iCloud

Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has begun a search to find senior-level executives for their cloud services. According to the report, Apple already has one Internet entrepreneur in their sights, but it hasn’t been disclosed who. To assist with their search, Apple is also reportedly looking into hiring out a recruiting firm to find solid talent.

The hopes in finding new leadership for their cloud products is undoubtedly to strengthen Apple’s already existent iCloud, but to also build new web-based applications. The report mentions that Apple is working towards building these web-based applications to limit the amount of hardware a single person needs on them at one time. The details aren’t final, though lower-level positions have already been filled to begin work. Arguably, Apple has already begun this push with iCloud.

Apple is also considering building new apps that leverage the Web to reduce people’s need to carry around numerous devices at once, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

To assist with their movement to the cloud, Steve Jobs announced the new data center was operational in North Carolina during this year’s WWDC. The data center is home to powering all of Apple’s current cloud services, like iCloud, and presumably will power what’s coming up next.

It’s obvious that Apple will need to begin an aggressive attack on the cloud if they want to be on terms with where Google’s currently headed. It will be interesting to see how Apple will attack making web-based applications, and what else they plan to do in the cloud — but it seems they’re already off to a pretty solid start.

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If you don’t know by now, Apple has officially opened up their iTunes Match service to the public, bringing with it 256-kbps AAC DRM-free copies of your non-iTunes purchased music for $25 a year. To help familiarize users with the service, Apple has posted the following chart walking us through some new iTunes Match related iCloud icons you’ll start to notice in iTunes.

In addition, they also dropped some helpful guides explaining the ins and outs of the service including Troubleshooting iTunes Match, How to subscribe to iTunes Match, How to add a computer or iOS device to iTunes Match, and How to delete songs from iCloud.

In the troubleshooting guide, we learn you can enable a column within iTunes to display the iTunes Match/iCloud status of any given song in your library. For example, whether it’s a “Matched” song or just “Uploaded”. To do this, click “View > View Options” or press “Command-J“, and click the “iCloud Status” checkbox (same place you also enable “iCloud download”).

A MacRumors forum poster also offers a few helpful hints, while noting iTunes Match keeps your meta-data (a nice touch if you tend to edit data associated with your songs), the post clears up some concerns regarding the intricacies of what happens with your local copies: 
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Following the release of iOS 5.0.1 this afternoon to developers, Apple has released iTunes 10.5.1 Beta 2 to developers this evening. Along with being posted to the Developer Center, Apple has sent out the following email to developers. In the email Apple now reveals that iTunes Match has been made available for Apple TV. This update also includes a number of bug fixes. Sadly, iTunes Match still isn’t available to the public.

iTunes 10.5.1 beta 2 is now available and includes a number of important stability and performance improvements. iTunes Match is also now available for testing on Apple TV.

On your Apple TV, choose Music > Turn on iTunes Match.

Please remember to backup regularly and do not delete the music you add to iCloud from your computer.

How’s it looking on your Apple TV? Let us know; tips@9to5mac.com. Full email after the break:

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As noted by MacRumors, Apple’s self-imposed end of October deadline has come and gone without the promised public launch of iTunes Match. The service will scan your local iTunes library and fingerprint songs in order to make them available for download (or was it streaming?) via iCloud to all authorized devices – for $25 a year flat fee, no strings attached. It’s unknown what’s behind this unusual setback. Could be last-minute backend issues that needed sorting out. Be that as it may, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for Tim Cook to keep a tight rein on his team now that the ultimate micro-manager is gone.

It’s worth mentioning, however, that Apple removed support for iTunes Match from the public release of iTunes 10.5 even though it’s been present in prior developer betas. iTunes Match resurfaced in iTunes 10.5.1 beta that was seeded to developers on October 11 and subsequently expired. Apple also last week sent notices informing developers their cloud libraries will get wiped out, another sign of an imminent launch.

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The moment I read the “I’ve Cracked the TV” quote from the Steve Jobs bio, I knew what the subject of the next few months at the rumor mill would be. Here it is in context:

“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ [Jobs told Isaacson]. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

That seems to be a lot more certain than Jobs was last year at the D8 conference when he took a question from an audience member. In it, he laid out some very important things that no one is really talking about.

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(Flashless)

The whole clip is much more fascinating than much of what I’ve been reading over the past week. The interface that Jobs is talking about isn’t whether Apple will use Siri or 3D gestures or not. It is how to put a layer on top of everything else with a consistent UI. He gets down to the nitty gritty at 1:30-3:00:

Add a box on to the TV system. You can say well gosh I notice my HDTV has a bunch of HDMI ports on it one of them is coming from the set-top box I’ll just add another little box with another one. Well, you just end up with a table full of remotes, clutter of boxes, bunch of different UIs, and that’s the situation we have today. The only way that’s ever going to change is if you go back to step one and tear up the set top box and restart from scratch with a redesigned UI and present it to the consumer in a way they’re willing to pay for it. And right now there’s no way to do that. So that’s the problem with the TV market. We decided what product do we want the most, a better TV or a better phone? Well the phone won because there was no chance to do the TV because there’s no way to get it to market. What do we want a better TV or better tablet. Well a better tablet because there’s no way to get the TV to market. The TV is going to lose until there is a better go to market, or there’ll just be a bunch of TIVOs. That’s the fundamental problem. It’s not a problem of technology, it’s a go to market technology.

So the question becomes: How is Apple going to “tear up the set top box” and start over?

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We’re receiving numerous reports from disgruntled users claiming iCloud deleted their documents from iWork apps on their iPhones, iPod touches and iPads after restarting devices. Worse, documents from the Pages, Numbers and Keynote iOS apps are also wiped out from the iCloud servers and cannot be found using the web interface. Sure enough, a bunch of threads on Apple’s Support Communities site (here and here) highlight the issue which affects an unknown portion of users.

A forum user NickFro describes the catastrophic bug:

I can reliably reproduce the error as follows. Create a document in Numbers on an iOS device, or upload to iCloud.com manually. Wait for sync. Restart iOS device. Launch Numbers. The document will be deleted. If you have iCloud.com open, the file will still appear but clicking on it generates a “File not present on server” error. Pretty serious bug, but I can’t tell if it’s in iCloud or the iWork apps. Or both.

He also offers this remedy:

Delete the iCloud account at both the main level of Settings (i.e., by selecting iCloud) AND by deleting the account in the Mail, Calenders, and Contacts section of Settings. Have it remove everything from your device. Once it’s done. Go to the main level, select iCloud, and re-enable your account there and set all settings there for sync. Let the sync happen.

If that didn’t help, try the solutions described here and here.

If you backup your iOS devices with iTunes instead with iCloud, you’re in luck: Just restore to a device backup containing your files and launch Pages, Keynote or Numbers on your device – but don’t enable iCloud in any of those apps. As you know, iTunes creates a device backup at each sync (unless iCloud backup is enabled in iTunes or Settings on your device). This lets you use Time Machine to go back in time and retrieve a specific backup file containing your device’s settings, app data, documents and more. The affected users who enabled iCloud Backup on their device (Settings > iCloud > Storage and Backup) are in a much worse situation as any document created on their device and synced with iCloud gets deleted from both places without a warning, as shown in the below clip.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1vHhIY_uqw]

For some, the problem stems from migrating MobileMe accounts to the iCloud ones so deactivating the “old” MobileMe account on every iOS device, Mac or PC should help.

According to a forum user Felix Leiter:

As long as there is still one machine with a functioning “MobileMe” in the System Preferences, this will erase all files on startup. I found it out when I turned on my wife’s machine, having forgotten that I had created a temporary user account there to store some of my MobileMe information. As soon as I switched to that user account, zap!, all iWork files disappear. Now that all former MobileMe panels have been deactivated, the remote reset is no longer occurring. or at least so it seems.

For others, iWork documents are disappearing upon syncing with a computer, too. This happens after a document has been created on an iOS device or uploaded from the computer. Here’s one possible remedy…

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Apple announced sales of four million iPhone 4S units in the three days after its launch on October 14. In addition, the company said, more than 25 million customers have already upgraded to the new iOS 5 software in the first five days of its release and more than 20 million customers have signed up for iCloud: Apple’s marketing honcho Phil Schiller was quoted in a statement:

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. iPhone 4S is a hit with customers around the world, and together with iOS 5 and iCloud, is the best iPhone ever.

In 2010, Apple announced 1.7 million sales of iPhone 4 during the launch weekend. The company reported 600,000 pre-orders for iPhone 4 in the first 24 hours, which included orders placed with overseas carriers.

Following the iPhone 4S release last week, carrier AT&T announced pre-orders of 200,000 units in the first twelve hours, calling it “the most successful iPhone launch we’ve ever had”. Apple then confirmed one million iPhone 4S pre-orders in 24 hours, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4. Sprint announced its best sales day ever…at noon Central Time.

It should be noted that the iPhone 4S is the first iPhone to launch simultaneously on three carriers in the United States, available for the first time on the Sprint network – which together with Verizon, certainly helped sales numbers. Apple also added Australia and Canada to the five launch countries it had for the iPhone 4: US, Japan, UK, Germany and France.

Pre-orders went fast and the handset actually pretty quickly sold out across all carriers following the launch.

Full release below the break:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-SSg_zZ1M]

The Verge:

The iPhone 4S is a great device for some, but what if you’re thinking of upgrading from an iPhone 4? That’s a tougher call. The phone is faster, to be sure, and has an amazing camera. And of course, you can’t get Siri unless you have a 4S… but I just don’t know if any of those reasons are compelling enough to convince previous buyers to upgrade. The concept is a particularly hard sell for Verizon customers. The gap between this year’s model and last year’s model isn’t as wide as Apple would probably like.

For this review, I returned to the iPhone after a fairly long period of using and testing other devices. Spending a week with Apple’s newest phone, I’m reminded again of just what makes the company’s products so special. It’s not specs, services, or apps. This phone is not perfect. Certainly it can be improved. But there is something here, beyond the screen and CPU, beyond iCloud, something under the surface. Some intangible spark.

Is this the best phone ever made? That’s debatable. But I can tell you this: the iPhone 4S is pretty damn cool.

TechCrunch:

Leading up to last week’s event, like everyone else, I kept reading the rumors about a new iPhone with a larger screen and completely different form factor. Quite frankly, I was hoping they were wrong. (For the record, I stated that I heard the screen size rumor was wrong weeks ago.) The iPhone 4′s design is the pinnacle of smartphone design in my opinion. I simply could not imagine how they could alter it to make it better. Even making it thinner would mean that it wouldn’t fit as nicely in your hands for taking pictures. Android fanboys are going to love that statement.

I’m happy that Apple decided not to change the form factor even though they had to know there would be some backlash from a certain segment of the population (read: idiots). Instead, Apple focused on the other thing they do best: refining already great products to make them better. The iPhone 4 was a great product. The best smartphone ever made. Now it cedes that title to the iPhone 4S.

New York Times:

Android phones seem to come out every Tuesday at 3:45 p.m. Apple updates iOS and the iPhone only once a year. So Apple had a lot of catching up to do, even some leapfrogging. There are some rough spots here and there; for example, every now and then the 4S’s camera app gets stuck on its startup screen. And while the battery still gets you through one full day, standby time is shorter than before (200 hours versus 300). But over all, Apple has done an excellent job.

The question isn’t what’s in a name — it’s what’s in a phone. And the answer is: “A lot of amazing technology. And some of it feels like magic.”

Daring Fireball:

The iPhone 4 was my favorite product that Apple has ever made. The iPhone 4S has all the best features of the iPhone 4 — same look, same feel, same Retina Display — and adds several significant improvements. The one and only disappointment I have with the iPhone 4S is that the shutdown spinner animation is still low-res. That’s pretty low on the list of nits to pick.

More after the break:

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Right after releasing iTunes 10.5, Apple has begun seeding developers with the iTunes 10.5.1 beta, which also includes the latest iTunes Match beta. Like before, the release notes mention iCloud libraries will be deleted at the end of the beta. Of course it also comes with the usual bug fixes and enhancements, but we’ll let you know if we find anything interesting. Full release notes after the break.

The official Twitter iOS client has also been given an update today (via MacStories), bringing an “enhanced sign up experience”, the ability to upload photos to pic.twitter.com, and a redesigned direct message UI for iPad. The improved sign up experience comes courtesy of iOS 5’s ability to access Twitter account data from the Settings app, opposed to re-authenticating manually. You can grab version 3.5.0 from the App Store now.

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Here you go. The 103MB download isn’t immediately visible from the iTunes home screen but clicking download reveals the 10.5 download button.  It is also hitting Software Update.  This is the first step in Apple’s upgrade to iOS 5 and iCloud.  Other updates, including iOS 5 tomorrow should be hitting shortly.

Full release notes below (via MacStories):

What’s new in iTunes 10.5

• iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes now stores your music and TV purchases in iCloud and makes them available on your devices anywhere, any time, at no additional cost.

• Automatic Downloads. Purchase music from any device or computer and automatically download a copy to your Mac and iOS devices.

• Download Previous Purchases. Download your past music, TV, app, and book purchases again, at no additional cost. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer on the iTunes Store.

• Sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 5.

• Wi-Fi Syncing. Automatically sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes any time they’re both on the same Wi-Fi network.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit: support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
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Do you know what time it is? It is one hour before this iPhone event – and Apple is updating its Store. That means new toys obviously. You ready already?

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In case there was any question, we’ve heard directly from Apple PR that there won’t be a webcast of Apple’s iPhone launch event. Last Year’s September event was live streamed but for unspecified reasons, Apple has chosen to keep this one off the airwaves. They will provide a live closed feed to the UK for European journalists however.

We’ll still be covering the event as it unfolds so make sure to stop by at 10am PT, 1pm ET or your local varient.

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According to a posting on the Apple Developer boards this afternoon, Apple will be resetting iCloud Backup data on Thursday, September 22nd. We believe Apple is performing this reset for the release of iOS 5 GM, which will be released around the same time of the reset. iOS 5 GM will be the last release before iOS 5’s official debut in early October, like we previously reported. This reset doesn’t include data from mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, or bookmarks.

On Thursday, September 22, the iCloud Backup data will be reset. Backing up to iCloud or restoring from an iCloud backup will be unavailable from 9 AM PDT – 5 PM PDT. If you attempt a backup or restore during this time, you will receive an alert that the backup or restore was not successful. After this reset, you will be unable to restore from any backup created prior to September 22. A full backup will happen automatically the next time your device backs up to iCloud.

Along with iOS 5, we are hearing two new iPhones will be accompanying it, and will be announced in late September and available for purchase October 7th-ish. Check out last week’s post for all the details.

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Apple has seeded OS X Lion 10.7.2 build 11C55 to developers today, and it is the first OS X Lion 10.7.2 build to include iCloud for Mac built-in. Previously, developers had to download a separate iCloud for Mac package.

OS X Lion Software Update 10.7.2 is an update to OS X Lion 10.7 and includes support for iCloud beta. Please refer to the seed note for more details and installation instructions. (Mac Developer Program membership is required)

OS X Lion 10.7.2 includes the ability for users to easily enable iCloud Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Find my Mac on their computers. The software release will most likely ship alongside iCloud sometime this fall. Apple’s iCloud service is seemingly almost ready to launch with both Apple and carriers (for the iOS 5 integration) already being trained on the matter.

Let us know if you find anything; tips@9to5mac.com. Thanks Nicholas!

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9to5Mac has learned that Apple’s iTunes chief Eddy Cue has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, reporting directly to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. Cue, 47, will also serve on Apple’s executive management team. The change has been communicated internally via Tim Cook’s email message to employees, enclosed below. Also, Apple’s PR beat Cue, whose LinkedIn profile still lists his old role, by updating his public bio page on the company’s site to reflect the change.

Interestingly, Cue is now responsible for Apple’s iAd division which has been struggling since its promising launch in the summer of 2010, culminating with the resignation of Apple’s former vice president of mobile advertising Andy Miller earlier this month. In fact, Eddy Cue is now in control of Apple’s entire cloud-based operation that encompass the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore and iCloud services, the CEO wrote in his email message. Here’s Cook’s email to troops:

Team, It is my pleasure to announce the promotion of Eddy Cue to Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services. Eddy will report to me and will serve on Apple’s executive management team.

Eddy oversees Apple’s industry-leading content stores including the iTunes Store, the revolutionary App Store and the iBookstore, as well as iAd and Apple’s innovative iCloud services.

He is a 22-year Apple veteran and leads a large organization of amazing people. He played a major role in creating the Apple online store in 1998, the iTunes Music Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008.

Apple is a company and culture unlike any other in the world and leaders like Eddy get that. Apple is in their blood. Eddy and the entire executive management team are dedicated to making the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.

Please join me in congratulating Eddy on this significant and well-deserved promotion. I have worked with Eddy for many years and look forward to working with him even closer in the future.

Tim

Fast Company last year ranked Cue the second most creative person in their annual list of creatives. They wrote:

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Apple has just released iOS 5 beta 7 to developers as an over-the-air update. iOS 5 includes new features like Notification Center, Twitter integration, Newsstand, and iCloud support. The software update will become publicly available this fall, likely alongside the new iPhone lineup in early October. Apple has released iTunes 10.5 beta 7 and Xcode 4.2 beta 7 as well. Apple has also just released Safari 5.1.1 update 3. Let us know at tips@9to5mac.com anything you find!

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We’ve found that in the Wi-Fi sync settings there is now support for multiple Macs. Under each Mac you’ll find what categories your iOS devide will sync to. Thanks Christoph!

Additionally, the Nuance Text to speech is now available as a menu item (below)

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The following issues relate to using the 5.0 SDK to develop code.We’ve pasted the full change log for the new beta after the break:

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Apple’s latest Photo Stream beta has an interesting icon that seems to look like the rumored iPhone 5s with extended screen and elongated home button (we count 4 pixels by 2 pixels – close up below the fold and actual icon, right).  What do you think?  Coincidence?  (Thanks Steve and Olivier!)

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Update: 1 day off it appears. Time zone?

What we thought was a static file in iOS that correctly predicted the previous Saturday iOS 5 Beta 5 update turns out to be one that Apple can change remotely.  Yesterday, it changed from Wednesday August 17th to Thursday, August 18th. We can only assume that Apple can change this on a whim so the date appears to be a target date, which we know can change. As of this writing, the target is in a week.  We’ll keep you updated. (Thanks to iCloudil.com for notifying us of the change)
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Looks like we’re going to have to keep waiting for an Netflix-killer from Apple… Rumors were floating around last week that claimed Apple was on the verge of launching a new “iTunes Replay” service, which would allow users to re-download and/or stream TV shows and movies. Unfortunately, a new report from CNET claims Apple does not have the agreements in place to offer content from the big film studios via the cloud.

While we all know Apple is working on some type of on-demand service for iTunes content via iCloud, apparently sources have confirmed the company has failed to sign the majority of the six major film studios and “negotiations could drag on for months” before they eventually acquire cloud streaming rights.

There were also rumors that Apple could introduce a video subscription streaming service to rival Netflix and Amazon. However, the report confirms this was probably just speculation, most likely stemming from discussions Apple has had with studios regarding a video-on-demand service in the past.

Why is Apple having trouble signing the studios? Greg Sandoval from CNET claims HBO’s exclusive distribution rights with Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, and Universal, as well as support for the new UltraViolet streaming service may be preventing Apple from landing deals with the big studios.

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As a part of Apple’s MobileMe-to-iCloud transition, Apple will be bringing expired MobileMe accounts back to life. We have gotten our hands on login information for a long-expired MobileMe account and have discovered that Apple has already migrated these accounts over to the free iCloud service (shown above). In order to setup these newly resurrected accounts you need to be running Apple’s upcoming iOS 5 and OS X Lion (with iCloud beta installed). Your old MobileMe username and password will now function as your iCloud Apple ID.

The reason being is that these new iCloud e-mail, calendar, and other accounts no longer work at me.com. That’s right, for the time being, users who have their old MobileMe accounts migrated over to the iCloud service can no longer access their email on the web. We got our expired test MobileMe account up and running as an iCloud account on a Mac running OS X Lion (with iCloud installed) and an iPhone running iOS 5. Mail, contacts, calendar, and the rest of the suite work perfectly with native apps, but not in Apple’s me.com web apps. Find my iPhone is the exception.

There has been a lot of talk lately over whether or not iCloud will support the MobileMe web apps, usher in their own redesigned web apps, or leave the web in the dark. Our discovery points to no web app compatibility, but that is likely because the iCloud web apps do not exist yet. The Loop and others say that iCloud web apps are, in fact, in development. We’ll likely see those when iCloud is ready to launch this fall. Thanks, Kristian!

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Chart courtesy of paidContent.org

With all three players having introduced their respective cloud music offerings, we can now pit them against each other. The above chart is from paidContent which opined that “Apple doesn’t always get it right the first time”. Author Amanda Natividad observed that in iTunes “syncing should be faster and easier” while “song quality may get a boost”. She obviously wasn’t paying attention to yesterday’s unveiling of iTunes Match, a new iTunes feature that works in conjunction with Apple’s upcoming online service dubbed iCloud. iTunes Match scans your music tracks (regardless of their sources), making matching songs instantly available to all computers and mobile devices without you having to spend weeks to upload gigabytes worth of music to servers. Jobs said yesterday:

With 18 million songs we’re most likely to have what you got.

Apple’s boss also noted that his company will automatically upgrade all matching songs to 256Kbps AAC. On the downside, you cannot stream songs via iCloud – yeah, you read that right. Instead, you are required to manually download iCloud songs that aren’t stored on your iOS device by tapping a tiny cloud icon next to each missing song in the iTunes app before you can actually listen to it in the iPod app. Great, what else should you know?

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