iOS 5, iCloud, new apps to arrive 12 October
Written by Matthew JC Powell Wednesday, 05 October 2011 04:45
At this morning's "Let's Talk iPhone" event in Cupertino, Apple again demonstrated new features coming to iOS 5, most of which we'd seen before, as well as integration with iCloud, which we hadn't, and announced updated iCloud-aware versions of its iWork apps for iOS. All of these things are going to arrive on the 12th of October.
Apple clearly has a great deal of faith in its ability to roll out data on that kind of scale — faith clealy not founded in the debacle of the App Store/iPhone 3G/MobileMe launch a few years ago. Lessons learned, one hopes.
iCloud will do everything MobileMe does — synchronise contacts, calendars and mail between your Mac and other devices — and more. You can also keep photos, documents, App Store and iTunes purchases synchronised between devices. It also includes a backup service so you can keep your iOS device backed up without having to connect it to a Mac at all — and restore it if necessary, including all your apps and songs.
With iCloud-enabled apps, you'll be able to work on a document on one device, then go to another synchronised device and start working on the same document exactly where you left off. Apple's iWork apps for iOS will be the first to support this, but expect it to be rolled out in the near future on other apps.
A few new tricks have been added as well. Find My Friends is similar to MobileMe's Find My iPhone, except that it allows you to broadcast your location (via your phone) to select contacts so that they can (for example) find you in a crowd or on a beach. You can do this constantly (so your buds can always track you down) or temporarily (just while you're at Dream World and don't want to misplace the kids — assuming they have iPhones too. They do, right?)
Photo Stream, another iCloud feature, keeps photos you take on your iOS devices (such as with the snazzy new camera on the iPhone 4S or the exceedingly non-snazzy camera on the iPad 2) synchronised across devices. Take a photo on the iPhone and edit it on the iPad's more generous screen, for instance, without particularly having to do anything.
The other difference between iCloud and MobileMe is the price, or rather lack thereof. iCloud is free for a relatively paltry 5GB of storage, though paid upgrades are available (Australian pricing not available yet). If you're a MobileMe member you'll be able to transition your account over (noting that you lose access to iDisk) or stay with MobileMe until June next year when it's shut off.
In the meantime, the 12th of October ought to be a fun old time. Given the apparently overwhelming burden placed on the internet by people wanting to follow this morning's event (followed by the collapse of apple.com for some minutes) all the downloading of iOS and apps might just be too much.
