Today we're beginning a series exploring the world of cloud services from a consumer's point of view. The word "cloud" refers to an online repository for your software, applications and data. Steve Jobs called this a "digital hub" and, as he explained to his biographer Walter Issacson, "over the next few years, the hub is going to move from your computer into the cloud." Even if you're not an Apple user, the move to a cloud hub is coming your way no matter whose hardware you use. It's going to be a big transition.
We have a special channel devoted to exploring the Cloud from a business point of view, called ReadWriteCloud. But over the past year it's become increasingly apparent that cloud services will soon rule the lives of consumers too. Which cloud service, or combination of cloud services, is right for you?
In theory, security researcher Charlie Miller was just trying to help. Apple's iOS is probed by malicious hackers constantly. They want a way in. To this point, Apple has been successful in keeping them out. It is one of the values of its iron fist rule over the App Store and the iOS user experience. Miller found a way in and planted a sleeper app in the App Store that he was going to use to present the security flaw at a conference in the coming weeks.
In planting the malicious app, Miller violated Apple terms of service and has been suspended from the iOS developer program for a year and his app has been removed. What the app did was get around the code signature requirement for iOS apps and allowed the app to connect to a command-and-control server to download additional code to the application.
For those of us who have grown accustomed to purchasing things from our laptops, tablets and smartphones, the experience of walking into a physical store and standing in line can get tiresome. It's hard to top the immediacy and convenience of online and mobile shopping. Yet, there are still plenty of items that are best purchased in person.
Apple hopes to bridge the gap between these digital and physical worlds. The company just released an update to its Apple Store app for iOS. Using the application, customers can not only purchase Apple products like they can on the Apple website, but they can now opt to pick them up in person at one of the company's many retail locations.
Over the weekend I finished reading the authorized biography of Steve Jobs,
by Walter Isaacson. It's a hefty 650 pages and spans the entire life and career of Steve Jobs, the iconic Apple co-founder who sadly passed away a month ago. The biography is well worth reading, I gave the book 5/5 stars. I'll even say that it should be required reading for technology entrepreneurs and anybody who wants to be a leader in our industry. The biography is a sympathetic one, so don't expect to read a great deal of criticism about Steve Jobs. Despite that, it's a well-rounded portrayal of a man destined to be remembered as one of the great product visionaries of our time.
There's plenty to learn from the biography. Here are three of the main lessons that I took from the book. Each comes from an aspect of Steve Jobs' own personality, which he managed to instill into his company Apple. (Note: don't worry, there aren't any spoilers in this post!)
Apple had a great month in the new app department, mostly spurred by the release of the iPhone 4S and all the iOS5-based applications that developers have been working on throughout the summer. Android also had an interesting month for new apps but the real intriguing flood will come whenever Ice Cream Sandwich becomes widely adopted and, finally, we can start adding real Android tablets apps to our apps of the month column. Check out the selections for October 2011 below. We again brought back the updates portion of the column, with a list at the bottom of important app updates users should be aware of. Check it out below.
The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.
The perception among younger adults is that everybody owns a smartphone. When numbers like 50% of U.S. cellphone owners have apps, the reaction inevitably comes, "only 50%?" It is easy for adults, say those from 25-44 years old, to forget that there is a significant portion of the U.S. population that does not own cellphones, let alone those of the smart variety. Mobile penetration in the United States is at 77%, which lags behind many other developed countries.
Nielsen came out with its third quarter mobile numbers today and the demographics are intriguing. The reason that young people feel like everybody has smartphones is because they do. 62% of people 25-34 years old have smartphones. Of all cellphones in the U.S., 43% of them are smart.
Thus far, users of iOS devices have had to compromise on how their Google Web services work on their touch devices, using browser-based apps. For Gmail users, the compromise is mostly over. The native Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch has just been approved in the iTunes App Store. It runs on iOS 4 or better.
The app adds email push notifications and sounds. It has fast inbox search, autocomplete from both Gmail and native contacts and photo uploads. It has priority inbox, conversation threading, and all the labeling, starring and archiving features that Gmail users need. And of course, its fully enabled with touch gestures. But it's a Web view. It's not a local email app (though Gmail does cache your messages offline - thanks, readers). And it doesn't support multiple accounts. Oh well. At least it's nice to touch.
The world of mobile content creation just got a whole lot more functional. Seven months after releasing its music recording and sequencer program Garage Band as an iPad app, Apple has shrunk the app down even further to fit it on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Garage Band for iPhone is impressively capable for a mobile application. It may be a bit tedious, but one could viably use the software to record and edit an entire album of music, albeit with a few limitations. It comes with built-in synthesized instruments, as well as the ability to plug a guitar or microphone into the device to capture real sounds.
Apple device owners who want to store their music collections in the cloud and listen to them on their iOS-powered devices had better keep waiting for iTunes Match. Using competing services like Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, it would appear, is off-limits for iPhone and iPad owners. There's a setting within iOS 5 to activate iTunes Match, but the feature won't work until the next version of iTunes is released.
Apple recently pulled a third party app that let users stream music from their Amazon cloud locker, reportedly due to legal concerns.
Before Apple even officially announced the iPad, traditional publishers started to get excited about the potential of the device. Much like the iPod did for music, Apple's rumored tablet could help them make the transition to digital, and perhaps even allow them to solve the problem the Web couldn't: monetization.
The iPad finally did launch, followed by its slimmer, fast successor and magazines and newspapers began developing native apps for the device. More recently, iOS 5 came along and brought with it Newsstand, a feature that gives publications special treatment and a storefront from which they can sell subscriptions (if they can stomach Apple's revenue share scheme).
