Just keeping up with a few liveblogs from Apple's event today.. So far, all the additions are exactly the things I jailbroke my iPhone 4 to get. Improved notifications, hardware camera button, lockscreen info, etc.. The main issue I have with the iPhone can't be solved with software though, the screen is just too small to make the best of these updates. Everything looks great on the iPad, but there's a reason why certain features aren't being demoed on the iPhone.. I don't subscribe to any magazines, and I don't use or care about Twitter, iOS is becoming less relevant for me iMessage is the same idea as BBM. Same issues here, everyone I know doesn't have the same type of phone! This was a problem when I had a Blackberry, and there's the same issue now. There's still nothing wrong with SMS, it does its job. OTA updates and built-in photo editing are the top features for me (no more Photoshop Express!). Lion seems nice, Synaptic was always my favorite feature of Ubuntu and I'm glad that we'll start seeing similar stores on Windows and OSX. Multitouch improvements also look quite awesome. Thoughts, etc?
+1 as a jailbroken iphone user, im pretty much set with most of those updates. here's my list with + indicate my list of want-ness (alread achieved with jailbreaking and using now are marked with *) Notification +++* Subscriptions twitter integration Safari Reader and tabs ++ Reminder + Camera +++* Mail ++ Computer free ++ Game centre iMessage ++ with these improvements, i feel iOS now has a chance as a good tablet OS. just still need jailbreaking for SBsettings and Activator. more complete info here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/apples-ios-5-all-the-details/
Simply. Profit from selling iDevices is high enough, and they expect that putting thing like this on feature list will give the buyers another plus point for the iDevices against non-iDevices. @gilljoy: no ads, according to engadget.
by selling you soul, firtborn and spare internal organs, on a more serious note, i'm assuming it'll work like Ubuntu One or Live *whatever* [they keep changing the name], a set amount of space, maybe the odd advert.
No ads, Jobs was very specific about that. Paid for by the massive massive pile of cash Apple are sitting on. You get 5GB of space for Mail and documents, and then a rolling 1000 photos for sync. It's $25 a year for the iTunes service that replaces your pirated/ripped music with 'legit' copies from iTunes and the associated sync rights (being able to re-download at will, cloud sync etc). Wireless sync is great news, ditto notifications, iMessage and OTA updates. Combine with iCloud and I think Apple are a jump ahead again, at least with software. I can see iMessage being used a lot - probably 50% of my friends and work colleagues have iPhones.
It's a great set of features.: Notifications upgrades was a given (About time) Downgrading the PC/Mac to device status is brilliant. No need to plug in the iOS device to sync / upgrade. Over the air delta OS upgrades! The volume / shutter button is a lovely little addition too, but I do feel sorry for the Red pop guys. But they've already got the cash so it's not so bad, but I bet they won't sell millions now. And iCloud, kind of like an always on fully wired in dropbox. Nice! I would love to know how much it'll be to get more than 5GB as that includes your media and apps but doesn't "appear" to include app data, so across my phone and pad I'm going to need way more than 5 measly gigabytes. I'm not sure I'm happy there's still no retina graphic support. So for apps that support retina but don't have an iPad version or aren't truly iPad aware they still scale up to blocky-blocky 320x res making them next to useless. But I guess that's the point, means the developers are forced to make a proper iPad compatible version... hence 90k ipad apps. Be interesting to see what new iOS hardware we get to see this year.
I'll be honest there'll be music in my library I have no idea if I've got the CD for or not. I've lost CDs, had them stolen from cars etc. Inserted loaners with auto-rip engaged etc. I wonder if an agency of one flavour or another will want to use this data to seek out copyright infringement cases. Those with crazy crazy library sizes attached to iTunes accounts with little or zero purchases. The algorithm to spot infringement will be so easy to write when you know what people have and what they purchase, especially if people are seen to have the same files available on torrents. Here's what they "could" do... Do their own torrent downloading to "match" your files bit for bit with those from all the torrents out there. When teams scatter the directories and tags with their names and "torrent downloaded from" signature files they won't even have to be very clever at it. If someone has data proven to be from a torrent, and they are buying way less music than is in their library then they could be flagged as a "suspect" downloader. Someone who's then very easy to spot on the torrent networks if they use the same network location to torrent and iCloud sync. Personally, I don't think they're going to do this. I think the 25 a year scheme is to get some cash from those thieving and to allow upgrading to cloud status of legitimate libraries. Just because they can (with some degree of certainty) take a guess at what is a legitimate library ripped from CD and what came from the torrent 'cloud' doesn't mean they will do so. The music companies know you can't stop piracy overnight, so they've agreed to this music locker scheme (and the others from google and amazon) to bring in extra £$€ I can't wait for it to be available, my library isn't "that" big but it's too big to keep on my laptop SSD, iPhone or iPad, so it'll be nice to have access to all of it from anywhere and everywhere.
All look like solid additions to iOS to keep it competitive. Looks like I won't need to jailbreak it either. Perhaps Apple have done enough to keep me on the bandwagon when it comes to replace my 3GS - we'll see what the device landscape looks like when the next iPhone is announced.
Between OSX Lion, iCloud and iOS5, I think Apple just increased Brand Loyalty and integration of their devices. The only issue I have now is that my internet line at home is slow, meaning my 3G bill will go up... but that can be changed. Also, I now (thank you, iCloud) have a valid reason to have an iPad for work... damn... more money spent. iOS5 especially, looks great.
I too doubt they'd do this - the backlash against Apple would be epic if it happened, and would drag their name through the dirt. This is basically the music industry finally realising that people do rip CDs and download music and now trying to get some level of money back, rather than realising zero revenue. After all, the person has already got the music, it's do this or get nothing. I've got a lot of ripped music in my iTunes library - but then I have a big CD collection they came from too.
Agreed - the notion is absurd. I've bought all of two tracks from iTunes store and yet own 300 albums - all purchased legally in (gasp!) a bricks and mortar record store. A record company attempting to use the completely circumstantial evidence of "oh he has X tracks and 0.01% of those are iTunes purchases" would be laughed out of court, and a huge amount of bad press generated.
I have thousands of songs on my playlists and none of them have been purchased from iTunes. I'm pretty sure some of the MP3's I have on my phone would never appear on iTunes as they are white label 12" from the 80s' & 90s'.
By the way, i have another solution for your dilemma (aka how does the free work) : http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/ $99 per year from every developer, or $299 per year from every company... That covers lots of hard drives and lots of computers . PS: There goes the idea of developing a iOS app... I think i will stay with Android development, that is just a one time $25 fee .
Also: It's obvious where Apple is making its money now: in selling the content, not providing the service. That's why Lion is so cheap to upgrade - it makes more sense for Apple to have its users up to date and able to buy more stuff from them.
iTunes Match will let you upload those songs to the cloud if they don't have them, if you really want to. And the stacks of high-margin hardware they sell. Apple make their money on their 30% cut off the App Store, movie rentals/purchases and music as well. $99 is incredibly cheap. You could indeed go the Android route, but you'll make significantly less money. The industry as a whole has been commenting recently about how iOS sales of apps is way, way higher than the same app on Android. So that $75 difference becomes meaningless.
Also because Apple aren't REALLY in the OS business. Their money comes more from hardware than from software sales, I would guess. They are using software to supplement the hardware, rather than using hardware to make the software work. It fits in with Apple's "it just works" mentality to have software available cheaply, TBH.
The main topic of my post was that no wonder they can offer services like iCloud, when every iOS developer pays at least $99 or more . The second part was just a expanded "sigh" on my part, i'm still thinking about it, it's just that when you have ~1100€ netto sallary per month then that $99/year doesn't sound that cheap (0,51% of my yearly sallary ; plus you need to buy a apple os x device, which is another 700-2000€; plus you should buy a iOS device too, which is another 200-600€).
