When Snow Leopard came out two years after Leopard, it provided a lot of UI refinements and some important under-the-hood upgrades for developers, like full 64-bit support, Blocks in Objective-C, Grand Central Dispatch, QuickTime X, OpenCL, native Exchange support and more. Mountain Lion is a similar upgrade — it looks to improve on Lion with a lot of UI refinements and some significant changes for developers. But instead of under-the-hood improvements, the most significant changes appear to be out in the cloud this time around.

Here’s the list of changes that Apple is rolling out, and how they will affect developers:

iCloud

iCloud can store both documents and key-value pairs. The important thing to keep in mind here is that the developer is responsible for collisions and conflict resolution between different devices updating the cloud. Documents have a dialog to let users select which version of a file they want to use. If you need to merge document changes, you’re on your own. Developers will need to think really carefully about how to manage conflicts when saving to iCloud if you are syncing data between multiple devices/computers. It’s not clear yet if apps signed by the Mac developer program certs can access data stored by apps signed by the iOS developer program certs. We will have to wait and see what Apple intends here.

While Snow Leopard added Exchange, and Lion added iOS-like features, I think Mountain Lion will be remembered as the “iCloudification” of the Mac.

Game Center

Something like 25 percent of titles in the Mac App Store are games, and the percentage is also quite high on iOS. I think there is a major opportunity here for developers to port games from iOS and keep high scores, achievements and friend lists in sync. iCloud support also means keeping saved games and game states in sync across devices. I’m not sure Game Center will ever be as popular with gamers as Steam and Xbox Live, but it could be great for casual gaming. I’d love to see someone come up with Xcode achievements so I could compare KLOCs with my friends.

Developer IDs, App Signing, Gatekeeper & Sandboxing

A lot has been written about sandboxing, which is coming to the Mac App Store and Lion, in advance of Mountain Lion’s release. I don’t think I’ll try to add anything to the discussion except to point out that Gatekeeper should help to educate users on what the differences are. It appears that you’ll be able to sign your apps — and gain the increased trust of users — without having to submit to the App Store and agree to sandboxing. Of course, to use the iCloud features and other goodies like notifications, you’ll probably want to go with the App Store anyway. Overall, I think this will end up being a good thing, despite the growing pains endured during the rollout.

Ken Case of The Omni Group is optimistic about the announcements:

This seems like a very big deal to me. Partly because Gatekeeper takes a more proactive stance against malware, preventing malware developers from producing new software which infects systems rather than always retroactively tracking down the bad software and preventing it from spreading further.

But even more important to me is that while designing this feature in a post-Mac App Store world, Apple went out of their way to build a mechanism which still supports developers who distribute software through channels other than the Mac App Store. It would have been much easier for them to simply say “to get malware protection, you must use the Mac App Store; otherwise any software you use is at your own risk” — but instead they’ve introduced a new mechanism for identifying trusted developers who distribute software outside the Mac App Store’s curated experience.

Color me relieved!

Sharing

Integrating single sign-on for Twitter in iOS led to a marked increase in people signing up for Twitter accounts. Just as Twitter integration didn’t kill the sales of dedicated Twitter clients on iOS, I would expect that the market on OS X won’t be affected much. Of course, Twitter isn’t the only way to share things. Flickr, Vimeo, etc. are there as well. What I’m really curious to see is if developers will be allowed to extend the sharing sheet by registering their own apps on the system. That could be awesome.

Apple is trying to make it easy to add sharing to an app, but the real issue here is figuring out if your app needs Twitter integration or not. I’m not sure I need to tweet my word count from within BBEdit, for example, but I do like the idea of tweeting what I’m reading right from within Safari, or what I’m looking at from within iTunes or the Mac App Store. I’m hopeful about this feature, as long as developers are judicious in putting it to good use.

Notifications

I think this is one area that developers should really work to adopt. I’m curious to find out more if Apple will allow online services to send notifications to apps as you can on iOS (where Facebook sends a notification to the Facebook app, and Strategery tells you when you’ve been defeated, etc.). Because of the infrastructure needed to handle those types of notices (especially at Internet scale), I would look into Push IO and similar services to leverage so you don’t have to build it all on your own.

What Else?

I’m sure there will be much more to come as Apple makes their plans more public closer to the summer launch, but I think there is a lot of good stuff here that developers can use to improve and build on their Mac apps. I think that iCloud integration will have the biggest long-term impact on OS X, but the refinements in app signing, sharing and notifications will be important features for developers as well.

What do you think will be the biggest change to the ways you make Mac software today?

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Step 1: New or existing ID

First, go to the Settings > iCloud screen on your iOS device. By default, Apple will begin with the email address for the Apple ID you use to make purchases via the iTunes Store on your device entered into the sign-up field. If you want to use that ID to create your new iCloud ID, then go ahead and sign in. If not, click the “Get a Free Apple ID” link at the bottom of the Settings page.

If you choose to use an existing Apple ID, you’ll simply have to sign in with your credentials, then agree to iCloud’s terms and conditions. Apple will send out an account verification email to the address that is your Apple ID, which you can then follow a link from to complete the process.

If you choose to create a new Apple ID, you’ll be guided through the entire sign-up process on your iPhone or iPad.

Step 2: Grant permissions and set syncing preferences

Once verified, iCloud will automatically turn syncing on for most services, and ask your permission to either merge or replace data on your device, as well as use your location for Find My iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Whether to merge or replace your data is up to you. Merging is probably the safe bet in most cases, since even if you don’t yet have anything on the cloud, it won’t affect what you have on your device. Even in cases where you have a lot of duplicate information on your device and already on iCloud from a previous setup on your Mac or elsewhere, I’ve found that Apple’s service is smart about what to keep, and where to put what information, so there’s little clean-up required after the fact.

Step 3: Choose what syncs

You can selectively set which data does and doesn’t sync via iCloud once you have it set up on your device. Your options include Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, Notes, Photo Stream, Documents & Data and Photo Stream.

For Documents & Data, you can choose to allow iCloud to sync that information either only over Wi-Fi, or over both Wi-Fi and 3G. As developers incorporate Documents in the Cloud into their apps, this will become more important for customers looking to ease their 3G mobile bandwidth usage.

Note that you can also opt to back up your device to iCloud. This will work the same as a backup in iTunes, allowing you to remotely restore your iPhone’s settings, some content and information. Note that this backs up the camera roll, account information, documents and settings. You’ll have to replace any movies or music from iTunes on your device manually, as well as reinstall any apps in the event of needing to restore from an iCloud backup.

Step 4: Download the apps

Apple’s iCloud works together with some official apps from Apple, too. To complete your iCloud experience, go ahead and download Find My iPhone and Find My Friends from the App Store. These will help you locate your own device should you lose it, locate friends and family on a map if they choose to share their location with you, and vice versa.

You can also grab Apple’s iWork apps from the App Store if you want to see Document syncing via iCloud in action, but note that these cost money.

The rest

iCloud comes free with 5 GB of storage, but if you shoot a lot of video or backup many devices to the service, you might just want to upgrade your storage options. $20 a year gets you 15 GB total, $40 per year allows for 25 GB, and $100 a year will provide 55 GB of iCloud storage. You can upgrade to each option (or downgrade for your next payment cycle) via the iCloud settings on your device.

It isn’t too difficult to set up, but I’d be curious to see what percentage of iOS buyers end up going through with it. Are you planning to use iCloud? If you are, do you foresee any reason to need to upgrade your storage level?

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Facebook and Twitter share links are kind of a weird addition, if you ask me. Are people really all that likely to want to share basic information about available Apple products along with links for where to purchase them? I can see people maybe using it to brag about an upcoming purchase, but that’s about it. But it is something that’s been in place at the iTunes Store for a while now, and I suppose if even some people tweet or post about Apple products to their wall, the links will have done their job.

As mentioned, so far, these drop-down menus are only appearing for Mac Pro and iPod classic models. It’s possible that the role out was stopped midway, if it somehow contributed to the store outage, which web performance monitoring firm Catchpoint told GigaOM via email was network-related.

We’ll keep watching to see if these appear throughout the store, and let us know if you spot them anywhere else, too.

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1. Setup Facebook and Flickr albums in iPhoto

This is actually a tip for your Mac, but it makes it much easier to share photos to Facebook and Flickr if you set up Events in iPhoto ’11 that you can dump content to in bulk. Using uploading apps on the iPhone itself usually works best if you’re only doing one photo at a time, and if you’re on vacation, that can get annoying very fast. Connecting your social accounts in iPhoto will make it much easier to create organized albums on Facebook and Flicker with only a couple of clicks.

To set up your services, just go to iPhoto’s Preferences and click on Accounts:

2. Add bookmarklets to mobile Safari for social sharing

Soon you’ll be able to tweet right from within Safari using the native iOS share button, but for now, tweeting links while browsing on a mobile device can be a frustrating procedure if you’re using a standard copy/paste method. Instead, you can use bookmarklets (which are basically bookmarks that perform a function) in mobile Safari to share on Twitter, or on Facebook and Tumblr, too. Check out those, and many other useful bookmarklets, complete with full instructions, over at Digital Inspiration.

3. Get all the primary apps

The iPhone is well-represented when it comes to social network apps. The Facebook app just got a small update to fix bugs and improve performance, and the Tumblr app was updated earlier this week, and now has a completely redesigned interface that’s perfect for mobile sharing. Twitter on the iPhone is a solid client, but there are many third-party options available, too, like the uniquely designed Tweetbot. There’s also a Flickr app , and of course Instagram, which is quickly becoming the default network for sharing pictures on an iPhone. You’d be surprised at how much more likely you are to use these services just by having their native apps on your device.

4. See content recommendations from Facebook in Safari

Want so see some content reading and viewing selections from your Facebook friends without ever leaving your browser? The Recommend browser extension (really a bookmarklet like those described above) by Bob Hitching will let you call up a window that shows you what people in your network on Facebook are recommending most. It can be a little hit or miss, but it does surface some interesting content.

5. Use cross-service sharing apps

You can use Dropico, a service that provides one-stop shopping for photo sharing across networks like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Twitter and Tumblr, to cut down considerably on the time it takes to participate in multiple networks, and even apply effects prior to sharing. Likewise, Gowalla can check-in to multiple location-based networks, including Foursquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla itself, all through one app.

iOS 5 will really up the game for iPhone social sharing, and it looks like Google+ might help as well, although initial reaction appears to be split, likely because of Google’s spotty track record with social services (remember Wave?). But if you want your device to be a better tool for engaging with others, there’s no reason to wait when so many choice tools are available right now.

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Google+

Huddle is Google’s mobile group chat service, and probably stands the chance of being the most similar to what Apple’s got on offer with its upcoming iMessage. But it’s designed around a very different type of messaging. You can organize contacts into groups and automatically message across those groups with a simple tap in Huddle, but it resides within Google Plus, and isn’t integrated with your device’s text messaging app. iMessage will serve as a communication tool for impromptu conversations with one or more people, and all the functions people normally accomplish through text and MMS. Huddle looks like it will appeal more to work teams and other more formally organized groups, and will work for the kind of event planning people do with groups of friends on Facebook right now.

Instant Upload and Photo Stream actually have very little in common, and make clear the different guiding principles behind Google’s new product and Apple’s offerings. Instant Upload is for sharing with a wide audience; Photo Stream is for keeping your media organized on devices either you or your close family owns. It’s the same with FaceTime and Hangouts: One is about one-on-one communication between relatively close contacts, while the other is about casting a wider net for a totally different kind of interaction. These could butt heads down the road if FaceTime implements group chat, but even so, FaceTime will likely be used in different contexts, like for catching up with mom and grandma at the same time, where Hangouts could be used for book club meeting, for example.

Google has said there’s an iOS app in the works for Google+, and even the current HTML5, web-based, front end looks great (as it should, thanks to former Apple interface designer Andy Hertzfeld) and works really well on iOS devices, according to my colleague Mathew Ingram. It’s clear Google wants to reach out to as many as possible with Google+, and Apple should bend over backwards to make that happen, because as the name implies, this new social product does nothing but add to the social appeal of iOS and the iPhone.

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Good Bets

I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d put money on just a scant few changes for iOS 5. It’s not that I don’t think iOS 5 will bring big changes; in fact, it should be one of the most significant updates for Apple’s mobile OS since its introduction, due to increased competition from Android and the possibility we won’t see any new iPhone hardware Monday. But Apple has done a good job of keeping a tight lid on any details about iOS 5, so there’s precious little to base predictions on.

New Notifications. Apple will probably change the way notifications work and appear on iOS. I argued a while ago that Apple’s notification system was perfectly adequate for most users in its existing form, but as competition grows in the mobile space, they’re starting to look decidedly old-fashioned. Apple will change how they work, but what changes are in store remain up in the air. Look for a central notification history screen, at the very least, so they aren’t lost to the ether once dismissed as they are now. iOS app Boxcar provides a pretty good example of how better native notifications could work.

iCloud Integration. Apple is unveiling a suite of cloud services bundled under the iCloud trademark. It stands to reason we’ll see iCloud hooks built-in to iOS itself, and an iOS-style icon spied on a banner at the WWDC venue seems to reinforce that assumption. iCloud integration in iOS 5 could be what those early rumors of Photo Stream and Media Stream features are all about, and will likely handle syncing up your digital life via email, contacts and calendars as well. Look out for some surprising additional x-factor features, too, since Apple has to make a big splash with iCloud to make it a runaway success.

AirDrop. This is an announced OS X Lion feature that lets Mac users automatically and easily share files with other AirDrop-enabled computers nearby, without setup. So far, Apple hasn’t said anything about AirDrop coming to iOS devices, but easy wireless file sharing between devices is something iOS users have been looking for in third-party apps like Bump for a long time. Apple has a golden opportunity to increase cross-platform integration by bringing it to mobile.

Interesting Possibilities

These are things that have popped up on the radar, but either because they’re somewhat extreme, or because there isn’t much backing them up, they remain little more than exciting teases at this point.

Twitter Integration. As per my article earlier today, the Twitter-iOS integration rumor is gaining traction in some influential circles, and for good reason: OS-level Twitter support would make direct social media interaction on the iPhone much more of a reality, and could give Apple a leg up on the competition. Such a close partnership would be a big step for Apple, however, which tends to shy away from such arrangements, so we’ll have to wait and see just how close they’re willing to get.

Widgets. Along with new notifications, rumors have been circulating that widgets will get introduced in iOS 5. These would provide live, updating information directly on the home screen, and go way beyond the badge notifications iOS currently offers. Android already has widgets, and Apple’s own native Calendar app icon updates automatically as the day changes. Apple should and likely will provide live updating content to the home screen, but don’t expect its approach to resemble Android’s.

Spaces. Home screen management on iOS devices got a lot easier with the introduction of Folders and the ability to reshuffle your icons and screens in iTunes, but it could be easier still. An iOS version of Spaces, which Apple has already patented, would do a great deal to make managing your iOS “desktop” easier still. Even just the ability to quickly rearrange the scrolling order of home screens would be a big usability boost.

Far-Fetched, but Awesome

I would love these to be true, but there’s little or no indication that they are, unfortunately.

Facebook Integration. While Twitter integration is being talked about by some fairly reliable sources, Facebook integration isn’t. Apple has had a rocky relationship with Facebook in the past, thanks to trouble with Ping at launch. But Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg did meet for dinner once, and who knows what they discussed there?

Live Lock Screen. Apple’s iOS lock screen doesn’t do much beyond telling you the date and time, and in the opinion of many users, that’s a waste. If Apple added a better notification system to the lock screen, or provided a way for third-party apps to display live updating information from RSS or Twitter source, for instance, it would be a lot more useful. Even if Apple just let you display the current weather on the lock screen, it would be a huge improvement.

What do you want from iOS 5? Feel free to point out anything I’ve missed here, or your own suggestions for what features would really make Apple’s next platform revision also its most ground-breaking yet.

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First, you’ll need to have tethering enabled on your iPhone. Tethering allows you to share your connection with one device over Bluetooth or USB. If you don’t know how to enable tethering, or get it working on your Mac, iPhoneinCanada.ca has a great step-by-step guide.

Once you’ve got tethering enabled, you can share your connection with other devices using your Mac’s built-in AirPort Wi-Fi. You can do this in System Preferences under “Sharing.” The screencast below shows exactly how to do this.

You can also enable WEP password encryption by clicking on the “AirPort Options” button on the Internet Sharing screen.

Now that you’ve set up Internet Sharing, you should be able to find a Wi-Fi network on your other devices with the network name of your Mac, which in this case is “Darrell’s iMac.” Just select that network, and enter the WEP password you chose if you enabled password protection.

I’ve used this little trick frequently on family vacations, and will probably have cause to use it more than once before iOS 4.3 becomes available to everyone. Watch your usage, though, as you could hit your monthly bandwidth limit pretty quickly depending on who you share with.

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Apple allows you to download an app you’ve already purchased from the App Store. This is perfect for when you purchase an app and realize the app isn’t synced to the iPhone. Simply “repurchase” your app and Apple will let you know that you already purchased it and there won’t be any charge. Thus you can reinstall any app you already purchased while on the road without any need to re-sync. Essentially you share apps over the air between your device and your synced iTunes.

Sharing Apps

Sharing apps with a family member works very much the same way. To add your spouse or significant other’s app to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, go to Settings, then Store. Choose Sign Out to sign out of your personal account.

Next, sign into the other person’s account. They’ll need to either give your their password or type it in.

Now that they are signed in to the App Store on your phone, they can download any app they’ve purchased and you will then be able to use that app on your phone. In addition to app sharing between you and your spouse, this is a great way that you can purchase apps for a child’s iPod touch, and then share only the apps you wish with that child. This might be much safer than giving them their own Apple Store account and your credit card! Keep in mind that you won’t be able to update your apps and the other person’s apps at the same time. To update their apps you’ll need to sign in as them and do updates separately.

Karma Violation?

Does this violate any rules, either Apple’s or karma’s? I don’t think so. Apple made the conscious decision to enable sharing between members of a household in iTunes, allowing family members to listen to each other’s music and watch each other’s videos. Household app sharing is explicitly allowed this same way. Apple is trusting its users to do the right thing with household and family app sharing, and we should return that favor by not abusing the system.

Before I say anything else, it’s my duty to report that Apple is indeed acting within the scope of the agreement it has with developers in requesting the removal of this feature from apps. As of now, USB syncing is still a private API, which means developers shouldn’t technically be using it. To get around this, many have implemented the feature using the iPhone’s Digital Camera Image Management folder, but that also requires the use of private APIs.

Whether or not developers are violating the development agreement isn’t at issue here, though, really. Apple has quietly acquiesced to the use of USB syncing in many apps, not just Stanza, until now. The timing is not inauspicious. Apple’s only begun to enforce this rule following the unveiling of the iPad, and, more to the point, of the iBookstore.

Ars Technica believes this is only a temporary measure. They point to an alternative apparently in the works in iPhone 3.2:

Though users of Stanza, PDF readers, numerous audio editors and sequencers, and other apps will be frustrated, the good news is that Apple has a mechanism planned to address both syncing and file sharing issues. The beta SDK for iPhone OS 3.2 has APIs for accessing an on-device shared storage folder, which will be mounted as a readable and writable disk when plugged in to a computer via USB.

Ars then goes on to point out that iPhone OS 3.2 is currently only intended for use with the iPad. The same features could later appear in an update for the iPhone, but they may not. We could see an OS forking at this point, and that might mean a significant difference in the available features for each device.

Not to mention that there’s no guarantee the iPhone or the iPad will ever get the same kind of USB syncing functionality back. The iBookstore means that Apple has a monetary reason to prevent other content providers from getting its e-book products onto its devices. And in the meantime, while everyone waits for a potential future solution, Stanza users and others are left completely out in the cold.

The iPad represents many new possibilities for iPhone developers, but at what cost? Will Apple close its iPhone OS platform even further to ensure that it maintains the lion’s share of content control? Will it quietly hamstring legitimate competitors as it extends its power over the media users view on its devices? Not necessarily, but with the advent of a brand new device, we should watch closely to make sure we aren’t losing something irreplaceable in the bargain.

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Amazon announced today that it will now be offering a much more financially attractive deal for publishers providing content for its Kindle platform. Maybe it has just reached a profitability milestone in terms of the cost of Kindle unit construction that allows it to shift the burden away from content providers, but I’d hazard a guess the move has more to do with Apple’s impending announcement next week.

Why would I think that? Let’s look at the numbers. Up until now, Amazon’s profit-sharing model has been, shall we say, less than kind to the people who provide its digital books. The new model gives content providers 70 percent of the total revenue derived from sales, while Amazon would keep only 30 percent. Sound familiar? That’s exactly Apple’s formula for App Store revenue sharing. Under Amazon’s previous model, providers received just about half the cut they’ll now be getting. Pretty aggressive, if you ask me.

The deal isn’t automatic for every book sold through Amazon’s Kindle store, though. There are a few criteria providers have to meet. Here’s how it breaks down, according to AppleInsider:

• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
• The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
• Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

Whether or not a war really is coming, Amazon clearly doesn’t want to be left behind. And the bottom line is that’s great news for us consumers. Amazon’s revenue-sharing model has been one of the major barriers to getting more content available for the platform, and now that they’re feeling the heat from Apple, be it real or imagined, the floodgates are open.

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