iCloud

On iCloud, again…

Dr. Drang on iCloud

I use what I consider the sweet spot of iCloud services: Calendar and contact syncing and iPhone backup. In each case, the huge convenience and timesaving that comes from using the service outweighs the occasional (and by now quite rare) frustration when it doesn’t work.

That seems to be the trend among Mac power users (see also the comments on this post).

In my experience, iCloud services are good when it comes to PIM (personal information data) data. Contacts and calendars are stable and robust. Email is OK, certainly Gmail is more flexible, but for years I haven’t needed anything more powerful. 

Cloud sync/storage and complex note taking is still something that other companies are doing better. 

On iCloud challenges and Apple’s organizational issues

 has written a report on the fact that organizational challenges are at the heart of iCloud’s below average record:

Apple is great at building hardware and software that runs on it. But it has long struggled to build services reliant on software that runs remotely rather than on devices. While company executives say they are making progress, interviews with nearly a dozen current and former Apple employees paint a different picture.

Deep organizational issues are holding up releases and complicating products.

I’ve been an advocate, and most important a user of Apple online services (note that I don’t use the word cloud, as when I started using them, they were still referred as services) since iTools. 

Despite the lack of flashy features, I’ve never had any problems with Apple’s online services. I’ve never lost any data, and to this day my old .Mac email address is impeccably spam free. 

One thing is certain though. iCloud, as MobileMe, .Mac and iTools before, are not services designed for power users. They cover the basics for the average Apple user. Convenience over power, shall we say. 

Yet lately something surprising happened. Even services that were meant designed for the average user (it just works) stopped working properly. 

  • Changing the iCloud password takes you to an endless labyrinth of lost permissions, password retyping etc. 
  • iMessage has problems reactivating when changing the iCloud password
  • iPhoto Library (beta) can’t even be activated on many devices/iCloud accounts. Fair enough it’s a beta, but at least you should be able to activate it. 
  • iTunes Match is in shambles, and I’ve used it since day zero. 
  • iCloud document sync is not at par with services like Dropbox. I’ve had problems with apps hanging or unable to upload/download large sets of documents
  • Trying to share across devices some PDF files is an herculean technical challenge. 
  • Continuity works, 75% of the time. For a feature which is constantly advertised that is not a good percentage. 
  • Maps is still a joke.
  • FaceTime lately has worse video quality than Skype.
  • iCloud Drive’s implementation suffers from the initial decision to sandbox apps and their data. 

The result is that I’ve re-subscribed to Dropbox and I’m seriously thinking of getting an Evernote Premium subscription (yes sorry, I’ve been critical towards Evernote lately…) to store my notes.

I am not sure if organizational issues are the real cause here. Maybe so, but maybe there’s something more serious going on. Something that involves strategy and roadmaps.

I am really afraid that the silly yearly OS X / iOS release cycles, and new products like the Apple Watch are diverting important resources to core services. 

iOS 8.1 and iCloud problems

512Pixels:

In short, apps using iCloud data will freeze or just crash at launch for many users. I’m seeing it all over the place in my iPhone 6, and like Fraser Speirs, can’t use apps like Keynote. Infuriating and pathetic.

I can reproduce this behaviour with Pages on my iPhone 6. The trend with Apple bugs is worrying. These are not glitches, these are usability issues that makes me wonder if Apple’s executives eat their own dog food when it comes to iCloud. 

In fact, I find it hard to believe that these bugs did not come up during QA.

How to move videos from Mac to iCloud Photo Library (Beta)

With the beta release of , all your photos and videos are stored in iCloud. Only low-res versions are stored on your iOS devices. This helps you save precious space on your iPhone.

Provided you have an Internet connection, iCloud Photo Library (Beta) lets you access the entire picture and video collection you have collected through the years.

Pictures and videos shot with your iPhone/iPad are automatically uploaded to iCloud Photo Library, but how about the media currently stored on your Mac? It would be nice to be able to access that stuff while away from your computer.

Until Photos for Mac is released at the beginning of 2015, we will have to resort to some workaround to move videos from OS X to iCloud Photo Library (Beta). In this post I’ll give you two solutions.

AirDrop

The easiest way to transfer existing home videos from your Mac to your iOS device is through . My experience shows that this method works reliably for files with less than 1GB in size. This is what you need to do:

  1. Open the Finder folder where your home videos are stored
  2. Select two-three files at a time (or in any case any number whose combined size is less than 1GB)
  3. Make sure that AirDrop is enabled on your iPhone
  4. Click on Share –> AirDrop at the top of the window

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Dropbox

The old good Dropbox is useful when you need to move to iCloud big video files. The process is straightforward:

  1. While on your Mac, copy the video file to Dropbox
  2. Access it from your iOS device
  3. Save it to your iPhone

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Conclusions

After moving my home videos to iCloud, I tested the playback speed from my iPhone. I was surprised with the lack of latency and how well the system is integrated with iOS.

Remember that these techniques work only if you have iCloud Photo Library (Beta) enabled.

iCloud security topic is an excellent clickbait

Normally I don’t do this, but I had to write about it. Yesterday, Mashable was obviously looking to sell more ads when they posted an article titled “How I Hacked My Own iCloud Account, for Just $200”.

If you want real information, scroll down to the comments. Mashable’s readers have more common sense than the journalist who wrote the article. 

Some gems:

In fact, I was able to use an iBrute-like tool to crack my own password (which, to be clear, was chosen to be extremely easy to crack. Like, it was Passw0rd1. Apple wouldn’t let me use Passw0rd, but Passw0rd1 was just fine.).

or

A small program is included with EPPB that can be run from the command line on Windows or OS X. The program searches to see if a user has the iCloud Control Panel for Windows installed (or if the user is logged into iCloud in OS X) and if it is, it copies an authentication token from the proper place and copies it to a text file for easy copying.

To the best of my knowledge, OS X stores that token in Keychain Access, which should be kept locked at all times with your computer admin password. 

And then:

As a test, I decided to see if I could successfully reset the Apple ID account password for my sister (sorry, Kelley). I entered in her iCloud username and her birthdate, and then came across two security questions.

It turns out, I only knew the answer to one of the question. Simply hitting “refresh” on the question page, however, led me to a new combination of questions. Eventually, I managed to get a pair of questions I could answer. Voila [sic], reset.

So let’s get clear, the experiment was carried out after setting a weak password, having physical access to a Mac and using social engineering techniques on the journalist’s sister. Ok..

In other news, Apple said it will step up security measures to make it more difficult to get access to an iCloud account. 

In most cases, the weakest link in security is always a person. Remember to use these techniques to protect your account. 

Increasingly more users find Dropbox overpriced

Mike Evans at MacFilos:

In my little ecosystem the biggest threat to Dropbox is from Apple’s iCloud as it morphs this autumn into iCloud Drive. This facelifted service will work very much like Dropbox, with individual file control and the ability for disparate apps to sync data.
…
The big thing is that iCloud Drive will be much cheaper, certainly much less than Dropbox at current rates. Talk is of 200GB for $48 a year (a quarter the cost of Dropbox) and a terrabyte at even lower cost per Gigabyte. Currently the Dropbox ceiling for individuals is 500GB at $500 a year.

Integration with the OS and cost are the two biggest enemies of Dropbox.

The fact that only now Dropbox is building its own datacenters instead of relying on AWS is a big handicap for the company founded by Drew Houston. In a way Dropbox is the victim of its own success. With so many customers, the monthly bill for AWS must be scary. 

There is also the integration part. You can be sure that iCloud Drive will morph even more into iOS and OS X. Dropbox will increasingly feel like something added to the OS rather than blended into it. 

In my case, iCloud Drive cannot come fast enough. I really cannot wait to ditch Dropbox and finally achieve iCloud’s nirvana. I’ve been impressed with the speed, ease of use and the way the service is transparent to the user. There aren’t any sync icons in the menubar, nothing. Just pure and simple cloud sync/storage integrated in OS X Yosemite. 

iOS 8, Yosemite and iCloud

iMore:

In iOS 7, interface deference is a big thing: Just getting out of the way to enable you to get things done with a minimum of muss and fuss. That concept is employed readily across the board in iOS 8 and Yosemite, where the emphasis is on letting users work as seamlessly and easily as possible without getting in their way.

To me this is the most exciting thing about WWDC 2014 announcements. Being able to work in the same way regardless of the device I happen to be with in that moment.

How to store your home movies in iCloud

In this post I’ll show you how to store your home movies in iCloud, in order to make them available on all your Mac’s and iOS devices.

The only software you need is and , both of them freely downloadable from the App Store. The iMovie feature you are going to use is .

To move the home videos stored on your hard-drive into iMovie and make them available on iCloud follow these steps:

  1. Open iMovie
  2. Click on the Theater tab on top of the screen
  3. Drag your home videos from a Finder window to iMovie
  4. Let your Mac consolidate its library and upload the movies to iCloud. This could take a while depending on your broadband speed.
  5. Go to any other device you own and open iMovie. In the Theater section you will see the videos you uploaded in the previous steps.

The catch here is that you can only upload movies up to 15 minutes long. In my experience that is more than enough but be aware of this limitation in case you want to upload longer videos.

For more information on this feature check this .