changes we'll be seeing in the fall when iOS 5 is available for our phones. 1. iCloud Probably the biggest change to how we'll use our iOS devices going forward, iCloud is the glue that binds it all together. It has a number of big features of its own: buy music on your iPhone and copies of the same songs will appear on your Mac and iPad, for example. Work on a Pages document on your Mac, and the same file will be available on the iPhone. iCloud also shows a simple list of all the apps and music you've purchased, so you can easily re-download things you've already bought but deleted. iCloud also plays an important supporting role in many of the other features iOS 5 brings to the table -- I'll highlight them as we go through the following sections. 2. PC free No more cables! With iOS 5, your iPhone will be able to sync your iTunes content over your Wi-Fi network and download new iOS updates on its own without having to connect it to iTunes first. Plus, iCloud will automatically back up important content on your iPhone -- such as game saves and photos -- once per day. When you get a new phone, a quick sign-in with your iTunes account will have it automatically downloading the last backup. Now, more than ever, the iPhone can claim to be a post-PC device.
Apple updates Find My iPhone app with offline device support
Among all the hoopla about iCloud and iOS 5 today, Apple has also quietly updated its Find My iPhone iOS app. Version 1.2 adds features for devices that are offline. Now when a user is unable to locate a device because it is offline, that user will receive an email if the device comes online and is located. The update also adds the ability to remove an offline device from their list of Find My iPhone devices using the app itself. Previously the user had to log into MobileMe's Find My iPhone page through a desktop-based web browser. Find My iPhone is a free download.
Lion requirements: 64-bit CPU, 2 GB of RAM
As expected, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will require an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (or better, such as the i3/5/7 series or Xeon chips) and 2 GB of RAM for a compliant install when it ships this summer. This is consistent with the requirements from earlier builds of the OS. Judging by our Twitter inquiries, however, there is a good bit of confusion over the difference between "Core 2 Duo" (which is supported) and "Core Duo" (which is not). Here's the simple rule: Did you purchase your Mac (new) after December 2007 2006? It's probably OK for Lion, although it might need more RAM. Core 2 Duo processors have been used in the Mac line since late 2006, and powered most consumer Macs prior to the introduction of the Core 'i' MacBook Pro models last year (except for the Xeon and successor CPUs in the Mac Pro and XServe). Core Duo and Core Solo chips, on the other hand, were only used in the first-generation Intel Macs (MacBook/MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini), and were not used at all after 2006. Even the low-power first generation MacBook Air from 2008 used a Core 2 Duo, and all MacBook Air models shipped with at least 2 GB of RAM. Hope that helps! We'll have more details on "what Mac owners need to know about Lion" later today.
Lion Server to be a $50 download from Mac App Store
In the past, if you wanted to set up a Mac OS X-based server, you bought a separate DVD with an expensive license. In the case of Snow Leopard Server, that license was $499 for an unlimited number of users. Now, it appears that Lion Server is going to be a $49.99 set of apps that you'll purchase through the Mac App Store. This is a bit different from what we heard back in February, when Apple's PR department was touting that Lion Server would be bundled for free with every copy of Lion. For those who are currently running the latest version of Mac OS X Server 10.6, updating will be as simple as visiting the Mac App Store once Lion ships in July, then clicking a few times to buy, download, and install the new server OS on your Mac. Your Mac must run an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, or Core i7 processor to run Lion or the server apps, so that old original Core Duo Mac mini won't be able to be upgraded. What does the server app set add to Lion? • A Server App for setting up user accounts, creating groups, checking usage, and managing AirPort devices. There's no word on whether that $50 buys you an unlimited license, but that seems likely as Apple hasn't stated otherwise. • A Profile Manager to set up and remotely manage Lion workstations and iOS devices. • Wireless File Sharing for iPad • Push notifications • Wiki Server 3, iCal Server 3, Mail Server 3 • Xsan Directory services don't seem to be headlined on the Apple page, but I'm sure we'll see more details as Lion gets even closer to release next month. With Lion Server, Apple is making server software easily accessible for anyone, without the huge licensing fees seen in the Windows world.
