Change Tracking

The chief problem for me was that Pages did not show any sort of change tracking, making the app useless if your workflow relies on this feature. The good news is version 1.7 adds change tracking. The bad news: it’s so poorly implemented that it’s still almost useless.

While you now have the ability to review and accept changes on your iOS device, you still cannot use comments. For me, that is the most important part of the review process. Usually, that’s where a reviewer or editor asks questions and there’s a sidebar discussion in-line about the change. So, while I can accept the change someone made, I can’t see the commentary. I pretty much tend to usually “accept all changes” anyway. (I’m not in the legal profession, so your usage may vary).

The current state of change tracking, where comments aren’t handled, isn’t even something I can give Apple partial credit on.

Editing on the iPhone 5

Before the iPhone 5, editing in Pages on an iPhone was a complete mess. The screen was too small to display a lot of text and the keyboard covered up too much of the page. With the iPhone 5, well, it’s better, but sadly not by much. The chief advantage now is that I can fudge the margins a little bit and have my rows of text span the width of the screen in landscape so I’m not scrolling from side to side to see the text. While I can adjust the zoom level when reading with double-taps, once I edit the text, it zooms in.

Life would be so much easier if I could edit text in the zoomed-out view. So, for the most part I use Pages to refer to documents — meeting agendas, notes, etc. Performing more detailed tasks on a screen smaller than my iPad is something I might need to look at an iPad mini for.

iOS version still lags behind OS X

Styles still remain partially implemented. While you can choose from a list of styles, you can’t create your own. You also cannot update a style if you want the font to be different, though you can change the font manually.

Tables of contents also remain elusive, which can be a problem if you’ve made significant edits to a document and need to update the TOC.

Final thoughts

Pages for iOS still lags far behind the OS X version of the app.  Since we’re clearly past the myth of iPads existing only as consumption devices, and more professionals are eschewing laptops for iPads, I think Apple needs to seriously step up its game with its iOS iWork offerings. While I can accept that OS X Pages does not have feature parity with Microsoft Word, the lack of parity between iOS and OS X iWork apps is beginning to become tough to handle.

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Keynote, Numbers and Pages, which are Apple’s house-made apps for presentations, spreadsheets and word processing, should share documents better with the update thanks to increased compatibility.

Keynote now has better support for PowerPoint and Keynote for Mac slide sizes and more themes (Apple maintains iWork apps for Mac and iOS as separate products). Pages — to many users’ relief — finally gets the ability to track changes, and to accept and reject those changes while editing. Numbers, meanwhile, now lets users hide or unhide rows or columns in spreadsheets and preserve rich text when importing tables to the app.

Each iWork app can be updated in the respective iOS and Mac App Stores. The updates are free if you already own the apps, but are on the pricey side if you want to buy them new: $10 a pop on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Mac versions of the apps are $20 apiece.

Previous coverage:

Review of using iWork to sync Documents in the Cloud

Review of iWork apps optimized for Retina displays

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My frustration with this had grown over the last year. The iPad has become a frequently used writing platform for me because it’s always with me. Byword was fine for a lot of my writing, but I wanted the greater control over my text that Pages gave me. And getting spreadsheets and Keynote files to and from my iPad was a hassle with Byword. Having to go to iCloud on the web to share files wasn’t an ideal solution: I just wanted to see my edits across all my devices.

Now, with the release of OS X Mountain Lion on Tuesday, and updated versions of the iWork apps (which also now have Retina display support) I can finally sync and edit files across all my Apple devices.

The obvious points before we get started

To fully take advantage of sharing between iOS and OS X you will need the following: the updates to the OS X and iOS iWork apps released July 25 or later, and Mountain Lion. If you haven’t upgraded yet, go ahead.

iOS:

Once you’ve got them installed, on iOS go to the Settings app, choose one of the iWork apps and make sure “Use iCloud” is set to On. Underneath that is a slider that asks you if you want to open copies of iWork ’09 files. Due to discrepancies in the file structure, this allows you to keep the original file structure preserved by opening a copy. I don’t like having copies floating around and I don’t tend to have complicated files, so I’ve unchecked this.

Note: You will need to repeat this step for all three iWork apps.

Also, in the Settings app, go to iCloud and make sure that Documents & Data is also turned on.

OS X:

Setting up Documents in the Cloud for OS X is a little easier. Go into System Preferences, choose iCloud, and make sure Documents in the Cloud is enabled. You do not need to do anything in the individual application preferences.

Sharing down the dream

To save a newly created document in iCloud, from the Save menu, choose iCloud. You can also choose the folder to save it in, if you’ve already created one up there.

To open a file from iCloud, from the Open dialog box, choose the iCloud tab and then the file you want to open.

To move a file to iCloud, from the File menu choose Move To, and then select the iCloud tab and follow the same process as saving.

When I originally wrote about Documents in the Cloud last year, I was disappointed with how often I lost data. Since then, the service has improved significantly. My initial tests with Mountain Lion and the iOS versions did not have any glaring issues. Full disclosure: I’m also running iOS 6, but an informal poll amongst a few friends also yielded no glaring issues, save some initial slowness.

There are a few caveats, though. The biggest one is the iOS versions of the iWork apps still do not have all of the features of their OS X brethren. It’s getting better though, for example, in Pages version 1.5 you can now add footnotes and endnotes. This makes the iPad version of Pages a more viable option for students, even though the OS X version of Pages still requires a third-party tool for citations.

How it will affect my workflow

I am a simple guy, with simple needs. I’m also a guy who does very little work on his Mac that requires the full might and power of the Microsoft Office suite. What does, however, occur frequently is being asked to email the latest version of a file to a client. Naturally, this never happens when I’m in the same ZIP code as my Mac.

Starting today, all of my Pages (and other iWork) documents are getting moved to iCloud. When my free iCloud storage runs out, I’ll be paying for the additional space. While my corporate work keeps me chained to a (Windows) laptop, it’ll be nice to be able to work on my freelance work from the beach on the weekends and have my files sync. Where I can see iCloud being very useful is for people who do presentations on their iPads. After you’re done with Keynote on your Mac, just save it to iCloud and you’ll be able to easily access it from your iPad.

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So here are my impressions of how Apple’s own productivity apps, which have been optimized for the new iPad’s high-resolution display, fare on the new tablet:

Keynote

Even if Keynote is your least-used app of the iWork suite, if you give just a trivial amount of presentations it is easily the suite’s killer app for you. The ease of hooking your iPad up to a projector and pretty much eliminating the not-so-silent prayers that go along with marrying projectors and presentations is a gigantic stress reliever. When I started looking at the new Keynote app and opened up a few of my presentations I was overjoyed with how great even graphics not optimized for the Retina display look and how crisp and un-pixelated the text looked. Then I crashed back to earth when I realized unless I was hooking into a truly fantastic display — which most conference rooms don’t have — there would be little to no difference in what the audience would see since the iPad screen is a higher resolution than the display.

Where I did find handy was how graphics looked on the Retina display. Looking through a draft of an old presentation, I could see where I had cheated and downloaded a Creative Commons graphic file that wasn’t a good resolution. On the original iPad and my MacBook, I could fool myself into thinking it wasn’t that bad. On the new iPad, I could see that, yeah, it really did look that bad.

What I haven’t been able to benchmark efficiently is how well the beefed-up GPU and 1 GB of memory will aid the creation of graphics-heavy presentations. My limited, non-scientific tests didn’t yield a marked difference on a 30-slide presentation where most if it was full-bleed graphics. However, a 30-slide talk is pretty small. If someone creates large, graphics-heavy presentations regularly, I’d love to hear from you.

Numbers

If Keynote is in the running for the least-used app of the suite, Numbers is likely the winner of the never-used award. People who are spreadsheet users probably aren’t using Numbers. Still, Numbers, in a way, I think benefits the most from the new display. It’s been my experience that spreadsheets often try to cram too much text into one page, making it impossible to read. On the new iPad, text set to the smallest size was perfectly readable, while on the original iPad it was a blur.

Pages

During testing, when I opened a file with Pages on my old iPad, I realized just how much I’d been suffering for my art. My first reaction: I used to work on this thing? Opening a document with 10-point type was an awakening. Sure, I was amazed at how great my e-mail looked, but when I opened a document with a couple thousand words I’d typed on my old iPad, the, dare I say it, awesomeness of the Retina display hit home. Even now, looking at my MacBook Pro, my iPad is going: Look at me. Now look at your MacBook, Now look at me. That display looks like the bad end of the horse, doesn’t it?

How the apps affect my workflow

What I love about writing these articles is it forces me to take an inventory of my current writing process and tools. The new iPad with an external display is looking like a more visually comfortable writing environment than my MacBook Pro. The key tool for me is iCloud, so my main writing tool is Byword for iOS (which also looks awesome on the new iPad) and OS X because it looks great and syncs between all three of my devices. Pages is well-poised to take the top spot for writing apps this summer when the OS X version of iWork becomes fully iCloud-aware.

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When I wrote about Documents in the Cloud, one of my chief complaints was that the only way to upload and download files on my Mac was through the iCloud web interface. I made a casual mention in that post that while there is a setting in the iCloud System Preferences to sync Documents and Data, I admitted I didn’t know where they went to. A helpful reader posted that “on a Mac your iCloud data files are accessible at ~/Library/Mobile Documents.”

I wondered if I could access the files directly on my Mac using that folder, and create files there, then have them sync to iCloud. The answer, blessedly, is yes. Here’s how.

1. Make sure Documents and Data is checked in iCloud System Preferences.
   
2. Make your Library folder unhidden. There are two ways to do this. The easiest is in the Finder go to the Go Menu and choose “Go to Folder” and type in “username”/Library, where “username” is the name of your user folder. That will bring you to the Library folder. The other way, the one I recommend, is to go to the Terminal app and type in chflags nohidden ~/Library/ to unhide the Library folder. I’ve found this makes it easy to find the Library folder backups in Time Machine.
3. Go to the Library folder and find the Mobile Documents folder. Drag it to your Sidebar to make it easier to access.
4. From here, you can navigate to any of the three subfolders for each iWork app. In each, you must then did one level down to find the “Documents” folder. If you create a document in this folder in iWork it will show up on your iOS device. You can also create subfolders within this directory to modify the folder structure in your iWork apps for iOS. Any subfolders you create on the desktop must contain at least one document to show up in mobile iWork, however.

Note that the original file on the desktop, after being transferred to and opened on your iOS device, will prompt you to save it elsewhere on the desktop or delete it if it remains open on your Mac. Working backward from iOS to Mac doesn’t work, since iCloud changes the document format, but at least it lets you start on the desktop.

Also note that you can use this method to create and edit documents in Microsoft Office (or other document editors) on your Mac, and make them available to the iWork suite on your iOS device. I strongly encourage you maintain your own backups of this directory in case of accidental file deletion, or in case Apple for some reason closes this loop. For now, however, this makes working with Documents in the Cloud much easier and more rewarding.

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Documents in the Cloud is a way to sync documents and data across your devices. While it may seem like it takes the place of iDisk, it doesn’t replace it. There is no Finder-like access to a file structure. Each app has its data sandboxed, so it’s app-specific. If you open the same file in Pages and GoodReader, and tell each to upload that file to iCloud, you will have two copies of the file up there.

Setting up Documents in the Cloud

The initial setup of Documents in the Cloud is very easy. On your iOS device go into Settings, then iCloud, and make sure Documents and Data is set to “On.” You can also tell it to not sync when only on cellular networks.

To use the iWork apps with Documents in the Cloud, you’ll need to be running the latest versions of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. The first time you launch each of these apps, you’ll be asked if you want to use iCloud. If you choose to use iCloud, any local iWork documents you have will be uploaded to iCloud, so don’t worry about losing them. However, once you enable iCloud, you will no longer be able to use iTunes to add a document to an iWork app. Using “Open With” from an e-mail still works just fine.

Syncing between iOS devices

Right now, syncing between iOS devices is Documents in the Cloud’s strong suit. Changes made to a Pages document on my iPad show up within seconds on my iPhone. As a control, I performed a worst-case scenario for syncing: I deleted Pages from all my iOS devices and reinstalled it on my iPad. All my files were still there.

This service isn’t limited to just iWork, as games like Scribblenauts Remix will let you use iCloud to sync your saved games between devices. GoodReader for iPad also supports iCloud. The GoodReader for iPhone update is still in Apple’s review queue as of this writing.

Syncing between Windows and OS X

This is where Documents in the Cloud starts to fall down. While there is a Documents and Data checkbox in the iCloud Preference Pane in Lion, I can’t tell where the data is saved to. I also doubt it’s user-accessible.

The only way to get data from my Mac to iCloud right now is via the iCloud.com website. Unfortunately, the only apps that show up on the website are the three iWork apps. The good news is, you can upload and download either iWork or Microsoft Office files from here. The bad news is, if you have PDFs on your Mac you want to get into GoodReader and iCloud, there isn’t an easy option outside of iTunes syncing (that still works for GoodReader).

There are APIs available for developers to use on Windows and OS X that hook into iCloud. My bet is in the long run developers that want to make it easy for users to put data into their apps. Omni Group has said the next version of OmniGraffle for iPad will support storing documents in iCloud, but I don’t see any mention of OmniGraffle for OS X and iCloud. Omni Group tends to be on the leading edge of development, so I’m curious how they will handle this.

Final thoughts

Buyer Beware

I had little faith in iCloud retaining my data during yesterday’s craziness. My tests on seeing if a changed document was properly updated on the web and iOS were successful. However, at least three times when I went back to look at something on the web interface, my documents were gone. I would either have a web page empty of documents or one prompting me to get iWork for iOS. The first time this happened was during the afternoon and I was having trouble updating the apps. I thought maybe one of the apps got rolled back and threw iCloud off. The second time I had noticed my iPhone wanted to download the update again (I think I had deleted it) and I thought maybe something had gotten wonky again. The third time I didn’t do anything. I went to the web page, saw no documents and opened up Pages for iPad and watched three documents delete themselves.

Problems are ongoing. When I create a new document in Pages on iOS, it prompts me to either create a document, or import one even though iCloud is specified in Pages’ settings. This is how Pages worked pre-iCloud, and turning iCloud on and off doesn’t fix the problem.. When this happens, both the iPhone and the iPad can’t see iCloud. At which point I thought to myself: Yep, these are the guys that brought me MobileMe. It’s possible it’s related to all the iCloud launch issues, but I’m very scared to trust it with my data.

These issues aside, until there’s an easy way to always update documents on a Mac or a PC, Documents in the Cloud is of limited use to me. I’m not optimistic this is going to happen any time soon. All of Apple’s promo videos that show iWork on iOS being used with iCloud never show a Mac as part of the chain (the Mac does feature prominently when they demonstrate photo stream). I also don’t like that third-party iCloud-enabled iOS apps can’t register themselves on the website so you can drag files to them.

I was really hoping I would be able to round-trip files from OS X to iOS without doing the download/upload two-step. It didn’t seem like a fantasy to work on a document on OS X Pages, close it, and head to diner and have it magically appear on my iPad. Until Apple and other developers use those OS X and Windows APIs, that fantasy won’t come true.

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Not every Lion is part of the AirDrop pride

Unfortunately, just because you have OS X Lion installed doesn’t necessarily mean you can use AirDrop. While AirDrop doesn’t require any Mac to be actively connected to a Wi-Fi network, it does require that each Mac have a wireless card turned on — and not just any wireless card –only certain models of Macs are equipped with the sort of hardware necessary to participate. You could check your hardware version and see if you have what it takes, or just look for AirDrop in your favorites list in the Finder. If it’s listed, then you have what it takes.

Identifying other AirDrop users

At first you’ll think AirDrop isn’t working, or that it’s really, really slow.  Even though you may be in the middle of a slew of Macs running OS X Lion that are all AirDrop-capable, your screen will still be blank. That’s because in order to use AirDrop, you must opt-in by selecting AirDrop from your favorites list in the Finder. Once another Mac does the same, you will see the user show up in the Finder. As soon as either of you navigate away from AirDrop in that Finder window, it will be turned off.

If you happen to be a MobileMe user, and you’re logged in to your MobileMe account on your Mac, and all of the AirDrop Macs near you have all done the same, AND you all happen to be in each other’s MobileMe contact list, then you’ll see each other’s real names instead of just the computer nicknames of your Macs.  That makes it sort of like sharing files peer-to-peer over IM networks. The major differences are that you don’t have to be friends, you don’t have to be using the same service, and you don’t have to be connected to a Wi-Fi network. You don’t even need to have Wi-Fi turned on. All you need is the right Mac with Wi-Fi powered on, and someone to share with.

AirDrop a file from one Mac to another

It’s very easy to share a file once you can see someone to share with in AirDrop. Simply drag your file and drop it on the AirDrop recipient in the Finder, confirm when asked “Do you want to send…” to the recipient, and wait for the user to accept the file.  Once the file transfer process has begun, you don’t have to keep AirDrop open in the Finder. AirDrop will continue the file transfer in the background, and notify you when the process is complete. To be clear, no one using AirDrop can see any files you have on your Mac via AirDrop. Only files you drag and drop on specific recipients will be transferred. There’s no setup, no configuration; it just works.

Alternatives to AirDrop for your Snow Leopard friends

The ability to transfer files in much the same way actually existed before AirDrop. Granted, it wasn’t as slick or polished, and there was some initial setup and configuration involved, but the ability to transfer files from one Mac to another in an almost identical peer-to-peer fashion has been in place for quite some time. In fact, if your Mac can’t participate in AirDrop, it’s all you’ve got.

Send file in iChat via Bonjour. Enabling the Bonjour account in iChat is one of the slickest features on the Mac many don’t realize they have. It’s like a private instant messaging service for all Macs on the same network. You can use this ad-hoc network of IM buddies to transfer files back and forth quickly. You don’t need an IM account, just the user account you use to log on to your Mac. Transferring files is about the same as with AirDrop. You must all be participating in iChat, and you must choose so transfer a specific file to a designated recipient. It’s not quite as easy as AirDrop, but it’s close. The one advantage here is that the range is greater.  You aren’t dependent on the Wi-Fi radio signal reaching directly between Macs; you just need to be on the same network.

Bluetooth file transfer. In theory, transferring files from Mac to Mac over Bluetooth is exactly the same as AirDrop.  The big difference is in the setup. You must first enable Bluetooth Sharing in the System Preferences; make sure that Bluetooth is turned on and that all Macs involved are discoverable. You even have to pair your Macs before the file transfer can begin. Once everything is set up and ready to go, you can use the Bluetooth File Transfer agent to send and receive files. I’ve used this technique in the past, but have found it to be unreliable and a pain to set up and configure, so I’d use this as a last resort.

AirDrop’s only flaw is its hardware dependency. Most households will have a mix of old and new Macs that are actively being used. That being said, when you do have the right hardware in place, nothing beats the simplicity of transferring a file from one Mac to another that comes with AirDrop.

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While this article uses iWork as an example, any app that supports Versions, like OmniGraffle, should work the same way.

What is Versions?

Every hour — if the program supports it — a Version will be created. If you’re at all familiar with Time Machine, the concept is the same: a version of a document you can revert back to is created within the “sandbox” of that app and data file. It’s like doing a save-as every hour, but all the versions are contained within a single data file. However, if you send the file to another person, that person won’t see the previous versions.

This is completely separate from the new Auto Save feature. Logic would dictate an auto-save would create a new version, but it doesn’t.

How do I view my Versions?

First, a bit of warning: If you open a document created before you upgraded your app, you are likely to see it say “Locked” in the title bar. Don’t fret. Just click on the arrow next to the title and choose Unlock. A document unedited for two weeks will automatically become locked. You can change this timer in the Time Machine preferences. You can also force a lock if you don’t want to version a document.

To access your past history, from that same pop-down, choose “Browse All Versions.” This will bring you to a Time Machine-inspired view. On the left you’ll see the current document. On the right, you’ll see all the old versions.

The great thing is, you can go back in time and restore pieces of your document; not just the whole thing. If you’re working on a presentation and delete a section, then decide you did want to include that, you can just go pull those slides from a previous version. Same holds true for sections of text.

The “Save As…” command is gone from iWork now as well. You can duplicate the document from the File menu which does pretty much the same thing. It’ll be treated a virgin document until you save it, however, so you won’t be able to see past versions of the duplicate’s original source.

Recommendations

I think Auto Save is a fantastic, long-needed addition. Even documents with no save history at all still get restored. Relying on the one-hour versioning is a fool’s game, though. My recommendation is to manually save early, and save often. The reason for this is because I found it very easy to have a Version not be created. If I opened a Pages document, added some text, quit the app, re-opened it, added more text and then quit the app, the next time I opened the only version I saw was from a while ago. I’d like to see a version get created every time I quit a document, too. So, if you think you’ll be going back to previous versions a lot, save on your own.

In my limited testing, sending Pages documents to another user stripped the version history. That’s how it should work. You don’t want the sordid history of a project to follow it along. That said, if the document contains some sensitive material you’ve redacted, it’s worth duplicating or exporting the document to create a fresh copy just to ensure all the info is scrubbed.

So that’s Versions in a nutshell. Even if you aren’t using it yet, you likely will be soon as more apps add the feature. Feel free to let us know in the comments which ones you think will benefit most from the addition.

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1. Pages

Apple’s own apps will likely be among the first to bring significant changes that leverage the power of iOS 5. Pages will get support for iCloud’s document syncing services, which means that changes you make on one iOS device should automatically be available to on another (and eventually on the desktop too), without any arduous setup requirements. Numbers, Keynote and other third-party editing suites like Documents to Go should get similar improvements in addition to Pages, which will make working with productivity apps on iOS devices much, much easier. Slide presentation apps will also get more useful thanks to Apple’s AirPlay mirroring feature on the iPad 2 that outputs whatever is on the tablet’s screen to a display device attached to an Apple TV.

2. CNN

One thing I initially liked about CNN’s iPhone and iPad apps was that they would provide push notifications for breaking news. Unfortunately, because of the way Apple implemented its notification system, breaking news updates became just another part of the stream of notification alert windows I had to dismiss to get to the home screen. Now, with the new notification bar and Notification Center, CNN’s breaking news updates will act as an unobtrusive daily record of key developments around the world. The best part is, this one doesn’t even require any action on the developer’s part; it’ll just happen when the new notification system is implemented.

3. Instagram

IOS 5 introduces Core Image, a new API that lets developers have access to hardware-accelerated video and photo enhancement as well as editing features. Built-in filters, color correction and facial recognition should make any photo app more versatile, but I think that if properly integrated in Instagram, it could help the photo-sharing service reach the next level. Used alone, or in tandem with Instragram’s existing filter set, individual user photos will look even more distinct, reducing the similarity that photos shared on the network can sometimes suffer from.

4. Real Racing HD 2

This one’s also a sure thing, as Real Racing HD 2 developer Firemint has already said it plans to support wireless AirPlay two-screen gaming once iOS 5 arrives. If you haven’t seen what playing this game on the iPad 2 and your TV with a wired connection is like, check out my video of the process. Doing the same thing without having to worry about yanking the Apple Digital AV Adapter out of your iPod’s dock connector is an exciting prospect, and it should make even more adventurous two-screen gaming applications a reality.

5. iMockups

I really could’ve chose any design or idea notebook app for this one, but iMockups is a particularly good example, because it’s designed with sharing in mind. In iOS 5, developers will have access to iMessage, so that apps can launch iMessage conversations between individuals or groups directly. For teams which have all members using iOS devices, it should make sharing mockup images for feedback with collaborators and stakeholders that much easier, and that much cheaper, too, since iMessage provides the convenience of MMS without the cost.

Have any other suggestions for apps you think will get a major boost from iOS 5?

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Mail, Calendar and Contacts are all now free, and sync between all your devices. You get a @me.com address for free, too. But that’s not all. There are now six more apps with iCloud support.

The App Store now works with iCloud, so your library of apps is available to all your devices. iBooks works pretty much the same way. You push a cloud button, and all your synced purchases are instantly pushed out to your device from the cloud, including book purchases. Backup is another iCloud app, which stores your device information remotely, so when you upgrade your device, a simple one-step sign-in process gets everything from your old device up and running on your new one.

All of the iWork apps now work with iCloud, too, by plugging into Documents in the Cloud. It stores your documents in the iCloud servers, so that you can see and work with changes automatically across platforms. Essentially, it means users don’t have to worry about the file system.

Third-party devs can take advantage of this, too, thanks to the iCloud Storage API. That means we should see simple cross-platform syncing across the App Store.

Though not a new app, Photo Stream is another new iCloud feature that is built into existing apps. It syncs your photos across devices, no matter the origin point, and works with iPhoto on the Mac, as well as with your iOS device’s camera roll. It even works with the PC, and with Apple TV, too. Photos are stored permanently if you move them to an album, but the last 1,000 are automatically saved on your iOS device even if you don’t. iCloud stores them for 30 days, unless you assign them to an album, and on a computer, all photos taken are saved.

iTunes is the last iCloud-enabled official Apple app. Now you can look at your entire iTunes music purchase history on any device associated with your account (up to a total of 10), and download songs or albums locally. No charge is incurred for multiple downloads. You can also turn on Automatic Downloads for new purchases if you’d rather not grab them manually.

All of these apps are available free, and you get them automatically once you upgrade your device to iOS 5. Included with the deal is 5 GB of free storage for mail, documents and backup, and photos don’t count against your total. The developer beta starts today for all these services, and iTunes will run in the cloud on iOS 4.3. The other features will come in the fall, to coincide with iOS 5′s release.

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