Many people I’ve talked to are anxious to try out the new features Apple has brought to OS X Mountain Lion. Unfortunately, Apple has only made the beta of Mountain Lion available to registered developers. In this video, I’ll show you how you can get the biggest features of Mountain Lion today, using only existing apps.
As spotted by MacRumors, it looks like iCloud.com might soon get iOS 5 and Mountain Lion style notifications, with Apple currently testing a new notification service on the website.
What do you think? I’m not sure I need yet another place to get notifications, thank you.
Source: MacRumors
Continuing the company’s efforts to transition existing MobileMe users away from the now-defunct service to iCloud, Apple has extended the deadline for customers to take advantage of free iCloud storage amounting to 20GB. MobileMe users with 20GB or more of files have had access to 20GB of free iCloud storage for months, with the extra storage space set to expire in June of 2012. After the deadline, users transitioning away from MobileMe have the option to purchase the 20GB iCloud plan for $20 per year or default to the free 5GB plan.
In an update to its FAQ page, Apple has quietly extended the free storage deadline from June to September of 2012.
Greenpeace likes to target Apple every year or so to keep them environmentally honest, and lately, the environmental access group has been going after Apple’s giant data supercenter in Maiden, North Carolina, claiming that it helps make iCloud one of the dirtiest things on the planet.
What Greenpeace is upset about is how much of the data center’s power comes from non-renewable resources, particularly coal. And they don’t think that Apple’s going far enough with its plans for solar energy plans.
Now the protests are getting real, with seven Greenpeace activists blocking train tracks used by Duke Energy and Apple use to ship coal.
Even with iCloud now up and running, Dropbox is still one of the best ways to sync documents between your Mac and iOS devices. It’s so great that all kinds of iOS apps — task managers, word processors, and even games — use Dropbox to send your data to the cloud so that you can access it on any of your devices.
However, Apple just turned up to the party swinging its banhammer. The Cupertino company has begun rejecting certain iOS apps that use the Dropbox SDK simply because they link to the Dropbox website.
This entire week we’ve been showing you guys how to take your DVD movie collection, rip the movie files off your DVDs, and get those movies playing on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Thanks to the software gurus at Digiarty, the entire process is free this week to Cult of Mac readers because Digiarty is giving away their popular MacX DVD Ripper Pro Stream Edition software absolutely free to anyone who reads Cult of Mac and has a pretty smile.
Yesterday we showed you how to rip your DVDs onto your computer, but what if you don’t want to waste all your iPhone or iPad’s storage space on movie files you might not watch for a while? Well, Digiarty has an easy-to-use solution which solves that dilemma. Air Playit is part of the free giveaway package Digiarty is handing out, and it turns your Mac into a server that will stream your ripped DVD movie files straight to your iPad or iPhone. It’s so simple your grandma can do.
Follow these three steps to get your ripped DVDs streaming to your iPad or iPhone right now:
Microsoft’s online file storage service SkyDrive, got a boost today with the announcement of some new features, including a native Mac client app for OS X Lion. While SkyDrive might lack some of Dropbox’s more advanced features on OS X, it does offer something only a giant like Microsoft can afford: 7 GB of free space for everyone, and up to 25 GB if you already have a Windows Live ID and sign up fast enough.
Abvio has updated its trio of iPhone fitness apps — Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter — with iCloud support and a bunch of new features. The biggest improvement, though, is that they are no longer annoying to use.
There have been rumors circulating for some time about Google releasing its own cloud storage service. According to reports, the service is on the verge of release a launch expected next week. Google’s service will enter a crowded market of cloud providers that includes Apple’s iCloud, Box with its new OneCloud feature, and the popular Dropbox.
Public cloud services like these tend to concern business and IT leaders because of the ease with which data migrates out of the office when they’re widely used. A Google service is likely to engender even more privacy and confidentiality issues on the part of businesses – and for good reasons that should concern anyone considering using it.
Apple finally gave the notice that it would be killing off MobileMe once and for all on June 30th, 2012. The soon-to-be-defunct service has already been replaced with iCloud, but Mac users who are still not running an OS X version older than Snow Leopard can’t hop on the bandwagon. You must have Snow Leopard installed to then install OS X Lion from the Mac App Store and gain access to iCloud. And chances are that if you’re still using MobileMe, you aren’t running the latest version of OS X.
Almost every cloud storage service on the Internet operates using a freemium model. Anyone who signs up gets a certain amount of storage for free. When someone uses up all their free storage, they can add more for a fee. Cloud providers usually layer on a few extra features for paid customers like the ability to stream audio files or the ability to restore deleted files or older versions of documents. Just like most companies now, they to outsource the support process making it easy for clients to resolve issues easily. Netzen is a company that provides IT support to businesses in the UK, consider checking them out if you need help with your IT.
With so many free options, however, it can be tempting to use multiple services simultaneously. Add files to a free Dropbox account up till the free 2GB, then create an account with Box for the next 5GB (Box’s free limit), then create a SugarSync account and on and on.
This approach, known as cloud squatting, effectively nets users unlimited free storage so long as they’re willing to play an ongoing game of musical chairs with their data. iOS and other mobile apps that can access and edit files across different services make it surprisingly easy for users to become cloud squatters – and it’s surprisingly difficult for a business or IT department to prevent or deal with cloud squatting employees.
Apple has been increasingly interested in powering its operations with that happy old sun, working on a 20-megawatt solar farm coupled with a 5-megawatt fuel cell facility at its data supercenter in Maiden, North Carolina. But that’s not nearly good enough, according to Greenpeace. In fact, the environmental activist group has gone so far as to call Apple out for using “asthma-inducing, climate-destroying coal” which makes the iCloud “the dirtiest thing on the internet.”
It seems that every week for the past few months, there’s been at least one or two announcements of app developers, cloud service providers, and mobile management vendors developing strategic partnerships to create or integrate their products into a single unified workflow.
Box’s OneCloud initiative, in which the storage provider teamed up with more than two dozen app developers to create seamless workflows for several different business and productivity tasks, is probably the biggest example of this trend. Others include Quickoffice launching its own cloud service as well as integrating with Accellion’s kitedrive, LogMeIn’s new Cubby service, and CloudOn’s virtualized version of Microsoft Office that integrates with Box and Dropbox for storage.
Apple has lost an appeal against a court ruling in Germany to have its iCloud push services restored. The service was disabled back in February after it was ruled that Apple had infringed on patents owned by Motorola Mobility. While iCloud is still available, users now have to open up their Mail app and fetch new email manually, or set their device to fetch email at certain intervals.
Rumors have been relatively quiet on the iTunes front for awhile. We’ve had reports pop up here and there over the past couple years, but nothing that exciting has happened to Apple’s desktop music app for a long time.
iTunes is due for a refresh, and it looks like we’ll be seeing an iCloud-centric iTunes 11 alongside the release of iOS 6.
When Apple announced that it was bringing movies and TV shows purchased in the iTunes Store to iCloud, every major production house was onboard except Universal and Fox. Due to licensing conflicts with HBO, Universal and Fox were not able to offer video content in iCloud initially. HBO later said that it would be loosening its grip on the studios to allow for licensing agreements with Apple.
It now appears that Universal Studios has been able to start offering its movies in the iTunes Store for re-download in iCloud.
We’re huge fans of Tapbot’s great alternative to the official Twitter app, Tweetbot. This evening a very cool update for Tweetbot has been released, which adds iCloud sync for user’s timelines, direct messages, and mute filters. This update is a must have.
There’s also a ton of other fixes and features in version 2.2:
iCloud is a great addition to the Apple ecosystem, but at times, it’s a little too limited in functionality for some. Many users wanted to be able to use their free iCloud storage as they would Dropbox, but iCloud restricts access and is only useful for storing app data or iOS backups. For those who are looking to get a little more out of iCloud, here’s a handy workaround I discovered today that allows you to upload any file to iCloud, much like you would with Dropbox. It’s not perfect, but it works, and for many it’ll be a helpful addition to iCloud.
Ubisoft has confirmed that its future iOS games will store your save data in the cloud, allowing you to sync your progress across multiple devices. That means you can beat missions and levels on your iPhone in your lunch break, then continue your game right where you left off on your iPad when you get home.
It’s a feature that almost every game — especially those build for both the iPhone and the iPad — should not be without.
Cloud storage provider Box today announced its new Box OneCloud initiative. With OneCloud the company is looking to create a one-stop work environment on the iPhone and iPad that’s centered around Box’s cloud storage and collaboration features. The aim is to make the Box app the hub of a range of additional iOS apps in the business and productivity space. While many apps in that space allow you to access Box storage (along with several other cloud providers like Dropbox, Google Docs, and Sugar Sync), they often have limited file management capabilities and can only access specific types of files.
Box aims to fix that by partnering with developers that offer access to Box storage and giving users that ability to launch those apps from with the Box app, which will serve as a central file management solution. The approach is a creative way to make up for the lack of a user-accessible file system in iOS. In some ways, you can consider OneCloud to be a business or enterprise version of iCloud.
One of the big fears CIOs and IT staffers have about the consumerization of IT and BYOD trends is that mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone combined with personal cloud services like iCloud, Google Docs, and Dropbox make it very easy for confidential business data to leave the office and the company network.While this is a definite fear for IT staff, how do most knowledge workers view the risk and the consequences of such so-called data sprawl?
According to a recent study, four out of five workers rank removing confidential data from the office as an offense that should get a person fired and yet 90% believe that it happens on a regular basis.
Sure, iCloud’s convenient, but how safe is your data? No need to be alarmed: it’s actually about as well secured as it can possibly be, as long as you’re not an idiot.
Following the release of Apple’s second Mountain Lion beta late last week, registered developers have been stumbling across a number of new features that weren’t present in the first beta. These include Twitter notifications, “iCloud Tabs,” and location-based reminders.
Last week, we showed you how to prepare your old iPad for today’s upgrade to the new one. Now you have your new device, you’ll want to ensure that all of your data from your old one gets transferred over during the setup process. Here’s how to do it — the right way.
You just bought the new iPad. Whether this is your first iPad or an upgrade, setting up a new device can take some time. Luckily, Apple has made it easy to set up a new iPad for the first time with iCloud — you don’t even need a desktop computer!
There are also resources like Cult of Mac to help you get the most out of your new iPad. We’ll show you how to get your iPad ready for prime time with this handy setup guide.