New iCloud Webmail, Contacts, Calendar and Find My iPhone
Before making the switch from MobileMe to iCloud last week, I was looking around for posts about iCloud’s new webmail and didn’t find any. As I’d just installed the iOS 5 GM on my iPhone, I was eager to get iCloud going as well to get a head start, but wanted to investigate the iCloud services first. I didn’t find any useful posts, but made the switch anyway. Seeing as iCloud will be free to all users now, I thought I’d give you a heads up into what you can expect!
Locate Lost or Stolen Macs with ‘Find My Mac’ in Lion and iCloud
Apple’s popular Find My iPhone feature of MobileMe is being extended to Macs as well, as part of iCloud and Lion (10.7.2). It will also allow the person who found or stole the machine to login using a limited guest account (with only access to Safari), in order to allow your Mac to connect to the internet. As with the iOS version, Find My Mac will allow you to remotely send a message, lock or even wipe your computer.
I’m guessing the geolocation will be limited to triangulating local wireless networks, but I’m hoping it will also send back the public IP address of the network it’s currently connected to, which would help significantly when trying to recover a stolen device. I wonder how developers of commercial Mac tracking software are feeling right about now?
For more info and pictures check out this post at Cult of Mac. In other news, iOS 5 will finally bring the ability to delete entries from your call history.
WWDC 2011 Reaction: Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud
I’ve been following Apple for pretty much my whole life, and I like to think that I have a good feel for how the company is going to behave. Every so often they actually manage to surprise me a little, which is always nice, and WWDC 2011 managed to do that. First off, it was nice to see Steve back in action, particularly as all the stuff he announced is essentially what he had been dreaming about and predicted as the future of technology back in WWDC ’97! Secondly, although it may not seem like it, this WWDC was different, and in my opinion is the starting point for something fairly major, both for Apple and the future of the way we use technology in general.
I don’t want this to be a long protracted post about what was announced, but here is a short recap. Read more
iCloud: Will Rebranded MobileMe Service Finally Bring Improved Services? (WWDC 2011)
[Update 10/10/2011] Here’s a summary of the new iCloud webmail, contacts, calendar and Find My iPhone.
Ok, so let me put this out there. MobileMe has been kinda broken for some time now (it’s ok Steve knows it). Yes, you can upload stuff to the gallery from iPhoto and your iPhone, and yes you can keep your contacts and calendars in sync across your devices, and you can also track your iPhone/iPad. But all-in-all, as an application it has been nowhere near the quality that you would expect from Apple for a $99 (!) yearly subscription… I would know… I’m a subscriber. I subscribe primarily because I’ve had my mac.com email account since back when it was free, and out of all the webapps, it’s the MobileMe webmail that makes me rage the most. While others like Gmail have ugly interfaces that work, MobileMe has a slick interface that works… about half the time (and the search functionality works when it feels like it).
And yet again I find myself hoping that iCloud will be a rebrand/rework of MobileMe that brings some actual value… hopefully free/cheap.
— Security Generation (@securitygen) May 10, 2011
I’ve been screaming for Apple to sit down and get MobileMe right – maybe they listened to me? Doubt it. This picture shows the new iCloud icon (spotted at the Moscone Center where the WWDC will take place), next to the current MobileMe icon. They’re pretty much identical, with Apple going back to its pro-style brushed-metal look. I’ve been speculating that MobileMe’s cloud-based motifs have been hinting at more developed features, and with the confirmed purchase of icloud.com by Apple, it became pretty clear it may actually happen.
It’s already well known that iCloud will be centered around an online music service, which would give subscribers access to their music from anywhere. How the existing MobileMe features fit in has yet to be determined. There are rumours iCloud will cost $25/year for the core music subscription. For one, I’m praying that Apple will decouple the email service from the rest of the subscription. There are also rumours that an iCloud subscription will be included with purchases of Lion, and this is highly plausible. With Apple pegged to have iAds running on iCloud services, they could stand to reap some significant advertising profits. I also hope they get their security right. A service of this magnitude has so many potential entry points. Time will tell.
The Worldwide Developer Conference is by far the most interesting of Apple’s yearly events, and I suspect Steve has a rabbit or two up his stone-washed jeans.
[Update] The answer to the title of this post is, hopefully, yes! Check out my post about the WWDC 2011 news. While I haven’t yet seen the finished products in the iCloud offering, I’m fairly confident that Steve would not allow a repeat of MobileMe. Seems like Apple did listen to me in the end, and MobileMe services will become free as part of iCloud! ;)
[Update 2] Here’s a summary of the new iCloud webmail, contacts, calendar and Find My iPhone.
Apple Launches MobileMe Beta (adds persistent SSL)
After logging into my MobileMe account today I was greeted with a small banner in the left-hand menu announcing an upcoming Mail Beta. Although I haven’t yet been upgraded to the Beta, it appears that Apple have been hard at work on turning MobileMe Mail into a full blown web email client… it’s about time.
Additions include proper formatting capability, improved layout and display, e-mail rules, and persistent SSL. With regards to that last one, although MobileMe supports SSL at the login screen to protect your credentials, all subsequent information (read: all your emails are belong to us) is sent in cleartext – an issue I posted about a long time ago. Google enabled the option to use persistent SSL for its Gmail service back in mid-2008 (although it is an option you have to specifically set in your Gmail preferences).
From my initial impressions of the beta, it definitely looks much better to begin with. The ability to view your inbox in the three (classic, compact, widescreen) views will probably be quite popular. The search field also works better. They finally allow you to scroll fluidly through your mailbox folders, however it only loads a certain number of message at a time. Now, this wouldn’t be too bad except that in this case it takes a bit too long for that loading to happen. Apart from that the persistent SSL also works nicely, so once they fix any small bugs and improve performance, I’ll consider myself happy.
Oh… and there’s rumors that MobileMe might become free. THAT would make me happy too!
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