MobileMe is officially dead.
Apple killed off the paid cloud storage service on Sunday. For months, the company had warned users the service would go dark, and urged them to switch to iCloud instead.
Any users who still haven't moved their data off of MobileMe still have a "limited time" to do so.
Users visiting Me.com, the website for MobileMe, will see a sign showing the product is closed. Below it, there is an option to move your data to iCloud.
iCloud users will have new email addresses ending in "@icloud.com" instead of "@me.com," reports MacRumors.
Apple revealed the change with today's updated release of the iOS 6 beta.
From the official iOS 6 release notes:
"icloud.com email addresses are now available for iCloud mail users. Users signing up for new Apple IDs, or enabling Mail on their iCloud account for the first time, will automatically receive an @icloud.com email address instead of a me.com email address. iCloud users with @me.com addresses that have been used with iOS 6 beta 3 will receive an @icloud.com email address that matches their @me.com address."
The beta version of iOS 6 is only available for iPhone app developers right now. But this new release means your @me.com email address will change to @icloud.com once iOS 6 launches this fall.
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AAPL Down With Markets
The market is off in early trading as Europe craters. Shares of AAPL are off with the rest of tech. The company will report earnings for its third fiscal quarter on Tuesday, July 24. Investors remain focused on iPhone penetration globally and the anticipated launch of the next generation in the fall; iPad adoption and the rumored launch of a smaller version; market share growth of the Mac business lines; the introduction of the anticipated Apple TV set and related products; and evolution of platforms such as Siri, iAd and iBooks. Shares of Apple trade at 9.8x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities).
iTunes In The Cloud Expands Internationally (Apple Insider)
While there has been no official announcement, iTunes users in quite a few new countries (including U.K., Canada and Mexico) around the world now have access to select movies they've purchased through iCloud. International roll-out of iTunes in the Cloud functionality has continued steadily since the service debuted in the U.S. late last year. Because of licensing agreements necessary to sell content like movies and music, certain material has become available at different times. Apple also expanded its iTunes Match service on Thursday to at least Poland and Hungary.
Apple Planning Second Data Center In NC (9To5Mac)
Apple has already begun building and expanding its Maiden, North Carolina data site and according to new plans sent by Apple to Catawba County, the company plans to add another 21,030-square-foot data center to it. According to the plans, Apple is planning to build a new $1.9 million data center that will house 11 rooms, t-boned to the existing 500,000-square-foot data center that’s already on the site. Along with its data center in North Carolina, Apple has also begun constructing data centers in Reno, Nevada and Prineville, Oregon.
Verizon Sells 2.7 Million iPhones In The Quarter (Apple Insider)
Half of all mobile subscribers at Verizon Wireless, the largest cellular provider in the U.S., are now smartphone users, thanks in part to sales of 2.7 million iPhones in the second quarter. Smartphone penetration in the quarter was up 13.8-percentage-points from the same period a year ago, when just 36% of Verizon subscribers had a smartphone. Total sales of Apple's iPhone through Verizon Wireless were 2.7 million units, CFO Fran Shammo revealed. In comparison, Verizon sold 2.9 million Android-based smartphones, and 2.5 million of those were 4G LTE handsets.
Verizon Hints At Fourth Quarter Launch Of iPhone (SlashGear)
Just in time for the holidays. The CFO of Verizon, Fran Shammo, also dropped a hint during the recent earnings conference call that the next iPhone may make an appearance sometime in the fourth quarter. That falls in line with past reports that indicate the next iPhone would make a debut in September or October, mirroring the introduction of the iPhone 4S and sticking to Apple’s one year cycle between new handsets.
Usage Stats Show The New iPad Is More Business Like (GigaOM)
iPad usage has been mostly concentrated on browsing the web, checking email, using apps, playing games and reading. But a subtle change took place with the release of the third-generation iPad this year: buyers of the new iPad are more likely than ever to use it for work. According to a report from CIRP, 21% of owners of the new iPad say they use it in a work situation, which is more than the 13% of all iPad owners who say the same. There’s nothing inherently more “business-like” about the iPad hardware itself: the main upgrades to the new iPad are a 4G connectivity option, a faster processor and a Retina display.
China's Population Of Internet Users Rises To 538 Million (San Francisco Chronicle)
China's population of Internet users, already the world's biggest, has risen to 538 million or an 11% increase, driven by rapid growth in wireless Internet surfing, according to the report by the China Internet Network Information Center. The government-sanctioned group said that raised the share of China's population that uses the Internet to 39.9%. The number of people who go online from mobile phones and other wireless devices rose to 388 million, up 22% from a year earlier.
MobileMe, the cloud product that was a predecessor to iCloud, is officially dead.
Apple's mobileme.com now redirects you to iCloud.com.
MobileMe launched in 2008 as a way to sync your iPhone's contacts, calendar, and email with your computer and the web. It also gave you Dropbox-like online storage.
But the $99 per year service didn't always work as advertised, causing reviewers to slam it.
Apple decided to kill MobileMe last year with its introduction of iCloud. MobileMe users had until today to migrate all their stuff to iCloud.
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One of the biggest stories in the tech world this weekend was Wired reporter Mat Honan getting "hacked, hard" in his own words. It's a pretty terrifying tale if you have anything of personal significance on your computer.
Here's what happened:
At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I didn’t use elsewhere. When I set it up, years and years ago, that seemed pretty secure at the time. But it’s not. Especially given that I’ve been using it for, well, years and years. My guess is they used brute force to get the password (see update) and then reset it to do the damage to my devices.
The backup email address on my Gmail account is that same .mac email address. At 4:52 PM, they sent a Gmail password recovery email to the .mac account. Two minutes later, an email arrived notifying me that my Google Account password had changed.
At 5:00 PM, they remote wiped my iPhone
At 5:01 PM, they remote wiped my iPad
At 5:05, they remote wiped my MacBook Air.
A few minutes after that, they took over my Twitter. Because, a long time ago, I had linked my Twitter to Gizmodo’s they were then able to gain entry to that as well.
As you can see, he initially thought the hacker guessed his password. Well, it turns out that wasn't the case.
Instead, the hacker called up Apple support and convinced it that he was Mat Honan. Because Honen is a public figure, the hacker was able to skip over some of the security questions and take over his account.
This is absolutely chilling. Apple screwed up big time, and it should explain to Honan (if it hasn't already) how this could have happen.
Over the weekend, Wired reporter Mat Honan detailed the terrifying story of how someone managed to hack into his iCloud account and remote wipe his iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air, deleting precious files in the process.
In a follow-up piece for Wired, Honan explains exactly how the hacker managed to get into his account and destroy his "entire digital life."
As it turns out, hackers only need a few key pieces of information to wreak havoc:
[W]hat happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s. Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification.
On top of this, Apple responded to Honan and admitted that it did screw up by noting that its "internal policies were not followed completely." Here's Apple's full statement to Wired:
Apple takes customer privacy seriously and requires multiple forms of verification before resetting an Apple ID password. In this particular case, the customer’s data was compromised by a person who had acquired personal information about the customer. In addition, we found that our own internal policies were not followed completely. We are reviewing all of our processes for resetting account passwords to ensure our customers’ data is protected.
Check out the entire story on Wired's website.
Good morning! Here's the news:
It's been almost a year since Apple launched its online storage system, iCloud, to the public.
Every user with an Apple ID gets 5 GB of storage for free to back up apps and settings on their iPhone, iPad, iPod. The service also syncs your photos, documents, and email with your Mac and mobile devices.
The idea behind iCloud is to be able to access all your stuff no matter what Apple device you're using.
But while iCloud is baked into all Apple products, it can be a bit confusing to use and get the most out of it. Here are some great tips to make sure you're getting the most out of Apple's cloud service.
We especially recommend syncing your contacts, notes, reminders, and bookmarks so that you can access them on any of your devices and on the web.
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Despite Apple dropping Google Maps in iOS 6, iCloud.com is still using its mapping data to track down missing iPhones, iPads and laptops.
Buster Heine from Cult Of Mac discovered this via Reddit and we confirmed that iCloud.com does indeed still rely on Google Maps.
The Find My iPhone app doesn't use Google Maps, but rather data from TomTom and its other partners. Still, both maps correctly locate our test device.
Don't Miss: Apple Had A Year Left On Its Google Maps Contract >
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Eddy Cue might have the least desirable job at Apple. Not only has he been in charge of whipping Apple’s problematic internet services division into shape, he’s just been given two more headaches to deal with: taking over Siri and Maps from departing exec Scott Forstall. Cue has long been Apple’s executive Mr. Fix It, but the task still ahead looks daunting: especially as he’s already faced with trying to keep Apple’s cloud services online.
The scope of the task is especially obvious this week. In the midst of the news that Cue would be assuming responsibility for Apple’s voice assistant technology and its nascent and much-derided Maps application, the iCloud service he oversees experienced yet another hiccup: many iCloud services were down for some users on Wednesday afternoon, according to Apple’s own system status page, with the exception of Messages and Mail (The Documents in the Cloud feature is still down as of this writing). This outage follows Tuesday’s brief episode when iMessages were coming back undelivered, iTunes Match and GameCenter were down and the App Store was unreachable.
Apple's streaming service iTunes Match is down this morning.
Yesterday, Apple's text messaging alternative, iMessage was down. So was FaceTime, its video chatting service.
The iTunes Match issue comes less than a week after a lot of people (myself included) signed up for a second year of Apple's streaming service. iTunes Match takes your entire music library, stores it in the cloud, and then allows you to stream it from any Apple device you own.
The iTunes Match problem, coupled with the frequent outages of iMessage show how unbelievably bad Apple is at Internet services.
This is going to be a problem if Apple wants to beat Android. Google, with its years of data and web services, doesn't have the same sort of downtime issues.
Apple's number one selling point used to be "it just works." Well, it doesn't just work if it's not working.
And Apple gives users no clues about why their text messages aren't sending or why they suddenly can't listen to music on their phone. The music just stops working. And the iMessages are just in this purgatory of "sending," without being sent.
So, people are just going to get mad at Apple and its inability to deliver on its promises.
The really odd thing about Apple's Internet problems is that the guy in charge of the Internet for Apple, Eddy Cue, keeps getting more and more responsibilities.
Cue is SVP of Internet Software and Services. That means he's responsible for iTunes Match and iMessage, which is constantly crashing. When Apple pushed out Scott Forstall, Cue was given Maps and Siri, two data heavy Internet services. It's Cue's job to fix those apps.
But if he's struggling to keep iMessage online, how is he going to fix Maps and Siri, which are two much bigger challenges?
Don't Miss: Apple's Biggest Mistakes
Apple, one of the most beloved companies in the world, has just received another impressive honor.
The iPhone maker received a Tech Emmy Award at CES 2013 from the National Academy of Television Arts.
Apple’s award is for an “Eco-system for Real Time Presentation of TV Content to Mobile Devices without the use of Specialized Television Hardware”, reports Forbes.
We don't know yet what product this is actually referring to but many are guessing that the win is for Apple's iCloud.
This isn't the first time that Apple has received a tech Emmy award. It took home an Emmy in 2001 for the invention of FireWire, in 2002 for video-editing software Final Cut Pro, and two more in 2005 and 2006 for “Streaming Media Architectures and Components.”
Don't Miss: Here's What Apple REALLY Said About A Cheap iPhone (We Think) >
iCloud, Apple's web-based service that syncs content between your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, went down early this morning.
9to5Mac first noticed the outage.
The outage means Apple Internet services like email, calendar, contacts, photo backup, iPhone/iPad backup, etc. did not work for most users.
As of this writing, it looks like some features in iCloud are still down, including photo and document syncing and iPhone/iPad backups.
Apple is often criticized for blowing it when it comes to web services like iCloud and iMessage. Both go down all the time or fail to work as advertised. This is just the latest in a series of screw ups.
Apple has a service called iCloud. It doesn't work as well as it should, and even Apple's biggest defenders concede its a real problem.
iCloud is supposed to allow users to sync photos, emails, video, music and lots of other data between their iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It's also supposed to allow the people who build apps for iPhones, iPads, and Macs to build in data-syncing.
The problem is that, for this second use, iCloud doesn't always work very well.
Yesterday, The Verge's Ellis Hamburger published a massive story on the topic, calling iCloud "Apple's broken promise."
Hamburger writes, "Customers demand iCloud integration more than ever from third-party developers, but it’s a total mess to implement."
The story goes on to quote lots of developers complaining about iCloud and Apple.
Here's how you know Hamburger is on to something. Two of Apple's loudest – sometimes crankiest – defenders on the Internet linked to his story and gave it high compliments.
Daring Fireball's John Gruber, who gets private briefings with Apple executives before product launches, once called a story by Busines Insider's Steve Kovach "jacktastic," because it said that Samsung was out-innovating Apple lately.
But yesterday, he linked to Hamburger's story and called it a "devastating piece" on "the calamitous state of iCloud Core Data syncing: users want it, but it simply doesn’t work reliably."
Late last year, Gruber wrote post suggesting that iCloud is so bad, Apple should actually spend billions of dollars acquiring Dropbox.
One recurrent theme I see in nearly every single “how I write on the iPad” story is Dropbox. It’s the linchpin in the workflow. Scary, because Dropbox is outside Apple’s control. Scary, because if not for Dropbox, many of these people would not be using their iPads as much as they are. Scary, because Apple’s iCloud falls short of Dropbox.
Then there's The Loop's Jim Dalrymple.
Dalrymple is an almost comically intense Apple partisan on the Internet. Once, All Things D's Peter Kafka once noted that Apple doesn't break out sales figures for the iPad Mini. For this crime, Dalrymple wrote a blog post calling Kafka an "assclown." Rude.
But yesterday, Dalrymple linked to Hamburger's story and said: "Ellis Hamburger wrote a great piece about why we haven’t seen more app developers supporting iCloud."
There's a reason iCloud's failures are so important to Apple defenders like Gruber and Dalrymple.
In our increasingly Internet-connected world, consumers will have the simple expectation that their software and data will travel with them for device to device.
If Apple can't meet that expectation, someone else will. Probably Google, maybe Amazon or Samsung.
It's been a year and a half since Apple launched its online storage system, iCloud, to the public.
More recently people have been talking about the storage system's shortcomings, calling it "broken."
Every user with an Apple ID gets 5 GB of storage for free to back up apps and settings from their iPhone, iPad, or iPod. The service also syncs your photos, documents, and email with your Mac and mobile devices.
The idea behind iCloud is to be able to access all your stuff no matter what Apple device you're using.
But while iCloud is baked into all Apple products, it can be a bit confusing to use and get the most out of it. Here are some great tips to make sure you're getting the most out of Apple's cloud service.
Apple's two-step verification process adds an extra layer of security to your iCloud account. It requires you to enter a second unique password every time you log in. It's easy to set up:
Apple makes you wait approximately three days before you can enable two-step verification.
It's been two years since Apple launched its online storage system, iCloud, to the public.
In the past few months, people have been talking about the storage system's shortcomings, even calling it "broken."
Every user with an Apple ID gets 5 GB of storage for free to back up apps and settings from their iPhone, iPad, or iPod. The service also syncs your photos, documents, and email with your Mac and mobile devices.
The idea behind iCloud is to be able to access all your stuff no matter what Apple device you're using.
But while iCloud is baked into all Apple products, it can be a bit confusing to use and get the most out of it. Here are some great tips to make sure you're getting the most out of Apple's cloud service.
Apple's two-step verification process adds an extra layer of security to your iCloud account. It requires you to enter a second unique password every time you log in. It's easy to set up:
Apple makes you wait approximately three days before you can enable two-step verification.
If you're having any issues with iCloud services today, don't panic – it's nothing you did. In addition to some iMessage trouble right now, it sure looks like an off-day for iCloud.
We'll keep an eye on things and let you know when everything is back up and running.
Here's what Apple's System Status page looks like right now:
iCloud now comes standard with any new Apple device. It is an extremely useful tool for backing up and syncing content amongst all of your devices, but is often overlooked.
What's even better is the fact that you get 5 GB of space for free. Watch below to how to take advantage of your iCloud service. Click for sound.
Produced by Justin Gmoser; Hosted by Will Wei
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Apple announced major updates to the Mac version of its iWork productivity suite at its October 22 event for the iPad in addition to the tablet versions remade for iOS 7.
While there's been quite a bit of backlash about the features taken out of its desktop apps, I haven't read much about the new iPad or iCloud versions of the suite.
When a friend asked me to crunch some data for him, I knew I had a perfect opportunity to put Numbers, iWork's equivalent to Microsoft Excel, through its paces on the iPad and in the browser.
It didn't go well.
The next version of iOS, Apple's operating system for iPhones and iPads, could have a deeper connection to its desktop operating system OS X through iCloud, its online data service, reports Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac.
Gurman writes that Apple is considering adding its Text Edit and Preview applications to iOS. Those two apps are already part of OS X. Text Edit lets you view simple text files and Preview lets you view PDFs and other standard document formats.
The OS X versions of Text Edit and Preview already sync with iCloud, but there's no way to get those files on your iPhone or iPad. Gurman reports that the iOS apps will bridge that gap.
Finally, Apple is thinking about releasing new iCloud tools for developers that would make it easier for users to store app data online. iCloud sort of lets you do that now, but developers have routinely complained that it's a pain to use and not always reliable.
It's a symbolic move too. Apple VP Craig Federighi has merged the iOS and OS X teams so they can work closely together. The improved iCloud integration between the two operating systems means Apple is thinking of new ways to improve an area where it's typically fallen behind its rivals — software and services.
Assuming it keeps to its pattern, Apple will likely announce the new version of iOS at its developers conference this summer. It will then give developers access to an early version of the software so they can test their apps. New versions of iOS typically launch in the fall, around the time Apple releases new iPhone models.
