GigaOM » Apple

Looks like iCloud will get some big upgrades at WWDC

Erica Ogg — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:40:41 +0000

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple will announce it is adding new photo and video syncing services to iCloud at its June developers’ conference, something it’s heard from unnamed sources that are “familiar with the matter.”

These improvements are said to include the ability to not just sync photos across devices, but also to share photos and albums outside of Photostream, and allow others to comment on the photos.

Videos will apparently get some iCloud love too: Right now Photostream only syncs photos between Macs, iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices. According to the Journal’s report, videos will also have the ability to be synced through Photostream or something similar.

These iCloud improvements are said to be part of the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6, which will be previewed for developers at the show – just as 9to5Mac said last week in its report on Apple’s plans for its own mobile mapping service.

It’s remarkable how quickly Apple has moved to build up its iCloud services, particularly for a company that previously hasn’t had much success with networked services. Apple CEO Tim Cook has embraced iCloud, calling it “a strategy for the next decade,” and users have responded by signing up in droves: iCloud was introduced at the same developer conference last year and as of April, Apple said more than 125 million customers had signed up for it.

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For Apple, iCloud is just the beginning

Erica Ogg — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:00:56 +0000

No one can doubt the sheer awesomeness packaged in Apple’s recent quarterly performance. However, for me the real story is the company’s iCloud and CEO Tim Cook’s assertion that with 85 million sign-ups in three months, Apple is only getting started with iCloud. “It’s not just a product, it’s a strategy for the next decade,” Cook declared. The recent elevation of Eddy Cue to SVP of Internet Services and his generous stock options are a sign of how serious Cook is about iCloud. The $1 billion data center in North Carolina is more proof of the company’s seriousness.

So the question is, What plans does Apple have for the cloud? Given recent history one can easily assume that the company would build more cloud apps that enhance existing services, like iTunes Match and Photostream. But those are small potatoes. The real opportunity for Apple is to offer a series of network services for its developers and millions of iPhone and iPad and Mac owners: network services such as storage, location data, voice command and control, notifications, and messaging.

Storage. ICloud is already a place to access your photos, songs and contacts remotely from any iOS device or OS X Lion machine. But what about making your desktop files and apps available everywhere too? Take the way Apple is going with its MacBook Air, a huge hit for the company. A logical next step to make even thinner and lighter machines with very little room for storage is to make a cloud-centric MacBook. Imagine opening up your laptop that has little local storage and being able to access any of your documents you have saved, anywhere you are. We know Apple has been sniffing around this area: Steve Jobs offered to acquire Dropbox several years ago, telling its founder, Drew Houston, that it was really “a feature, not a product.” So a cloud-based storage service that perhaps developers could use for their own apps? Doesn’t sound too far out there.
Location. Apple bought mapping companies PlaceBase in 2009 and Poly9 in 2010. We also know the company is hiring for mapping-related positions. That sparked speculation that Apple is indeed building its own location-based service. It has some location services in action already, like Find My iPhone and Find My Friends. An interesting step would be if Apple opened up such a service as an API to its developers.
Voice control. Siri is still in beta, which means it is not even a finished product. What will Apple do with it in years to come? A good bet is it will integrate it into more Apple devices. The future of device interfaces is more nontraditional methods of control, like voice and gestures. In other words, Siri is not an anomaly or a cute, little experiment: It’s the future. A good place to look for clues about how Apple might implement more voice control services is a patent filing Apple made, showing its interest in putting Siri in everything from Macs to cars.

It is true that Apple is not a company that has historically had great success with web-based services. Embracing networked services and the cloud means Apple inherently understands that even hardware companies that extract gazillions of dollars in profit right now can’t go another decade without this. In a way, Apple also has no choice but to pursue this. If it wants to continue to build the post-PC dream, it has to have iCloud and other connected services that connect all of its apps, services and devices.

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ITunes Match international rollout premature; refunds being issued

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:54:36 +0000

If it seemed on late Wednesday like Apple’s rollout of iTunes Match to basically every international market where the iTunes music store is available was too good to be true, that’s because it was; Apple is telling customers on Thursday that beyond Brazil and the U.S., Match “will not function.”

The link that leads to iTunes Match in international stores still functions, surprisingly, allowing you to view the relevant sign-up page without issue, as you can see in the screenshot below. But signing up still doesn’t actually provide access to the service.

But even if you followed that link and signed up early like I did, Apple has you covered: The company is reportedly issuing refunds to customers who attempted to get in early. According to reports on Twitter, contacting iTunes Support about an ability to use the service results in a reversal of charges. It’s not clear whether charges will be reimbursed without first contacting Apple directly.

ITunes Match allows users to scan and match their entire music library in order to access it from anywhere on Apple’s servers. It launched in the U.S. to mixed reviews, and it was recently introduced in Brazil, too, alongside the launch of the iTunes Store there. While Apple doesn’t appear quite ready to launch it internationally, it is clearly headed in that direction, since it already has different pricing in place for the service’s annual subscription fees, specific to each market.

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iTunes Match rolling out internationally (and maybe accidentally)

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:11:03 +0000

Apple is apparently in the process of setting up iTunes Match (its music library matching and cloud storage service) for international customers. According to reports, users can now access the iTunes Match sign-up page from this direct link. As of this writing, it was working here in Canada, where Match costs $27.99 per year.

I managed to sign up for iTunes Match using the link, too, though iTunes prompted me to log out and log back in because something had gone wrong. Upon logging back in and trying the link again, the purchase link was replaced with an “Add this computer” option, but that led to the same error message. Nevertheless, I received email confirmation that my iTunes Match subscription had indeed gone through, and others are reporting receiving the same.

Still, attempts to get the service actually matching and uploading my library haven’t yet been successful, which leads me to believe Apple didn’t yet intend to reveal this to the public. The Match sign-up page is also reported to be live in the U.K., Spain and New Zealand, and other international iTunes stores. Pricing varies by location. If you’ve had any luck signing up or have found the link works for you, let us know in the comments.

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Does the Siri outage reveal its success?

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:40:18 +0000

Siri went down on Thursday for its first extended outage — around five hours, according to most counts. That doesn’t seem like an exceedingly long outage (especially compared to the recent multiday service blackout for RIM’s BlackBerry devices), but it sparked many discussion threads and countless news articles. The tenor of much of the talk is that Apple made a major gaffe in allowing this to happen. But in fact, Apple might also want to reflect on this after the fact and pat itself on the back.

Of course, the outage was annoying and inconvenient, and hopefully Apple learned a valuable lesson about managing a large-scale, persistent data service managed from its own server facility, and this will never happen again. But the extent of the outcry as the outage wore on, as well as the attempts on Friday to follow up and try to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, show that Siri’s effect on the mobile landscape is not insignificant.

It could be the case that Apple’s servers couldn’t handle the demand that Siri was putting on the system, as some users who contacted Apple support about the problem were told. That would indicate that Apple underestimated the scale of demand for Siri, which suggests the personal assistant is being used a lot. But even if the problem is independent of demand, the fact that the news of Siri’s going down spread as far and as quickly as it did, and elicited so much response from the user community, indicates that it is finding a place in people’s lives. Some of the media attention could be attributed to the fact that people love when a winner like Apple stumbles, but user concern seems genuine.

When Apple first announced the personal assistant software, I admit to thinking that Siri had limited value beyond triggering an initial feeling of novelty that would fade quickly. After using Siri myself, I found that it actually had a lot of real use value, even in countries where it hasn’t yet gained localization features. The indignation of users affected by the outage indicates that I wasn’t the only one who found myself leaning on Siri a lot more heavily than I expected to.

It’s not as widespread, but the outcry about Siri’s downtime reminds me of the web-wide groans that go up every time the Twitter fail whale makes one of its visits or when Tumblr takes a tumble. That’s a minor PR problem for Apple in the short term, but in the larger picture, it’s a very good thing that people miss Siri when she’s not around.

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Apple spending big next year on retail and cloud

Erica Ogg — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:57:47 +0000

Apple is doubling down on its retail and cloud operations. The company says it will spend about $8 billion in capital expenditures in 2012, which is almost twice as much as the $3.4 billion it spent during fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30. Apple doesn’t willingly telegraph its plans, but thanks to its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, we get a peek into where the company plans to invest its money next year.

The increase was pointed out on Monday by Analyst Maynard Um of UBS in a research note.

A chunk of that new investment will, no surprise, go toward its retail operations. The company will spend $900 million on its stores in 2012, up from $614 million this past year.

Apple Stores have been growing rapidly, particularly outside the U.S., and especially in the greater China region. Apple opened 30 new stores in the most recent quarter alone, to bring the total to 357. CFO Peter Oppenheimer noted on Apple’s earnings call two weeks ago that the company would be opening 40 new stores in 2012, and “75 percent of those will be outside the U.S.” He also noted that Apple would be “replacing” some of the company’s higher-volume stores here in the U.S.

The rest of the $7.1 billion in extra capital expenditures is listed as “other.” From the 10-K:

The Company anticipates utilizing approximately $8.0 billion for capital expenditures during 2012, including approximately $900 million for retail store facilities and approximately $7.1 billion for product tooling and manufacturing process equipment, and corporate facilities and infrastructure, including information systems hardware, software and enhancements.

So some of the money is going to be spent on building the company’s new “spaceship” headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. and equipment for its manufacturers, but IT systems hardware, software and “enhancements” is almost certainly pointing to the company’s ongoing data center project and, by definition, its cloud infrastructure. (See also Horace Dediu’s examination of the data and how capex can be used to foreshadow iOS device volume production.)

Apple is building out a gigantic data center in North Carolina, and perhaps even a solar farm to power it — if reports are correct. That data center will support its cloud operations, and could increase the capacity and eventually lower costs for the maintenance of Apple’s iCloud service. Apple would never be accused of jumping on the cloud bandwagon early, but spending billions more underlines the fact that the company has much bigger plans for iCloud.

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Hands on with Kindle Cloud Reader for iPad

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:50:04 +0000

Apple recently gave e-reader apps in the iOS App Store an ultimatum: Either sell your books through the company’s in-app purchasing system, providing Apple with a 30-percent cut of each sale, or remove any links to your own web-based stores. Obviously, that’s not ideal for e-book sellers. Which is likely why Amazon has decided to work around the App Store restrictions by introducing a new web-based app that works outside of Apple’s official software distribution channel.

Amazon introduced Kindle Cloud Reader on Wednesday, an HTML5-based web application that runs in mobile Safari on the iPad, Safari on the Mac and PC, and Chrome on the Mac and other desktop operating systems. Amazon has promised support for additional browsers and platforms soon, but the fact that the iPad is in the launch group of devices makes clear Amazon’s main goal with this endeavor, which is to provide its customers with a full Kindle experience on the Apple tablet, including access to the integrated Kindle Store.

So how does it work? Once you navigate to http://read.amazon.com in your iPad’s Safari browser, you’ll be greeted with an invitation to sign in with your Amazon/Kindle account. Signing in will bring you to a screen featuring your library of Kindle book purchases, as well as a prompt directing you to allow Safari to increase the size of the database permitted for the site. This is used for the offline cache Cloud Reader maintains for reading without an active internet connection. Kindle Cloud Reader lets you tap and hold books from your library to download them to local storage for offline reading, and also stores books you are currently reading offline automatically, so that your reading won’t be interrupted if you lose connection.

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Actually reading books in Cloud Reader is a pleasure, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell that you aren’t using a native app, especially if you place a shortcut to the web app on your iPad’s home screen, which launched the reader in a chrome-less, full-screen browser. You can change the font size and color of your books in Cloud Reader, and also view highlights, notes and bookmarks you’ve made on other devices. You can’t make new notes or highlights using the web app, but you can add new bookmarks just by tapping the upper right-hand corner of any page, even offline. It also works in both landscape and portrait orientations, as does the integrated store.

Some of the frills of the native app are missing, like page turn animations, access to Kindle periodicals, and the ability to search through a book for keywords. You also can’t look up terms in the dictionary the way you can in the full-fledged native Kindle app. But if you use those extra features sparingly, and go through books quickly, then Cloud Reader’s built-in bookstore might make up for those omissions.

The Kindle Store included in Cloud Reader makes browsing for books on your iPad a pleasure. You get a scrollable selection of recommendations at the top of the interface, and a list of best sellers and category navigation below that. You can search the store at any point, and navigate back and forward as you browse. The individual book listings actually provide you with more info at-a-glance in a more sensibly organized way than on the Kindle Store in the desktop browser, and you can try a sample of any book in the Amazon e-book library, which loads up right in the standard Cloud Reader reading interface. Unfortunately, it doesn’t remember where you were when you switch to your library; jumping back to the store brings you to the front page.

In the end, Kindle Cloud reader works, and works well, but purely for e-reading purposes, it doesn’t really match up to its native app counterpart. That said, the ability to shop for books and read them immediately might outweigh the disadvantages for some. For me, Kindle Cloud Reader will remain on my home screen, but I won’t be using it primarily for reading; I’ll be using it to buy. The iPad-optimized Kindle Store is a pleasure to shop, and thanks to iOS multitasking, I can pretty easily switch back and forth between the native and web-based Kindle apps. Even if I don’t use Cloud Reader as a native app replacement, it does prove one thing: Keeping integrated e-book stores out of native apps benefits no one but Apple.

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Sneak preview of Apple’s iCloud web apps

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:22:18 +0000

Apple released a preview version of its upcoming iCloud web apps late Monday afternoon, alongside new pricing info for iCloud storage space upgrades. The iCloud apps currently appear to be available to some, but not all Apple ID and MobileMe account holders, as well as developers. I managed to access most of the new web apps, aside from Mail, and I liked what I saw so much I decided to share it in a screencast (note that there’s no sound in the video, so no need to adjust your computer’s volume):

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

As you can see in the video, the iCloud apps (running in the latest version of Safari on OS X Lion) look a lot like the redesigned Address Book and Calendar apps from Lion, as does the Mail app from screenshots I’ve seen. Apple’s decision to go for a unified look and feel between the web-based iCloud presence, Mac apps and iOS software is a great idea for encouraging adoption of cloud services among users new to the concept. One experience, no matter where you access from, really helps the learning curve and should help alleviate any concerns about privacy and security of access.

One other really nice feature about the iCloud.com beta: it appears to remember where you are when last you left off, even if you last logged in from a different computer, and delivers you right back to that same spot the next time you log in. It’s sort of like having Lion’s Auto Resume feature on the web.

Apple has definitely stepped up its game compared to MobileMe. Do you see yourself using iCloud on the web when it becomes available to the general public this September?

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How developers will be able to leverage iCloud for smarter apps

Weldon Dodd — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:38:09 +0000

One of the popular soundbites from Steve Jobs’ keynote at this week’s WWDC was “the truth is in the cloud.” Some have suspected Jobs of adopting metaphysical hyperbole in pitching Apple’s new iCloud service, but the ”truth” of the matter (sorry) is a bit more nuanced. Jobs was using “truth” both to make an insider’s reference to an old Apple technology, and also to look forward to brand new technology in iCloud.

Truth as used here has an inside technical meaning — the master or “truth” database in a distributed data system is the authoritative record for resolving conflicts. The master store in Apple’s existing Sync Services is the “truth database.” Here’s an image from Apple’s public documentation for Sync Services that illustrates the term.

In the existing Mac-centric sync model, the truth database is stored on the computer. Applications that want to interact with Sync Services don’t talk directly to the underlying database itself, but rather communicate through the Sync Engine, part of Mac OS X, which maintains the integrity, or truth, of the authoritative master data.

The other side to the “truth in the cloud” comment is that iCloud is more than just online document storage. Jobs made reference to this on Monday, saying:

Some people think the cloud is just a hard disk in the sky. We think it’s way more than that. iCloud is integrated with your apps, so everything happens automatically. It just works.

After a demonstration of iWork apps saving documents to the cloud, Jobs quickly added that iCloud Storage APIs would also include key value data. If Apple follows some of the existing conventions of Sync Services, developers would not interact directly with the master store, but would rely on system-level services, the APIs, to maintain the integrity of the cloud data. These system services will remove a tremendous burden from developers, making it much simple to integrate iOS apps with iCloud.

Syncing key-value pairs is also more flexible than syncing documents, and perfectly suited for several common uses. For example, to keep track of which levels are unlocked in a game like Angry Birds, the developer could update the key-value pair for each level independently from the others. In this scenario, the key might be the level id (“world-3-2″), and the value would be “locked” or “unlocked” as appropriate. It is simpler to fast sync just the one key-value pair that has changed instead of updating the entire settings file each time. This key-value pair approach also makes it much easier for developers to avoid situations where updating settings on one device would overwrite or erase all the settings on another device.

Some might be skeptical since Sync Services has suffered from a number of issues like mistaken duplication of contacts and calendar events. Jobs poked fun at Apple’s missteps with their previous cloud efforts when he said joked that users might ask “why should I believe them? They’re the ones that brought me MobileMe,” but he continued finished by admitting that while “it wasn’t [Apple's] finest hour,” the company “learned a lot.” Apple will have to put all of that learning to use to build a rock-solid online key-value store that can deal with billions of transactions coming from hundreds of millions of devices. That learning will be especially important when safe-guarding all that customer data in the key-value store.

Key-value stores have gained a lot of recent attention in web development circles because they offer a flexible, and fast, way to access small bits of data like user preferences. Solutions like MongoDB, Redis, Tokyo Cabinet, Memcache, Hadoop, MapReduce, Cassandra, Google’s BigTable , and Amazon’s Dynamo are all examples of web-friendly datastores that work with key-value pairs. Derrick Harris, over on our Structure channel, broke down how some of these technologies are being used to power the gear in Apple’s new data center, and highlighted a job listing which called for experience with key-value store technologies like Hadoop, Memcache and Cassandra.

iCloud is not just about online document storage, but a whole infrastructure for syncing data and preferences with an online key-value store — a new Sync Services built around the idea of keeping the truth database in the cloud instead of on a computer. The cloud is the new center of the Apple universe, in other words.

A ‘key’ difference (again, so sorry) between iCloud and other key-value stores is that Apple is focused on providing infrastructure for native iOS and Mac apps while others are working on platforms for web apps that run in the browser. Apple wants to make things “just work” for iOS apps without placing unnecessary burdens on developers as they incorporate iCloud services. This tension between open and fragmented and closed and integrated, which we’ve already seen in the Android and iPhone platforms, is being played out again here. But the fight is a good one for consumers, since it should lead to ever-better apps that test the limits of what we thought we could do with mobile devices.

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Report: Convenience means iTunes users will pay for iTunes Match

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:39:50 +0000

Though some iCloud functionality is already available to iTunes users (purchase history and Automatic Downloads, specifically), the paid iTunes Match service doesn’t launch until fall. But The NPD Group thinks there will be ample demand for such a service when it does arrive, according to details from an upcoming report it shared with us. But why are users so eager to sign up?

Forty-six percent of iTunes users surveyed by The NPD Group for its upcoming “iTunes User Report” expressed interest in signing up for a paid cloud music service, were Apple to offer one. Of course, since Monday, we’ve learned Apple does intend to offer such a service, in the form of iTunes Match. iTunes Match will scan a user’s local iTunes library, and provide access to high quality AAC files of songs found for direct download to any device associated with their iTunes account. Scanned music doesn’t necessarily have to come from the iTunes Store, either, which is a cause for concern for some, and excitement for others.

It’s easy to say that users are interested in iTunes Match because it seems like it could amount to a possible amnesty regarding pirated music, but the details of Apple’s scan-and-match service weren’t known when NPD posed its question. Instead, it seems more likely the motivation stems mainly from the convenience a subscription cloud music service provides, owing to the success of mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

NPD entertainment industry analyst thinks the survey is a good indication that Apple chose the right time to launch a fee-based service that provides cloud music access to iTunes users:

It’s notable that even before Apple’s announcement this week, nearly half of iTunes users had some interest in a paid cloud-based music service. As device penetration continues to grow, and as consumers demand easier access to their music from multiple devices, we can expect interest in these services from Apple and others to continue to rise.

That nearly half of iTunes users said they were willing to pay for cloud music access is very promising for Apple, considering how much of a shift it represents from the current way of doing things. It’s even better news for the company that younger iTunes customers appear even more amenable to the idea: 57 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 responded positively to the idea, indicating that there’s a good chance cloud music adoption will grow with time.

The only hurdle might be that NPD’s analysis found that the ideal average price for paid iTunes cloud music service is $17 per year, which is a fair bit shy of the nearly $25 Apple is asking. Also, NPD’s question to iTunes users did include the word “streaming” in its definition of a cloud service. iCloud and iTunes Match don’t provide streaming per se, but they do provide access to your entire library from any device where you have internet access, another condition set by NPD, and, as Cult of Mac points out, streaming just isn’t that useful to most Americans because of bandwidth data caps.

If Apple can sign up anywhere near half of the 160 million iTunes users it had at last official count, iTunes Match will be a considerable success. Are you planning on contributing to that success?

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