iOS 5 and iCloud Discussion

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dmaul1114

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Apple is holding a conference to show iOS 5 and iCloud on Monday, June 6th.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/31/apple-to-unveil-icloud-monday-june-6/

I'm interested to see what iOS 5 brings. I really wish they'd separate the iPhone and iPad OS personally, though I doubt they will any time soon. A tablet, IMO, needs a more robust OS than a smartphone does. But that aside, I'm still interested to see what updates will be useful for the iPad.

I'm also interested well as to see what all iCloud can do, whether it's totally free etc. I don't care much about streaming music on the cloud etc., but I use Dropbox a lot so I'm interested in cloud storage in general. Both for getting stuff on and off my iPad and getting files between my work PC and home PC--not sure how functional I should expect iCloud to be for the latter....

They're also showing a new OS X update for those of you on Macs.
 
I can guarantee that many people will have unrealistically high expectations and then post "FAIL" over and over on the internets when it doesn't live up to their expectations. It happens every time. But I'm sure there will be some good stuff shown.

I'm hoping for, among other things, improvements to Game Center. At the very least, increased (preferably infinite) leaderboards per-game. Hopefully other stuff like messaging.

I'm also hoping they improve notifications, just like everybody else is hoping. And a surprise or two. Etc.
 
Not me, I have pretty low expectations. :D

Notifications do need improved, it's one thing that has me leaning strongly toward Android if I get a smartphone. iPad I just turned off notifications as they annoyed me popping up when I was reading (which is the main thing I do on my iPad), but a good notification system is a must on a phone.

Widgets is something else I'd like to see added--and another thing that has me leaning Android for a phone currently. I'd rather the lock screen be useful and be able to show weather, whether I have no e-mails etc.

The stuff I really want on the iPad like a file system, way to attach multiple files to one e-mail, USB drive support etc. I know isn't coming in iOS5, and honestly probably never, so I don't have any expectations for any major changes.
 
I would love to see cloud saves, including ones that work with universal apps. It'd be great to be able to play the same game save on my iPhone and iPad.

I also doubt you will see any separation in the iPhone and iPad os anytime soon, if ever. The iPad and iPhones are incredible successes, apple has no reason to mess with a good thing. I would guess a huge number of iPad users also have an iPhone, and most those users probably like that the devices use the same os, especially because it allows for universal apps.
 
Yeah I doubt things will change much now. I'm sure apple will wait and see how things pan out for MS (Windows 8 with a tablet friendly interface built in) before changing anything.
 
havent been too impressed with ios 5 so far. some nice new things, but nothing thats blown me away or something where i saw it and thought "finally".
 
It's looking pretty good to me. Obviously the notifications improvements are welcome, and I'm glad to see that they are borrowing some of the better aspects of Android's notifications, as well as their own tweaks, rather then just mindlessly rolling their own entirely. Of course we'll have to see how it works in practice, but so far it looks great.

I also like that they are going to have a split keyboard - that's sorely needed when using an iPad landscape.

Other tweaks like volume up acting as shutter when the camera app is up, that's a nice addition, no doubt borrowed from a number of jailbreak hacks!

iCloud ... the details are still developing, but it sounds like that's got potential. Calendar, mail, and contact sync will be free - no more paid MobileMe for that, so that's obviously good. I presume that cloud document storage will not, but as yet not certain.

EDIT: actually iCloud is all free. You get 5 GB of storage for Mail (and other stuff???), while photos and iTunes purchased music doesn't count toward that. The photos part of iCloud sounds pretty nice. The email (and all of iCloud) is ad-free. Pretty nice, that, given that it's free. Well, of course I'm sure their hope is that it pushes you toward buying from iTunes instead of other sources, etc.

EDIT2: iTunes Match is $24.99 per year. The idea is it will scan your iTunes library and match any songs you've ripped or otherwise acquired (Amazon music downloads or whatever) and match it with iTunes songs and add them to iCloud as fast as they are matched, in 256 kbps AAC format. If they are available in iTunes then they are just there, and if there's any it doesn't have, they get uploaded. End result is it doesn't take long to get your entire library into the cloud. It's a flat $24.99 per year and doesn't count toward the storage limit! Well, I'm not sure if songs that *don't* match would count toward the 5 GB or not. Remains to be seen. Either way that's pretty awesome. I have probably 100 GB of music, mostly not from iTunes, so being able to store that in the cloud for $25 a year really isn't bad at all. Especially given that I had already been paying for MobileMe about about $75 a year, I'll be paying a lot less and get something more useful!
 
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itunes match looks interesting. i have a ton of music that i ripped myself, but im pretty cautious about handing it all over to apple. especially since it'll only be music in their library and then stuff that isnt is just uploaded. a lot of my weird indie and metal music probaby isnt on there and i already have my music organized how i like it.
 
Yeah, I'm curious how much of my stuff will match. I'm definitely going to give it a shot, though. I was listening to Indie Pop Rocks just yesterday when it made me want to listen to an album that of course I didn't have on my iPhone. Plus I'm hoping, though remains to be seen, that we can do stuff like Genius mixes including everything on the cloud! I hope it can do that, but I guess I won't be shocked if it doesn't. That would be pretty awesome, though.

It's unclear to me, but I think they are saying that iCloud will be coming to 4.3, so we'll get that before 5.0 is out. However maybe they just mean it works for developers in beta form, in preparation for iOS 5. I'm not sure.
 
was this THE apple event of the year? meaning since they didnt intro a iphone5 means we get to have the latest iphone for one more year?
 
The split keyboard and wireless syncs and updates will be useful.

The rest I don't care about since I only have an iPad and have notifications turned off. The cloud stuff sounds ok, but nothing to get me to switch from Dropbox since most of my syncing is PC to PC (office and home). Cloud music I don't care about since I have all my mp3s everywhere I listen to music.

But definitely some useful updates for iphone users and people who listen to music a lot more than I do.
 
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So happy to see the notifications being redesigned. I just moved from Android to an iPhone and that was one thing I sorely missed having.
 
So it seems that iCloud may not actually support streaming of music, only downloading to devices, from what I've read. Well, that works, I guess, but it's not exactly what I was expecting. If that's true, then there better be the ability to delete tracks from your device (on your device) in iOS 5, otherwise this feature is going to be ridiculous. Add new stuff on device, but not delete? Ouch. Well, maybe streaming is in there and they just didn't mention it, or maybe they wanted streaming but there's been some hiccups with licensing and it will come later, or maybe it's going to work out well in practice without that. I'll try it first before putting out $25 a year to have my non-iTunes tracks added to it. It would still be useful to be able to load an album I had a desire to play on a whim, so it would still be useful. Just make sure I can delete albums too.

EDIT: for iPod touch and wifi-only iPad users (as well as 3G users who have more limited data), downloading is undoubtedly the better solution, though. Also it would certainly reduce network bandwidth usage. Indeed, maybe that's why there's no streaming - maybe the cell providers didn't want it. I don't know.

Otherwise I'm really happy with everything that's been announced.

Also, I thought it was pretty amazing that Apple has tens of millions more registered Game Center users then Microsoft has Xbox Live users, and that in only 9 months versus 9 years or some such comparison. I'm forgetting the numbers, but it's something like 90 million versus 50 million. Something like that. Pretty astounding. I hope that has encouraged them to at least add more leaderboards per title, which isn't something they announced, but maybe it will be there. Also, I really wanted quick profile switching on devices (i.e. without typing in a password - like the Xbox).
 
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Notifications and Wireless Sync

About fucking time Apple. Two things I hated was getting a notification from certain apps and having it automatically take me to the fucking app. That and how I have to plug my iPod to my computer to download shit.

Question though. Does anyone know if iOS 5 will allow wireless sync of podcasts or at least automatic downloading to the device? One of my biggest annoyances with iOS is I subscribe to a podcast and whenever a new episode comes out, I have to cable sync it to just get the episode on my iPod. I would love a way for them to auto download right to my device.
 
[quote name='crunchewy']So it seems that iCloud may not actually support streaming of music, only downloading to devices, from what I've read. [/QUOTE]

Wow...no streaming??? You have to be kidding me. For me, that totally defeats the purpose of cloud on portable devices. An iphone and ipad have pretty limited storage capacity so streaming opens up a ton of space. Without the future, its basically just a glorified back up system. Amazon's cloud lets you stream from any device, and also lets you put any content you want on there including movies. I cannot believe there is no streaming. Is that really the case? Maybe it's some how a miscommunication.

this article says no streaming:
http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2011/06/comparing_apple_icloud_to_other_cloud_services.php
 
its a gigantic misstep in my opinion. Amazon already kills itunes on mp3 pricing, this is just another reason to not buy music from apple. They are touting the fact that the other services require an upload, while totally ignoring that they are the only ones to require a download. The 25 dollar service sounded pretty cool in the context of streaming but loses a lot of luster for me, knowing I would just have to download the stuff any ways. I would rather have to upload stuff and be able to stream then not have to upload and not be able to stream.
 
Much as I dislike Engadget, they have a good hands-on for iOS 5. There's some good stuff in there that I didn't know about and they say they've only scratched the surface. One unmentioned niciety that I'm onboard with: keyboard macros. So if you frequently type in your email address, for example, you could make a shortcut like myem that gets changed into your address. I'm guessing this works like the spell checker, so you can cancel it if you don't want it to translate to that, but I'm not sure.

http://www.engadget.com/wwdc-2011/apple-ios-5-hands-on-preview/

And yes, the lack of iCloud music streaming definitely makes iTunes Match seem a bit odd. I have to presume that streaming was supposed to be in there, but for some reason isn't. I wonder if it wasn't a licensing issue or something of that sort? Hopefully that's what it is and they'll add streaming later, but in the mean time I'll undoubtedly skip iTunes Match because it seems a bit pointless without that. I guess it does act as a backup service. And you can load your tracks from anywhere without needing to be near your computer to do it. I think it's useful, but would be a lot better with streaming.
 
I'm going to be able to cancel my text rate plan when this roles out, I don't text that much, and when I do, it's to people with iPhones
 
I'm the opposite. The only people I text to, all two of them, don't have even a smartphone, so I guess I'll stick with my minimum text plan. Or maybe drop it and pay per text, which truthfully would be cheaper anyway. It's just a bit painful to pay per text even though the end result is better. Silly, I know.
 
I had missed this iOS 5 tidbit: wireless Airplay mirroring. I think this may only be supported on newer hardware, but don't quote me on that. I don't have an AppleTV, and you need that to do the mirroring, but I've been thinking about getting one, in large part because Netflix on my Xbox 360 sucks so bad on our internet connection, while my iPad does a good job with it, plugged into my HDTV via the HDMI adapter. My hope is the AppleTV will work similarly well. It's 720p output, not 1080p, but then I have a 720p TV, so that's fine. Come to think of it, they are calling it "Mirroring", but according to the article it's 16:9 720p, so not really mirroring. Apps will need to support it. Real Racing 2 HD will:

http://toucharcade.com/2011/06/08/real-racing-2-hd-will-be-first-to-support-airplay-mirroring/
 
Netflix is probably chugging on your 360 as you don't have the bandwidth for the quality it's trying to stream. Apple tv would probably do the same, but the iPad mirroring would work if you think it's worth the money vs just using the video adapter cable.

No option for faster Internet where your at? If so, I feel for you as my parents still don't have broadband available where their at...not even slow dsl etc. Didn't have broadband myself until I was 27 aside from living in dorms my freshmen year of college, so now I don't think I could ever move somewhere I couldn't get fast Internet since I was deprived for so long!
 
Oh, I could get FiOS, I'm just too cheap. :) We're rocking DSL, albeit I did upgrade to a faster DSL service then we use to have since it cost the same with a contract. Yeah, I know, I should pay the bucks for FiOS, but it's a lot of bucks, especially since we aren't pay-for-TV subscribers, so they charge you even more. I think the Xbox should be able to work fine on my connection - it just needs to adapt better to the bandwidth available, or even just have an option to stream at lower quality. I don't understand why it doesn't at least have that. Surely we aren't the only ones with an Xbox on DSL. I keep hoping an update will improve things, but none of them have. :(
 
Yeah, they definitely need to tweak it so it defaults to lower quality (or more quickly drops down and rebuffers) for people on a slower connection.
 
I've watched a few review videos of iOS 5 and it looks pretty nifty. I wish newsstand was added as a "shelf" within iBooks.
 
I have a developers account and iOS5 is gonna blow you guys away. Its still a bit slow at times, but playing angry birds through your apple tv (via iPad) is amazing.
 
I can't say that that is one of the more exciting things for me. ;) Lots of other good looking improvements in there, though, from what we've seen.
 
That has to be one of the stupidest articles I've read in a while, and the note at the end doesn't convince me that it wasn't just an embarrassingly misguided article, and that the author is trying to cover up his dopiness. I mean the title pretty much makes it clear that it wasn't intended as a warning for prospective early upgraders. Ridiculous stuff.
 
updated last night. so far, meh. a couple small things ive noticed so far, not even worth mentioning. but what's really pissed me off, is that not only can i not delete the newsstand app, i cant put it in a folder. wtf! so now i have this icon, for an app i dont plan on using (on an ipad, i could see myself using it, but not my iphone) just floating around my screen.
 
My favorite part of setting up iOS5 was when it asked if I wanted to set up iCloud and then I kept getting the message "cannot connect to iCloud". Awesome.
 
I like it so far, but I only have an ipad. Newstand is nice on a tablet where newspapers and magazines work well. The new notification system is MUCH better than the annoying pop up bubbles. Wireless syncing and updating will be great as well. The split keyboard on ipad is a nice option as well.

icloud worked for me last night, but I don't need that for anything really anyway as all my mail and contacts are in the cloud already as my workplace uses office365 for that stuff.
 
[quote name='Javery']My favorite part of setting up iOS5 was when it asked if I wanted to set up iCloud and then I kept getting the message "cannot connect to iCloud". Awesome.[/QUOTE]

i havent tried anything with cloud. it was too late to get into it last night and now im at work.
 
I started downloading the iPhone iOS 5 last night and 4 or 5 hours later there was still a reported 4 or 5 hours to go. Too many people trying to get it at the same time, I guess. So, no, I didn't get it installed yet. Hopefully by the time that's done, I'm hoping the iPad version will go a lot quicker.

I heard about the Newstand app. That's pretty annoying that they don't let you even put it in a folder. Hopefully enough people complain that they change that. Everything else pretty much sounds great. I can't wait to use it.
 
Camera seems quicker for me; always a plus. Also, I like that it's available from the Lock Screen now. Played around with that for a bit.

To be honest, I didn't really mind the old text bubbles...though this new system definitely looks nice.

I'm also annoyed that Newsstand won't go in a folder.

One thing they're never gonna update/change is Searching text messages...what's the point of the current search box? It barely finds anything I want it to find when searching. Does it only search for a small limited time?

For example, if I search "tr" I get two text messages...I was in the process of spelling out "train" (which got no results...even though I've used it a couple times in texts). I would be much happier if I could do a text search on any and all my text messages that I have.
 
Has anyone gotten iCloud to work? Keeps giving me an error. :|

Haven't played around with much and have class soon, but I love the minimizing keyboard in texts.
 
i got pretty excited when i realized i could make folders for photos and put pictures in there from my camera roll. but then i was immediately disappointed when i deleted the picture from my camera roll and it disappeared from the new folder. so basically, the folder is a bookmark, not an actual folder. annoying.
 
You mean moving your MobileMe account to iCloud? It kept telling me to "please try again later," and didn't work until early this morning.
 
[quote name='jacknicklson']Mine backed up when I was sleeping. It apparently backsup when its not being used

I havent tried a manual one though.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I think the default setting is to back up automatically when plugged in and in lock mode.
 
Ah, just got it to work.

I have to get a new iPhone in a couple days (my lock button is stuck), should I use iCloud to backup and then restore to my new iPhone or should I use iTunes on my computer for that? Does it really matter?
 
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