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Video of "PC Free" Set Up of iOS 5 with iCloud
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That would be WebDAV, in Lion.
I should edit in, from what I can gather, users have a file structure like iDisk or Dropbox, and files that are pushed to/from iOS devices are pushed to directories in your account. You can manually manage the files here, which assumes you can drop files into an app's storage folder and they'll be pushed to your device. Not quite the same as having a Finder on your iPhone, but at least it's file-based, and better than the current system used in iTunes. That's just from at-a-glance though...might be better or worse in practice.
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Apple ID format for iCloud>
I have been using the same AppleID for years, back when iTunes had something to do with just music. I have purchased a lot of music with it when Apple still had DRM on songs...with an iPad 2, iPod Touch and iPhone 4, I now have plenty of apps, too. Because of DRM on older songs and apps, I expect that switching to a new Apple ID would prevent me from using those songs/apps with the new AppleID. Is this true?
If this true, I have noticed from the 'Find my iPhone' feature that Apple is now requiring an Apple ID that is an email and offers no conversion from the older format to the new one. I use one AppleID with Find My iPhone and another AppleID for everything else. Kind of nuts.
I am betting dollars to doughnuts that all of the new iCloud features are going to force me to use the email-style AppleID as well. This seems to be the trend and in my experience, if it is horrifically inconvenient, it is usually true. Can anyone confirm this?
What happens to all of my apps and DRM-songs if I have to switch to a email-style AppleID??
I have been using the same AppleID for years, back when iTunes had something to do with just music. I have purchased a lot of music with it when Apple still had DRM on songs...with an iPad 2, iPod Touch and iPhone 4, I now have plenty of apps, too. Because of DRM on older songs and apps, I expect that switching to a new Apple ID would prevent me from using those songs/apps with the new AppleID. Is this true?
If this true, I have noticed from the 'Find my iPhone' feature that Apple is now requiring an Apple ID that is an email and offers no conversion from the older format to the new one. I use one AppleID with Find My iPhone and another AppleID for everything else. Kind of nuts.
I am betting dollars to doughnuts that all of the new iCloud features are going to force me to use the email-style AppleID as well. This seems to be the trend and in my experience, if it is horrifically inconvenient, it is usually true. Can anyone confirm this?
What happens to all of my apps and DRM-songs if I have to switch to a email-style AppleID??
In fact, Steve Jobs has said, during yesterday's keynote, that his strategic direction is completely the opposite: He wants to aggressively downplay the significance of an accessible filesystem on PCs. He said that he and his core team have been in high level discussions with that goal in mind for the last decade.
Effectively, rather than achieving equity by evolving handheld devices into feature-compatible smaller versions of their desktop- and laptop-class cousins, Jobs has a vision where desktop- and laptop-class devices will be the ones to evolve, to become feature-compatible larger versions of their handheld cousins.
It will never be a full-PC, however that is fine. Many people do not use a full-PC as it is meant/designed to be used. For them, the full-PC is too much hardware! So, yes for many, it will be similar to the other full-PC they own.
Exciting stuff!!
Bootlegs
Interesting point about the cover art that I missed. There is bootleg cover art in the iTunes world (One example: Slowburn, Peter Gabriel at the Roxy 4/9/77) so I guess it can be done out to the iPod.
I do still wonder about them pulling the songs up to the cloud with the annual fee service. Sure they can tag it as unknown, but they will still be hosting an unlicensed item in their system.
FWIW
DLM
Apple did not release iCop yesterday.
I'm sure if they can't match a song based on it's metadata, they will just tag it as unknown and leave it alone. Anything more than that would not make sense. They are not scanning each song or recording.
I would guess that if iTunes can match an Album cover to your own ripped songs, they will also be able to match your songs on iCloud with their version. I would guess they will use a similar method for matching.
Interesting point about the cover art that I missed. There is bootleg cover art in the iTunes world (One example: Slowburn, Peter Gabriel at the Roxy 4/9/77) so I guess it can be done out to the iPod.
I do still wonder about them pulling the songs up to the cloud with the annual fee service. Sure they can tag it as unknown, but they will still be hosting an unlicensed item in their system.
FWIW
DLM
guess you're just feeling contrary today? obviously most people on this site don't care about what Android had from day one because the implementation is crappy...I'll bet my first born Apple's cloud service will function better than Google's and Google has had theirs for how long now?
Apple's will look better work better and be better recieved than the crap Android users call an OS
Google's cloud service works flawlessly. I entered my account information when I first got my phone, and that's it. E-mail is automatically pushed, contacts, calendars, etc, are automatically synced. It's set it and forget it.
Was that before or after a year of only being able to handle only one touch at a time?
I could think up some more but it really doesn't matter. Choose your poison: None of them are perfect, and they all copy from one another.
Notice the "PC Free" double-meaning?
Post-PC era, folks.
Finally apple admits that they make PCs is what I see.
Accessible to whom is the main potential drawback of storing personal data online. I dislike mentally taking the shine off shiny new things before I even unwrap the packaging, but data security does come to mind with anything related to the cloud. It seems difficult for any enterprise to manage that line between ease of use and sufficient security
for customers' data in an age when professional hackers never take a vacation. In some cases, options for increased security are not practical (for instance, a second authentication step involving text to a cellphone) depending on one's geo-location. That's before throwing in the fine print paragraphs related to marketing, and to compliance with law enforcement.
Sandboxing data so it could only be retrieved via the related application(s) should help, although that might also prove inconvenient to the owner of the data. And, if the hacker focused on hacking the app rather than hacking into the data owner's overall piece of the cloud, then the hacker is sitting in the sandbox of that app. Extend that to hacking the iOS, then what? Your cheezburger is mine! So I would be guided by considering that anything I stash in the cloud is potentially just one clever hack away from accessible to the universe. With automatic sync options set on, make that universal read-WRITE. Would I care? That would depend on what I had elected to store in the cloud. I tell myself to imagine posting an item on the front window of the general store down in the village. If that doesn't appeal to me, then perhaps I don't want to stash it in the cloud.
Still, I admit I'm already a huge fan of having iTunes, iBook and App Store purchase history in the cloud, and so being able to grab that one song I bought on a laptop and forgot to put onto my iphone right away. Or bought on the iPad and have to remember to drag onto the laptop. The insufficient choice offered by the existing "transfer purchases" option in iTunes has caused me to just make a note when I bump into something I want to buy while using iPhone or iPad. Then I buy the item later, from my workhorse laptop that has my main iTunes library on it. So I am looking forward to buying a song on the iPad and later getting it from the cloud onto the laptop, yes indeedy
Apple did not release iCop yesterday.
I'm sure if they can't match a song based on it's metadata, they will just tag it as unknown and leave it alone. Anything more than that would not make sense. They are not scanning each song or recording.
I would guess that if iTunes can match an Album cover to your own ripped songs, they will also be able to match your songs on iCloud with their version. I would guess they will use a similar method for matching.
Interesting... could I theoretically upload files with bogus metadata to score a bunch of free songs?
It is a game changer because all of those features are now available on a platform with a viable App market and Harcware people want. That is the bottom line. When an Android phone becomes competitive to the two year old 3GS, let us know. PS your phone won't run Android 4. My phone will run iOS 6.
Accessible to whom is the main potential drawback of storing personal data online. I dislike mentally taking the shine off shiny new things before I even unwrap the packaging, but data security does come to mind with anything related to the cloud. It seems difficult for any enterprise to manage that line between ease of use and sufficient security
That's before throwing in the fine print paragraphs related to marketing, and to compliance with law enforcement.
Sandboxing data so it could only be retrieved via the related application(s) should help, although that might also prove inconvenient to the owner of the data. And, if the hacker focused on hacking the app rather than hacking into the data owner's overall piece of the cloud, then the hacker is sitting in the sandbox of that app. Extend that to hacking the iOS, then what? Your cheezburger is mine! So I would be guided by considering that anything I stash in the cloud is potentially just one clever hack away from accessible to the universe. With automatic sync options set on, make that universal read-WRITE. Would I care? That would depend on what I had elected to store in the cloud. I tell myself to imagine posting an item on the front window of the general store down in the village. If that doesn't appeal to me, then perhaps I don't want to stash it in the cloud.
Still, I admit I'm already a huge fan of having iTunes, iBook and App Store purchase history in the cloud, and so being able to grab that one song I bought on a laptop and forgot to put onto my iphone right away. Or bought on the iPad and have to remember to drag onto the laptop. The insufficient choice offered by the existing "transfer purchases" option in iTunes has caused me to just make a note when I bump into something I want to buy while using iPhone or iPad. Then I buy the item later, from my workhorse laptop that has my main iTunes library on it. So I am looking forward to buying a song on the iPad and later getting it from the cloud onto the laptop, yes indeedy
Understandable concerns, but the truly paranoid among us should refrain from connecting our computers to the internet at all for fear of hackers and thieves
The API is a tunnel - an application can only see it's own data. Hacking your online account is a different story, but them's the risks you take with anything you do online, as PSN users now know. There's an important logistic to consider in that case anyhow; the amount of data that is stored in cloud storage is vast -- anyone who hacks a cloud has got to be looking for something in particular, because there's no way in hell they can just take everything they see. Hacking someone's personal computer is much more appealing, because you know where to look for the juicy stuff, and I'm pretty sure I'd be more interested in juicy stuff than your collection of photos and music playlists.
But hey, hackers are creative and the more popular the target, the bigger the bullseye. You just got to cross your fingers these days!
That's what I was wondering. If the play time is exactly the same and the metadata is exactly the same... but I seem to remember something about "audio signature", which is similar to an MD6 signature of your file. If the audio in your file doesn't match the file in the iTunes Store, then it's bogus.
And that signature would probably only be a few kilobytes each, making uploading for verification quite fast.
Understandable concerns, but the truly paranoid among us should refrain from connecting our computers to the internet at all for fear of hackers and thieves
The API is a tunnel - an application can only see it's own data. Hacking your online account is a different story, but them's the risks you take with anything you do online, as PSN users now know. There's an important logistic to consider in that case anyhow; the amount of data that is stored in cloud storage is vast -- anyone who hacks a cloud has got to be looking for something in particular, because there's no way in hell they can just take everything they see. Hacking someone's personal computer is much more appealing, because you know where to look for the juicy stuff, and I'm pretty sure I'd be more interested in juicy stuff than your collection of photos and music playlists.
But hey, hackers are creative and the more popular the target, the bigger the bullseye. You just got to cross your fingers these days!
It sounds like the new APIs (and I could be wrong) aren't just a tunnel to ITS app. Afterall - doesn't it make more sense that if I have a photo, I can paste it into a document. And if I have a document - couldn't I open it up in more than one App?
App Data is of great security concern. Games might not be an issue. But what about an app like Starbucks where it stores your card/payment. Apple suggested that ALL Data gets backed up in the iCloud so if you switch devices, you can just download and go on your merry way.
That increases security issues - and none of that was discussed. I am sure it's in the new EULA.
I also mentioned before in a few posts the question of ownership of data put into the iCloud.
There was great hoopla over location data not only staying on your device for a long time - but that the file was so big. Apple "fixed" that - but doesn't that all become moot now since when you sync to the iCloud, you've just given Apple's permission to grab that data?
Will syncing be all encompassing - or will you get to choose on an app by app bases which shares data and which doesn't? time will tell...
Steve said that for the past 10 years they were trying to figure out how to get rid of the file system.
I expect some kinds of data can be accessed by all apps - much the same way the photos and contacts are exposed by iOS. There is a file system on the cloud - the docs have a series of guidelines for storing data, some of these mention document folders, and explain that users can delete data manually from the cloud, which suggests there may also be a public/ area... public to other apps, or other people, who knows. I'm sure they've considered security anyway - be a waste of a billion+ dollars if not
Either way, we'll all be better off for reading the small print before committing anything sensitive to the cloud. Not sure that credit card type info would be uploaded...that's a pretty legally iffy area.
Edit: personally, I wouldn't put my credit card details into an app that orders coffee
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Either way, we'll all be better off for reading the small print before committing anything sensitive to the cloud. Not sure that credit card type info would be uploaded...that's a pretty legally iffy area.
Edit: personally, I wouldn't put my credit card details into an app that orders coffee
Either would I. But people do. And according to the keynote - App and App Data gets uploaded when synced. So until we have first hand experiences on that - I guess we won't have an answer for certain. But unfortunately - my inclination is that sensitive data can/will be uploaded to the cloud.
Also - will each app have a pop up to have you OK this process? I am not praising nor admonishing Android - but it's my understanding that such accesses in Android have a warning screen. Or will Apple go the seamless "hidden" route?
No doubt there will be a feature curve as well. Things released with OS 5.0/iCloud 1.0 will probably morph as usage increases/sensitivities and lines are crossed...
I agree about the filesystems described, but the application for cloud based computing would be different.
Google Docs lets you do what you've described without having file system based organization method. Picasa is another example.
A general user would want to create a document/file have access to it, edit it, and send it to someone else and/or save the changes. All of those things can be done without a filesystem.
Even if a user wanted to move the doc/file offline they could with the current cloud based system.
The only thing missing from the cloud computing mix is (as you have said and I agree with) having the file open with multiple apps or apps not located in the cloud . . . Photoshop for example.
But iOS wasn't built for that kind of heavy lifting.
Access Files
Edit Files
Save Files
Send Files kind of thing.
Having to access the filesystem to access the files you need is a flaw with the system, not a feature. Filesystems are often filled with a ton of clutter that the average user wouldn't know what to do with. The app should be responsible for presenting to you all the files you need, without a filesystem, and that is exactly what most apps do on iOS. I really don't see the need for a full filesystem for anyone but us geeks. Sure, I'd like it, but I really don't need it.