Former OS X chief Bertrand Serlet is finally ready to talk about his cloud startup UpThere after founding the company in 2011. While Sertlet isn’t completely taking the wraps off the company he assembled after leaving Apple four years ago, UpThere is opening a beta for its cloud service today following nearly three years of silence. The service is said to be similar to iCloud, Dropbox, and similar cloud solutions, but UpThere’s strategy is fast access to data stored online and not syncing content across devices. The beta will preview two products coming down from UpThere… Expand Expanding Close
I wrote a piece last month arguing that it was time for Apple to up its iCloud game, showing that the company is serious about cloud storage by focusing more on fast, reliable syncing, and by matching the functionality, storage capacities, and pricing of Google Drive.
In the WWDC keynote, Apple did exactly that. MobileMe may not, in Steve Jobs’ words, have been Apple’s finest hour, but it did at least include iDisk – an online drive we could access directly to store anything we liked – not just documents created in Apple’s own apps. It’s been a long time coming, but iDisk is finally back in the form of iCloud Drive.
A new email from Steve Jobs that was published during today’s Samsung lawsuit (via The Verge) has revealed a lot about Apple’s plans for its products in 2011 and beyond. As we’ve previously noted, Jobs referred to 2011 as a year of “holy war” against Google, but this document goes above that and describes how exactly Apple planned to wage this war.
A few choice bits are below, followed by the complete email.
With former MobileMe customers losing their additional 20GB of free storage a couple of days ago, there are probably a bunch of new people eyeing the paid iCloud upgrade options and wondering whether or not to hand over their cash. So we thought it would be a useful to take a look at the other major cloud storage services out there, to see how they compare.
As none of them are trying to hide the filesystem in the way Apple does, they all essentially work in the same way: providing you with a virtual online drive that you treat just like a local folder. There are also OS X and iOS apps for each.
Let’s start with the obvious: if you want something that is totally integrated into both OS X and iOS, and which Just Works, then iCloud is king.
Although the 5GB you get free doesn’t sound like a lot, you actually get more than this in practice – because Apple doesn’t count the space used by any of your iTunes purchases (apps, music, movies/TV shows or books), nor does it count the 1000 most recent photos you get to store in Photostream. If most of the content you want to store came from Apple, and all you want to do additionally is sync your contacts, calendar, notes and so on, the free storage is probably all you need.
iCloud is also a seamless way to store documents if you use Apple’s own iWork software: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. By opting to save documents on iCloud, they are automatically available to you from your Mac(s), iPad and iPhone – as well as on the web.
But if you have a lot of documents, you can pretty soon start bumping up against that 5GB limit. Which is where iCloud’s costs and limitations start to show up … Expand Expanding Close
After issuing tworeminders to former MobileMe customers that they would lose their free iCloud upgrade from 5GB to 25GB, Apple today reduced the storage limits as planned. Customers who have more than 5GB, and who haven’t bought a paid storage plan, will find that iCloud is no longer working.
If you exceed your storage plan on September 30, 2013, iCloud Backup, Documents in the Cloud, and iCloud Mail will temporarily stop working. To continue using these iCloud features without interruption, reduce the amount of iCloud storage you are using or purchase a storage plan by September 30, 2013.
As we’ve previously advised, much of the iCloud storage is usually taken up by iCloud Backups which can be deleted through System Preferences > iCloud > Manage. Those who need more than the free 5GB offered by iCloud can also use Dropbox to store photos and files.
Former subscribers of MobileMe, the $99/year iCloud predecessor, received 20 GB complimentary storage upgrades when making the switch to iCloud. Apple additionally extended this upgrade until September 30, 2013. Now, Apple is reminding those users, via email, that the complimentary storage will come to an end shortly:
As a thank you for being a former MobileMe member, you received a 20 GB complimentary storage upgrade when you moved to iCloud. Your upgrade expires on September 30, 2013.
When it expires, your iCloud storage will be automatically adjusted to the free 5 GB plan. Note that you are currently using xx.xx GB of storage. If you exceed your storage plan on September 30, 2013, iCloud Backup, Documents in the Cloud, and iCloud Mail will temporarily stop working.
To continue using these iCloud features without interruption, reduce the amount of iCloud storage you are using or purchase a storage plan by September 30, 2013.
As our own Benjamin Mayo notes, this will probably be a busy day for Apple’s support representatives as they work with the customers who are over the 5 GB free storage size. Much of the iCloud storage is usually taken up by iCloud Backups which can be deleted through System Preferences > iCloud > Manage…
During its Q4 earnings call today, Apple announced it is now up to 190 million iCloud users. That’s an increase of 40 million users since it last updated us on the progress of the service in Q3. Back in July, Apple said the service was at 150 million users—up 25 million in three months since they reported 125 million users in April. iCloud is clearly continuing to pick up speed and increasing its growth rate, with the company adding 40 million new users in the last three months for its fiscal Q4.
9to5Mac readers who migrated from MobileMe are reporting that their complimentary extra storage has been extended an extra year. Apple’s support doc is here.
From: iCloud <noreply@icloud.com> Date: October 5, 2012, 3:38:18 PM PDT To: 9to5mac Subject:Your complimentary iCloud storage upgrade has been extended at no charge Reply-To:no-reply@apple.com
When you moved your MobileMe account to iCloud, we provided you with a complimentary storage upgrade beyond the standard 5GB that comes with an iCloud account to help you with the transition. Originally, this storage upgrade was set to expire on September 30, 2012.
As a thank you to our former MobileMe members, we will continue to provide you with this complimentary storage upgrade at no charge, for an additional year, until September 30, 2013. No action is required on your part. For complete details, please read this article.
iCloud Team
The iCloud outage, which began Tuesday and affected roughly 2 percent of Apple’s 200 Million iCloud users, now appears to be over. However, some iCloud users wrote to tell us that Apple just dumped all of their email into the Inbox with 12/31/69 dates and jumbled Subject lines. One reader’s email now looks like this:
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An excerpt from his frustrated email is below. I hate to say this about a company that makes the best hardware and OS software in the world, but it would be hard to trust my junkmail to iCloud at this point.
Apple introduced iWork.com at Macworld in 2009 as a beta web service for sharing and collaborating on documents created in the iWork ’09 productivity suite. Since then the site has remained in a perpetual “beta” state, never becoming the full product Apple envisioned.
Like MobileMe, which was shut down one month ago, most of iWork.com’s features have been moved to iCloud, thus removing the need for iWork.com to exist any longer. As of tonight, Apple no longer will allow users to login to the web interface, and although the iWork apps were updated to support iCloud last week, the option to login to iWork.com through the Mac version still exists.
Considering the fact that the current suite is over three years old, many are hoping to see an updated version launch later this year. Apple’s next media event is rumored to be on September 12, and while it will likely be focused on the next-generation iPhone, it’s possible that Apple could surprise us with iWork ’12.
A discussion thread on Apple’s support forum appeared last night from a user who claimed all of his iCloud content disappeared without warning. A further glimpse at the following comments revealed the same situation occurred for a number of iCloud users.
One commenter, npascual, said an Apple support representative “acknowledged last night’s outage,” and then suggested the user “turn off all iCloud-related services on my iPad (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, etc.), wait a bit then turn them back on.” The representative apparently indicated “everything would return after a short period of re-synching.” However, npascual noted it had been a few hours since the call without any repair.
UPDATE: Well, Apple is owning up to the problem, according to its System Status page, but the company is neglecting to give an explanation as to what is happening.
Today, at Apple’s Q3 2012 earnings call, the company provided some updates on numbers for the quarter. Apple Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer shared iCloud is now up to 150 million users. Last time Apple checked in in April, it reported 125 million users for Q2. This marks an increase of 25 million users during Q3. Hit up the links below for all of the updates from today’s conference call:
Apple informed customers in Germany that push email on both MobileMe and iCloud services were disabled due to the company’s patent fight with handset maker Motorola Mobility. According to a support document Apple quietly published today, “Due to recent patent litigation by Motorola Mobility, iCloud and MobileMe users are currently unable to have iCloud and MobileMe email pushed to their iOS devices while located within the borders of Germany.”
Push still works for Contacts, Calendars and other items and it is unaffected on OS X. Moreover, the affected users can still access the iCloud/MobileMe email service by manually checking for messages or using the Fetch setting. Apple also wrote the following line in the support document:
Apple believes Motorola’s patent is invalid and is appealing the decision.
As you will recall, Motorola filed an iCloud-related lawsuit on April Fools’ Day. It recently won an injunction and provided a €100 million bond to enforce it. Apple detailed how the patent suit affects the iCloud/MobileMe email service:
The Apple discussion boards are starting to heat up with an issue related to users not receiving emails from particular domains sent to their me.com/ .mac accounts. The problem appears to specifically related to RoadRunner and Comcast domains, and is affecting users across the U.S.
The issue is related to me.com accounts being unable to receive emails from rr.com and comcast.com domains. One user reports being unable to receive emails from “hawaii.rr.com”, while others report the same for “tampabay.rr.com”, and “rochester.rr.com”. It appears Apple’s servers aren’t playing nice with the domain, although some users report receiving emails up to 24 hours late, which would indicate the domain isn’t being blocked entirely. Emails forwarded from one account, such as an rr.com account, to a .me account are apparently not affected. There are a few mentions of the same issue for emails sent from Comcast.net as well.
Just today my boss’s emails stopped showing up in my inbox – online, in Mail, or on my phone. I am able to send files to him. He is sending and receiving emails. The problem seems to be entirely between hawaii.rr.com (his email, time warner/roadrunner) and my .me/.mac mail account (neither work). I am able to use my gmail account and my .me/.mac account just fine together.
At this point the problem seems to be inconsistent, but impacting a lot of users across the country nonetheless. Users in the Apple Support Communities report that Comcast claims it’s a “a .mac problem”, while one poster says rr.com has forwarded the issue to their engineering team. Most seem to believe it’s an issue on Apple’s end. We’ll keep you posted when Apple addresses the problem. Expand Expanding Close
A frustration for many users in the past is the fact that Apple IDs are currently not able to be merged. As Apple’s iOS 5 and iCloud near launch, Apple might be taking an important step to allow the merging of Apple IDs. iOS 5 includes several services such as iMessage, iCloud integration, Game Center, FaceTime, iTunes, the App Store, and iBooks.
Some users are frustrated because all of those services are spread across multiple Apple IDs. For example, some people have a separate Apple ID for iCloud (especially migrators from MobileMe) and for iTunes/App Store/iMessage/FaceTime, etc. According to an answer from Apple’s executive relations team, as reported by MacRumors, Apple could be readying a solution that merges all of a user’s Apple IDs:
Tim Cook about the issue, and quickly received a phone call from an Apple executive relations employee. She had spoken to the team responsible for Apple IDs and acknowledged that they understood the issue and that more people would run into the problem with iCloud. She also repeated that there is no way yet to combine accounts but revealed they are working on it. In the meantime, she recommended picking a single account to plan on keeping indefinitely and to make all future purchases on that account.
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:
Apple’s new iCloud Web apps are built using the same SproutCore Javascript engine that was used throughout MobileMe. If the favicon above doesn’t prove it, looking at the underlying code below seems to offer undeniable evidence.
SproutCore describes itself as an open-source framework for building blazingly fast, innovative user experiences on the web.
Here’s a nice interview with Charles Jolley, one of the founders of SproutCore and previous MobileMe Javascript Frameworks Manager. He left Apple about a year ago to start Strobe – a device agnostic Web publishing engine based on…you guessed it, SproutCore.
Interestingly, SproutCore lists Strobe Inc. as its parent company.
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!
For those wondering when Apple’s in-house apps will go 64-bit, we have some good news and some bad news. In Lion, the developer release of iTunes 10.5 is 64-Bit (finally). The developer version of iPhoto with Photostreaming to the iCloud however, is still 32-Bit, at least currently.
Yesterday, Apple killed MobileMe and replaced it with the iCloud online services suite which will be available free with iOS 5 this Fall. Apple has published a nice Q&A explaining what the transition means to MobileMe subscribers and how the company plans to go about it. Additionally, a notice at www.me.com/upgrade says that “you’ll be able to upgrade your account to iCloud soon”. With that in mind, you may want to prep your migration ahead of the Apple-imposed June 30, 2012 cut-off time when the MobilMe service will no longer be available. Wondering how? Turns out there’s a leaked document for that!
A 9to5mac reader writes in telling us he/she’s found some interesting files in Lion. These files are labeled “MobileDocumentsFolder.icns, Mobile Documents 32.png and SidebarMobileDocumentsFolder.icns” and show new types of icons for a Cloud file system. Clearly, this would seem to be the successor to iDisk and is probably shows a more transparent interface between the desktop and the Cloud, perhaps a little more like Dropbox. We’re also thinking there is an iWork.com component as well since these are “documentsFolders”.
– here’s the new sidebar icon.
Update: In fact, it looks a lot like a mix of iDisk and iSync (which makes a lot of sense)
Apple looks like it is tightening its grip on the “App” and “Mac” naming rights area. Last month, it forced App4mac to change its name. Sure Apple is now in the Mac Apps game but the company in question is six years old and named itself App4Mac two years before iOS turned Applications into apps. Patrice Calligaris, CEO writes to tell us:
On May 6, we received this letter from Apple lawyers. On June 1st, our company become adnX.com. Before we were app4mac.com during six years and it has never been a problem.
We complied only for the first case as other two cases are silly. We fixed the graphics that they did not like.
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