Services

One of the biggest differences between OS X and iOS is the way they treat inter-app communication. OS X’s little-known Services feature provides a way for applications to transfer data, such as currently selected text, between each other. Let’s say I’m typing a document and I want to search the web for a phrase I’m using. I can select the phrase, use the “Search With Google” service, and a new Safari window pops up with the results. Third-party apps can use Services as well, and users can create their own with the Automator app. This flexibility and customizability is what makes Services powerful.

Let’s switch to iOS. Apps are sandboxed, which means they can’t share files between each other, and the only way to share text is through copy and paste. Third-party apps can’t process actions from other apps without using URL schemes, which isn’t an ideal solution.

Implementing something as complex as OS X’s Services within iOS’s simplified UI isn’t easy. So far, Apple’s taken the approach of only including the most useful Services from OS X in its own apps. In iBooks, for example, I can select a word and define it, make a new email with it, or search the web for it: all the basic stuff you can do in OS X. It’s a sign that Apple’s at least thinking about the problem, and I’m hopeful that the coming iOS 7 update will address it more thoroughly.

Multiple user accounts

Multiple user accounts were introduced with Mac OS 9, and they’ve evolved quite a bit since. Today, each user gets their own settings, files and associated iCloud account. If you click on the currently logged-in user’s name in the menu bar, a menu pops down with a list of other users. Choose one, and that user’s desktop rotates off the screen to be replaced by the other’s.

It’s true that you can sign in and out of iOS with different Apple IDs, but this only lets you download another user’s content from iTunes and not much else. You don’t get your iCloud data or settings, and any changes you make outside of iTunes stay with the other account. Obviously, this isn’t ideal for families that share an iPad or iPod touch. The latest version of Android, Jelly Bean, includes multiple account support for tablets, giving Android users one more feature to tout that iOS doesn’t have.

Slideshow wallpaper

“Slideshow” wallpaper — background images that shift after a set period of time — was introduced to OS X with 10.3 Panther. iOS 4 introduced homescreen wallpapers on the iPhone, but you could only set one at a time; it remains so today. Considering that you can already run a slideshow on an iPad’s lockscreen, doing the same thing with homescreen wallpaper doesn’t seem like much to ask.

Mission Control

Released with OS X Lion, Mission Control consolidates Exposé, Spaces and Dashboard into one UI. I’ll be talking about the Exposé part here, since I don’t see any need for Dashboard or something like Spaces on iOS. Exposé is the feature that zooms and arranges your open windows so you can see them all at once. Click on one, and Exposé switches you to it.

In iOS, switching between apps is accomplished with the multitasking tray. Double-tap the Home button, and the tray pops up, showing your most recently used apps. Unlike Exposé, the multitasking tray only shows you the app’s icon and not the app itself. Apple actually experimented with a more Exposé-like interface in an early version of iOS 4, and Jailbreak tweaks, such as Multifl0w, bring a similar interface. Android and Windows Phone’s task switchers also use app previews and not just icons, and with the multitasking tray making its debut almost three years ago, it feels like it’s time for an overhaul.

Gatekeeper

By default, Gatekeeper locks down your Mac so it will only run apps from the Mac App Store and developers registered with Apple. However, you can turn Gatekeeper off on OS X. On iOS, there isn’t a choice: you can only download apps from the App Store. Because of this, and Apple’s policy of reviewing every app before approving it, there’s been a few incidents over the years, starting with the blocking of Google Voice, which damaged the company’s reputation with some developers. By implementing a Gatekeeper-like system, it would be easier for Apple to defend criticism of its approval policies, as developers could still sell their apps on the web. iOS developers would also be able to get out updates even if Apple rejects them.

There are problems with this, however. Apple would have to allow downloading apps from Safari, which also means building an interface to manage them. App piracy, already an issue on jailbroken devices, would likely increase under such a system as well unless Apple implemented DRM. Malware is another possible concern, though as with Gatekeeper on the Mac, having the default be to only allow apps from the iOS App Store would leave people protected. With all of these negatives, I doubt we’ll be glimpsing over the walled garden any time soon.

Versions

Versions, introduced with Lion, provides a Time Machine-like interface for looking through past revisions of a document. When you trigger it, the desktop slides away as the current app is placed next to its past versions, stacked together on the right. Browsing through past versions is accomplished by a timeline on the side. You can edit the current version right within the interface, as well as copy elements from past versions.

Versions hasn’t made its way to iOS yet, and that’s understandable given the size of iOS devices. How would you fit something like Versions’ interface on the smaller screen of an iPhone or iPad? On OS X, an app’s window can resize to fit comfortably within Versions, but they can’t on iOS. Versions would have to be rethought significantly for it to work on smaller screens, so I’m not optimistic that it’ll be in iOS 7.

Many of these features that work so well on OS X are admittedly a long shot for making it to iOS. However, with Craig Federighi placed in charge of both OS X and iOS software after the departure of Scott Forstall, there’s at least the possibility that OS X features may eventually find their way to the other side.

What other features from OS X would you like to see in iOS? Tell us in the comments. 

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The features of Wunderlist Pro will come as no surprise, as 6Wunderkinder accidentally revealed them last month, but here’s the gist anyway: tasks can be assigned among friends or colleagues, and subtasks can now be created. This should make Wunderlist Pro an effective replacement for the axed Wunderkit, which was a project management counterpart to Wunderlist’s task manager.

The Pro version costs $4.99 a month or $49.99 annually, and is available now for iOS devices, OS X and the web. 6Wunderkinder tells me the Android and Windows versions will follow in a week’s time.

“Wunderlist Pro allows you to easily delegate to-dos and effectively track the progress of each task, yet this is just the beginning. There is still a whole lot more to come,” 6Wunderkinder CEO Christian Reber said in a statement.

The first installment of that “whole lot more” will be the ability to attach files to tasks, which can then be shared for collaborative work. Meanwhile, the sharing functionality of the original Wunderlist has also received a boost through the addition of an “action bar” that allows one-click access to email and share lists.

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Jolla, which is led by ex-Nokians, has taken the abandoned MeeGo OS and wrangled it into a new, slicker version called Sailfish. The Linux-based OS will in theory be available for a number of device types, but the first commercially-available version will be on a smartphone sold through the Chinese distributor D.Phone and the Finnish carrier DNA.

According to a separate tweet a few days ago, the timescale for that release is looking a bit fuzzy:

@jpetrise @nmshenoy @ashnazir Product shipping in 2nd half of year, announcement will happen closer to shipping.

— Jolla (@JollaHQ) April 1, 2013

One significant partnership announced at Helsinki’s Slush Festival last November will already be in trouble, namely that with ST-Ericsson – a chipmaker that is in the process of being broken up by parent companies STMicro and Ericsson.

Sailfish will certainly find itself in choppy waters this year. There are a range of factors that threaten the iOS-Android duopoly, from Windows Phone and BlackBerry to newer players such as Firefox OS — and let’s not forget Nokia’s low-end Asha platform, which will likely compete in the same market as Sailfish and Firefox OS, and Facebook Home, whose effect on the smartphone scene is yet to be felt.

Jolla will have a tough time establishing itself, but at least developers can really sink their teeth into its native app potential (they can also submit Android, HTML5 and Qt apps) now that they have the SDK.

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Now doo is coming out of beta on OS X today and, over the next few weeks, on Android, then iPhone, then iPad (a refreshed Windows 8 app will follow in the next couple of months). And, while the end result is similar to that in the beta, it’s quite a different beast under the hood.

Why? As CEO Frank Thelen told me, the future may be all about semantic tagging, but for now people still love their folders:

“The beta period was a very tough time for us. We learned that people are not willing to put their documents into a library like iTunes. We had to change the product in a way that people can keep their existing folder structures, and we’re just a smart overlay. Basically we had to change the whole architecture.”

So, while the beta version involved wholesale importation of documents, the new overlay approach involves just pointing doo to existing folders and letting it do its semantic thing, namely optical character recognition, smart auto-tagging of people, sources and places, and categorization — doo can recognize and classify 70 different types of document, from contracts to tickets. In the beta, if you opened a document it would open in doo; now it will open in the service it’s stored in, such as DropBox.

Essentially, doo has morphed from a well-organized document repository into a cross-service search engine for consumer and small-business cloud storage. That in no way diminishes what it does — it’s super-valuable to have a tool that can return useful data when asked to, for example, find all invoices stored in the last 30 days. Additionally, Thelen said, improvements to doo’s syncing capabilities mean it can always detect when a file is stored multiple times across different services, and always serve up the most recent iteration.

You can also scan documents straight into doo, or even photograph them in via smartphone. But, for now at least, the main value for most people will be in its management of existing documents across DropBox and so on. It’s like a smarter alternative to Found (which was in any case acquired by YouSendIt last month).

By the way, for those of you who want to run doo on a Windows 7 PC, you may have a wait in store for you. While it will come at some point, Thelen said, the doo team hasn’t even started working on it yet.

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There is also a more practical reason for trying to time your Mac purchase just right.  That is the fact that the hardware from Apple will most certainly outlast the version of the operating system it ships with.  A good goal when deciding on a purchase is to maximize the time your new Mac purchase will be able to run on a supported version of Apple’s OS X software.

The following looks at release cycles, processor performance and the history of Apple and Intel release dates to help you determine if waiting for a new release worth it before you go shopping.

Intel providing the performance

Looking at performance, the most important factor to consider is the Intel chip inside the Mac you are purchasing. Intel releases its chips on a tick-tock release cycle. Each “tick” is a major step forward in manufacturing and each “tock” is an improvement on micro-architecture. At this year’s CES, Intel showed off its new Haswell micro-architecture, part of their fourth-generation Intel Core processor family, that will be made available later this year.  Haswell is a “tock” as it enhances the micro-architecture of the chip.

Using the Mac Geekbench scores from Primate Labs for the 15-inch MacBook dating back to the first release of an Apple MacBook with an Intel processor, you can see that (other than the time Apple skipped a “tock” release from Intel) the first release in a tock cycle has had the more significant performance gains than chips that were released during a “tick.”  So provided Apple includes a Haswell chip in its upcoming Mac releases, we can expect significant performance improvements once again since this will be the first release of a new Mac during Intel’s tock cycle of chip enhancements.

The big question is, will Apple have a Haswell chip inside of the next revision of Macs?  It’s always tough trying to predict what Apple will do, but as the above chart indicated, Apple has done a good job historically of releasing a MacBook Pro update within a month of Intel releasing the chipset that is used inside the MacBook Pro. So not only are you getting the latest hardware from Apple, you are also most likely getting the latest chips that Intel has to offer. And if Intel can deliver on its promise, this particular chipset will be just what a manufacturer looking to move away from dedicated GPU chips in their products in favor of sleeker and thinner designs is looking for.

Apple providing the support

Keeping up-to-date with all of the current versions of Mac OS X, including all of the security updates and bug fixes is important too. Being able to continue to run your favorite software on the latest version of OS X also helps.  With each OS X release comes the potential that your favorite software will no longer be supported on older versions of OS X.  It is therefore a good idea to see just how long you can expect Apple to continue supporting the hardware you are thinking about purchasing.

When it comes to the lifespan of a given OS version, Apple has typically been keeping up OS X versions around for about 580 days, or a little over a year and a half. This is the average time from the initial release of a new version of OS X until the date of the last update Apple puts out for that version of OS X. In contrast, we’ve seen, at least historically, a hardware update about every 260 days. That ends up being about two MacBook Pro hardware updates for every one OS X software update.

The current version of OS X, Mountain Lion, supports MacBook Pros back to the June 5, 2007 release of the MacBookPro 3,1, the previous version of OS X, Lion, continues to support MacBook Pros back to the Oct. 24, 2006 release of the MacBookPro 2,1, and finally OS X Snow Leopard, whose last update was released on July 25, 2011, supported all Intel-based Macs, the first of which was the MacBookPro 1,1 released on Jan. 10, 2006. This trend continues all the way back to the original release of OS X 10.0.

If historical data is any indication of future expectations, then it is reasonable to anticipate that the next version of OS X will support MacBook Pros back to the Feb. 26, 2008 release of the MacBookPro 4,1 which was when Apple also transitioned from Intel’s Merom to Intel’s Penryn based Core 2 Duo chips. This trend creates a countdown timer for each hardware release. Set at roughly 2,400 days, or 6.5 years, this countdown starts on the first day each new MacBook Pro is released, not the day you happen to purchase your MacBook Pro.

Timing purchases just right

What it boils down to is timing.  Planning out your MacBook upgrade to coincide with Intel’s “tock” releases should ensure that you are getting the largest performance gains with each purchase.  When you purchase your new hardware as close to the release date as possible, you will maximize the number of days your Mac will be running on the last supported version of OS X.  With evidence of testing for the next version of OS X beginning to show online, it wont be much longer until the mid-2012 MacBook Pros are no longer running on the version of OS X they shipped with.  And if you’re like me, purchasing the extended coverage provided with Apple’s own AppleCare program will certainly help guarantee that your Mac will keep running for at least three of the six years that your Mac will be able to run the latest version of OS X.

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There are two OS X modeling programs I’ve become quite enamored with: AmpliTube 3 Custom Shop (free, with in-app purchases for virtual gear) and Guitar Rig 5 Pro ($199). Both can also plug in directly to GarageBand for use in recording. To access them, create a new track as a Real Instrument and choose Edit from the right-hand palette. From there, you can choose from a variety of effect sources. Choosing AmpliTube or Guitar Rig from this menu will allow GarageBand to access these programs via a plug-in.

Plugging in

Unless you have one of the new Fender Squier guitars that has a micro-USB port built in (I have one; it’s nice), you’ll need an audio interface. For these purposes, I’m a big fan of Apogee’s Jam ($99). I also found that I needed to create a separate Aggregate input in Apple’s Audio Midi setup (not the Audio Midi setup in the programs) so I could use the Jam as well as my speakers. Until I did this, I’d get input but no sound.

Guitar Rig 5

At $199, Guitar Rig 5 isn’t cheap. I also found it the more versatile of the two programs. With gobs of presets you’ll have no problems finding the sound you want. Guitar Rig has 17 amps and 27 cabinets, as well as 54 different effects that will really let you dial in your sound.

My style tends to run towards ZZ Top, rockabilly and heavy metal. There were presets available that gave me all those sounds, including a Vai-type pitch shifter sound, so I was thrilled. In some ways, I was having too much fun trying out the different presets to actually get any recording done.

It’s important to note that these amps are “emulations” of popular amps, not licensed models. For instance, The VAN 51 amp is an emulation of Peavey’s 5150 amp. This doesn’t really bother me too much since even licensed simulations are just that — simulations. Even the 6505 model on my Peavey Vypyr is a computer’s best guess of that sound. There is also a Control Room module, where you can model different microphones and their placement which adds an extra bit of customization to your sound.

Native Instruments also has an optional $500 foot controller that would make it easier to swap between presets while playing. You could also use this live, accessing Guitar Rig 5 on a Mac. It’s not farfetched for me to think about having a MacBook angled up next to my stage monitors while I use the Kontrol as my footswitch.

AmpliTube 3 Custom Shop

With AmpliTube 3, The base software is free, with a minimal amount of basic amps included. To buy more amps and effects, you can purchase credits, which can be used to acquire more virtual gear. About $40 will get you get 45 credits. Most licensed amps run about 30 credits, and effects ranging between from five credits onward. Once you’ve bought a piece of gear, you’ll run AmpliTube to use the gear. Note: If it prompts you to authorize the software, you’ll find the key on your Account page.

During my testing of these two packages, all sort of sounds and squeals were coming from studio without much mention from my girlfriend, who is also a musician. However, one strum from the Carvin V3M I bought brought a “wow, nice tone” comment. Given that she likes Carvin amps, I took this as an endorsement that their official model was pretty damn close.

The chief advantage I see that AmpliTube has over Guitar Rig is that AmpliTube has official models of Carvin, Fender, Orange, and some Marshall amps, and more. When I started an app to play my guitar through, more often than not I gravitated toward AmpliTube and that Carvin V3M amp. It’s not that Guitar Rig’s settings were bad, I just found that Carvin model to be so pleasing to my ears. So pleasing, in fact, that I’ve added a real Carvin Legacy 3 amp to my wish list.

IKMultimedia also has a generous demo period for virtual gear. You can try a piece of gear for up to two days, every two months. This really lets you compare the sounds and evaluate how well they fit into your style.

I liked the customization in AmpliTube 3/Custom Shop. You can throw amps, cabinets and effects into a preset at will. While I found it look a little longer to get a sound I liked from AmpliTube than it did with Guitar Rig, I preferred the sound I ended up with more.

How I use them

It’s impossible for me to recommend one over another. My usage so far seems to fall into this pattern: my rhythm and general practice sounds come from AmpliTube (I love the Carvin V3M and the Orange Dual Terror amps), while my lead and exotic sounds come from Guitar Rig (there’s a setting called 1993 Hot Solo Rig I use for a vague hint of David Gilmour’s Division Bell sound, as well as just a cool echoey distorted lead channel). If you can afford it, I’d suggest getting Guitar Rig 5, and about $50 worth of amps and the like from AmpliTube’s custom shop. I think this will let you get some great sounds.

With any of these programs, even if using signature gear and settings, you’re still going to sound like yourself, not a famous artist. This is true even in physical gear. My live amp has a model of Joe Satriani’s amp. When I play it, I still sound like me, but with a better tone.

I’m thrilled with these two programs. With them, I can get any sound I want, and the presets usually spark some creativity just playing riffs while randomly cycling through them.

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Siri would be an upgrade from the Dictation app that Macs currently have. The Maps service may just be for developers who want to integrate Apple’s Maps into their Mac apps. But it could be something else too. Writes 9to5Mac:

With this MapKit framework, as developers refer to it for iOS, in OS X 10.9, it is also possible that Apple will extend its own work on mapping on the Mac besides integration for developers. It is possible that Apple will want its own full-fledged Maps app on the Mac, but we have not been able to confirm that as of yet.

The test version of OS X 10.9 is far from a final product, and anything could happen between now and next summer, when Apple has typically timed its Mac OS releases. But it’s entirely probable that these two services will eventually make the leap from iOS to OS X, perhaps even next year.

One of the hallmarks of 2011′s OS X upgrade was how many features and services built for iOS showed up in OS X: iMessage, Notes, Reminders, Notifications, Game Center, system-wide Twitter integration, AirPlay mirroring, and even little features like the sharing buttons. In that light, why wouldn’t Siri and Maps be next on the list?

Apple’s overarching strategy is for iCloud to hold all of its customers’ content so that any device — Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch — can access that content from anywhere. Part of ensuring a consistent experience across all of those devices will mean that all Apple services, especially heavily marketed features like Siri, will need to be available on all of them.

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Echofon for Android has been in public beta since the beginning of November and that app is still available in a free, ad-supported version. If you like the beta, you can opt to pay $4.99 for the Pro version which is now available in Google Play. Here’s a look at the client on an Android device:

Support for all the Twitter basics are in there: in-app image view, a Jump to Top option, the sync feature and Jelly Bean notifications; helpful if your Android device is running  Android 4.1 or better. You can reply or retweet, for example, directly from the Android notifications pane. That’s a nice time-saver. Even better is a full-featured widget that puts Echofon on an Android home screen: It shows the number of unread tweets, mentions, DMs and lets you compose new tweets with a button tap. And a quick left or right swipe moves you between different views.

I keep coming back to the sync function as a key advantage, however. It gets old when you switch to a different mobile device and have to reread various mentions, interactions or direct messages. With Echofon, I don’t have to worry about that as I hate reading the same content over and over.

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The combination of the overall change in computing, from something that occurs at a desk to something that happens on a variety of devices throughout the day, and higher performance chips based on the ARM architecture planned for next year are probably the spur for the latest rumors. The change in computing has been happening for some time, but only last week did ARM announce its next generation processor cores, the A-53 and the A-57. The big focus of those cores was that they can support 64-bit computing — a necessity for servers and the personal computer markets today.

Better chips mean a better experience

In a conversation last week with Nole Hurley, VP of marketing and strategy for ARM’s processor division, we briefly discussed the likelihood of one of ARM’s new A-50 cores having the chops to make it into laptops and other devices dominated by CPUs. The 64-bit compatibility associated with the next generation ARMv8 architecture means that the cores will be able to address more memory. That gives devices the ability to support having scores of open tabs on their browsers while running a dozen different programs or apps.

Until these cores were announced, ARM cores have supported 32-bit processing. That’s fine for mobile devices where ARM has dominated, but when it comes to content creation, 64-bit compatibility is crucial, as you can see from my colleague Kevin Tofel’s review of a Chromebook running on an ARM chip versus one running an Intel chip. Thus, with these new cores, ARM has a product that could possibly compete in the laptop and personal computing market. Those cores will be out next year with devices running that IP expected in 2014.

If Apple is contemplating this switch it is because it realizes that now that computing has gone mobile, the x86 architecture, which was optimized for performance at all costs, has been superseded by the ARM instruction set that optimizes energy efficiency at all costs. The difference now is that ARM has also been boosting performance while optimizing for efficiency and has reached a level of performance parity that supports today’s application needs. Intel’s focus on efficiency in x86 is kind of like retrofitting a Ferrari to be more fuel-efficient while ARM has been building a Tesla.

Apple hasn’t stood still however waiting for better ARM cores. It has built a better core using its ARM architecture license to tweak the current generation ARMv7 instruction set to increase the performance of the A6 processor in the iPhone 5. (An architecture license lets Apple tweak the core designs that ARM builds.) As this deep dive from Anand Tech illustrates, Apple has already made a processor for phones that could rival a traditional CPU.

Apple hasn’t forgotten about the need for software

And Apple may have already started down the path of optimizing its OS X Mac operating system for the ARM-based architecture, one major step it needs to take before any transition off Intel’s x86 platform. Back in 2007 Apple said the iPhone runs OS X and Apple later clarified that it runs on the same kernel software. Thus, must of the optimization needed to fully retrofit OS X for the ARM instruction set may already be done. That only leaves the popular software running on the MacBook left for a retrofit, and because Apple already has adapted popular programs of its own such as iMovie and iPhoto for iOS, that work may also be done.

The biggest holdout is probably Microsoft Office, and one would assume that Microsoft, once it got word of Apple’s plans it would act to preserve that software on the popular Macbook platform. However, Microsoft has been dragging its feet with ARM. For example it supports Windows RT and has a mobile platform that runs on ARM chips, but Windows 8 still doesn’t.

So, as the rumor mill works over the possibility of an Apple switch from Intel to ARM-based chips in the Macbook, it’s worth noting that the hardware is almost in place and the software is probably mostly there. The biggest unknown in this plan is how Intel might react to the threat of an Apple defection.

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Google Mail services for iOS devices

When using the included GMail profile on iOS, you can quickly connect to your Google Mail, Calendars and Notes, but not your Contacts. To set this up on your iOS devices, all you do is the following:

• Launch iOS Settings app, select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and tap on “Add Account…”.
• Choose GMail and enter in your Google Account’s name, email password and description.
• Once your account is verified, select the services you want to enable with this configuration.

If on the other hand you use the Exchange profile on iOS to connect to Google Mail, you will only be able to access your Mail, Contacts and Calendars, not your Notes. To set things this up this way on your iOS devices all you need to do is the following:

• Launch iOS Settings app, select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and tap on “Add Account…”
• Choose Exchange and enter in your Google account’s email, password and description.
• Once your account is verified, enter m.google.com as the server name, leave the Domain blank, and set the username as your full Google email address.

If you really do not use Notes with your Google account on your iOS device, then consider just using the Exchange profile configuration instead of the more obvious GMail profile.

Google Mail services for Macs

Unfortunately, the Exchange interface that works so well for mobile devices does not work at all when using the same configuration settings on Mac OS X.  Similar to iOS, OS X also has two different configurations that need to be used in order to access all of the same Google Mail services on OS X.

Just like on iOS, using the included GMail configuration, you can get to your Mail, Calendars and Notes, but not your Contacts. To set this up on your OS X devices, you need to do the following:

• Launch OS X System Preferences application and select “Mail, Contacts & Calendars”.
• Choose GMail and enter in your Google account’s name, email address and password.
• Once your account is verified, select the services you want to enable with this configuration.

In order to access your Google Contacts on OS X, you will need to configure the Preferences in the Contact application directly. To set this up on your OS X devices, you need to do the following:

• Launch the OS X Contacts application and select “Preferences” from the main menu.
• Select “On My Mac” and check “Synchronize with Google” under the Account Information.
• Enter in your Google account’s full email address and password.

On OS X, this configuration is using Google’s IMAP interface to access your email.  When using your Mac, you will often notice that your iOS devices that have been configured using the Exchange configuration are notified much faster than the OS X Mail application that is forced to use the IMAP configuration.

Everything else Google

One additional feature that Apple supports on OS X that is not supported on iOS is Google’s instant messaging service, Google Talk. What may surprise you is that neither iOS nor OS X enables Apple’s Reminders to access your Google Tasks. This is odd as it does work with Yahoo, Hotmail or other Exchange Servers that support the particular interface that Apple is looking for.  To access your Google Tasks and additional online services provided by Google, like Voice and Docs, you will have to install additional apps that Google has made available for iOS. On OS X, chances are you will just use the Safari web browser and access the web version of each service.

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