Posts Tagged: iphone

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9
Jun 11

iCloud Single Sign-On

Apple announced iCloud earlier this week, and this has been a long time coming. Not in that the feature itself is something that everyone has been asking for, but it solves a problem many applications have: maintaining state between hardware devices.

Google’s answer to this problem is that the device doesn’t matter. Its all about the browser. Apples answer is iCloud — it’s all about apps.

[A short recap for those just joining the conversation, iCloud is a thing that enables sharing of data between your devices. You take a picture on your iPhone, and moments later that photo is on your iPad, in iPhoto on your Mac, and even the photos folder on your PC. Apple is initially building this into many apps: iTunes, Photos, App Store, iBooks, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Backup, Contacts, Calendar, and Mail]

Why is this important?
Today maintaining state between computers, smartphones and tablets relies on a hodge-podge of technologies:

  • Mail is kept in sync using special imap server settings on each device.
  • Music is sync’d only with a cable connected to iTunes running on just one computer. Same for bookmarks, photos, iBooks.
  • Kindle books, probable the closest in style to iCloud, syncs through my Anazon login. Yet that one login on each device gets me precious little beyond the books.
  • Calendars use a mashup of CalDAV, Googles services, and Microsoft Exchange. My address book is in a similar situation.
  • OmniFocus todo’s are sync’d through a custom WebDAV folder on my edstrom.net server.
  • Dropbox, one of my favorite utilities, also comes close. Their big claim to fame is their open API which many applications have adopted instead of building their own sync layer. And there is certainly demand for it: take a look at all the Dropbox apps.
  • Games may or may not save state…

In a lot of ways, I think iCloud is the answer to the old buzz catch-phrase: Single Sign-On. Now I can sign into any device -once- and all my apps, my photos, my documents, my music … will all be there. Outside of the browser window.

 

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16
Jan 11

Apps are a Bigger Deal than Music

Horace, in his understated way of saying things, talks about iOS app downloads:

“Growth like this is hard to get one’s mind around. Not only are downloads increasing, but the rate of increase is increasing.”

His chart where he compares app downloads to music downloads in the iTunes store helps. The iTunes store became the biggest music retailer in less than 5 years after initially opening, displacing Best Buy and Wal-mart. Note the speed of getting to 10 billion downloads:

Personally, I have 223* apps in iTunes, and there are three iOS devices in our house. Doing the math, I get 74 app downloads per device.

* After a one-time attempt to vainly delete the unused ones.

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11
Jan 11

iTunes Challenge

I need your help. Or at least I think I do. It’s a technical problem.

Here’s the situation:

I have a media iMac at home. I have an iPhone and an iPad that sync music, podcasts, books, apps, movies, and photos to this media machine. I don’t sync the contacts, calender or email through iTunes as those go through the cloud.

I recently started using a MacBook at work. I’d like to switch synchronizing the iPhone and iPad to the work machine. I’m not sure entirely why. Some vague reasons that have crossed my mind:

  • It’s a nicer and faster computer than my 5-year old iMac.
  • I could download new apps or books from iTunes instead of searching within the App Store on iOS.
  • New podcasts would download during the day to listen to on my commute home.
  • I’m more likely to sync to my work computer than my home machine.
  • The old iMac’s USB doesn’t charge the iPad at all unless the screen is off, so I’ve started charging both devices at work.
  • I don’t really use the iMac at home other than to store stuff.

The problem, however, is the media. Podcasts will download on their own, so that doesn’t seem to be a problem. And with iTunes Sharing, I can sync the files — or at least a lot of them, but I won’t get the play counts and I don’t have the space for all of the media (the iMac has a pretty full 1/2  TB drive). And it only works at home when I actually have the work computer on with iTunes running. Yet, there does not seem to be a way to sync smart playlists (maybe I just recreate them? but again, the play counts which are vital to many of my smart playlists, are missing). And iPhoto synchronizing from a shared library is manual only. This is a bigger issue, because my wife and I take lots of photos of our kids, and I really appreciate how new photos taken with our SLR or iPhone just magically show up on the iPad after a sync.

So … is this a fictions first-world problem that I invented and needs no solution? Or is it a real problem? How would you solve it?

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4
Jan 11

AirPlay

Adam Lisagor on Why AirPlay Is Important:

“AirPlay is important in the evolution of media because the tech infrastructure Apple has been building for more than a decade is finally maturing enough to reach that holy grail of weightlessness.”

The idea that you can easily present a slide show, play a video or movie, play a song, play a video game or whatever … from the device you are holding to the TV on the wall is very intriguing. No need to switch remotes, configure the “source” for the video, or anything else. Just choose “play” and choose “that screen over there”. Weightless indeed.

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2
Dec 10

Build an App or Web Site?

The lines between what a mobile app does, and what a web site can do are blurred, and it isn’t clear always which is the best. A new study tries to make sense of it: To App or Not?

“Mobile users like apps when all they want is a self-contained experience, like a game. When they want the freedom to chart their own course, they prefer mobile Web experiences.

Omniture measured the preferences and behaviors of 1,200 mobile users in four key consumer categories: products and shopping, financial services, media and entertainment, and travel. In all four categories, users leaned toward experiences mediated through the browser of the mobile Web. [...] The exceptions to the rule: Social media, games, and other mini-experiences, like maps, in which cases they prefered apps.”

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