iCloud - page 12

With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple is finally showing us its idea of how we’ll compute in the future. Perhaps not surprisingly, this pristine vision of our computing destiny — unveiled after years of secret, patient and painstaking development — aligns perfectly with how we currently use our computers and mobile devices.

The keynote at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month not only showed off a new way to think about computing, based on data not devices, but also silenced pretty much every criticism leveled at the company over the past few years.

Let’s take a look at Apple’s new way of doing things, which fulfills Steve Jobs’ post-PC plan by minimizing the importance of the Mac.

Write, the distraction-free note-taking tool that’s been a great success on iOS, is ready to make writing easier on your Mac.

Whether you’re a student, a blogger, a novelist, or simply too forgetful to remember what you need to pack your holiday, Write’s incredibly simple design and clutter-free user interface can make writing a more enjoyable experience. But don’t let its minimal beauty fool you — Write is packed with handy features.

With another week full of news in the past, your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the latest and biggest features. Facebook’s alleged Snapchat competitor, Microsoft’s latest attempt at an ‘iPad killer’ and iCloud’s hacking are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown.

Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another. Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.

The recently revealed exploit that allows anyone to bypass the iPhone’s Activation Lock system is a rather simple process that requires adding just a single line of code to a computer running iTunes.

The exploit, which is called DoulCi (“iCloud” backward), has already been used thousands of times on locked iPhones and iPads around the world. It’s the work of a pair of anonymous hackers, who cracked Apple’s theft-deterrent measure by tricking lost or stolen iOS devices into thinking they are being reactivated by Apple’s servers.

Today Apple made some upgrades to its web-based version of the iWork suite that are more suited for those working in large teams. The number of people that can collaborate on a single document has been doubled to 100, and the maximum storage size for files and docs has also been increased.

Cult of Mac Deals regularly offers “name your own price” bundles, and we’ve got another here for you that assembles 9 apps and an iOS course that really deliver the goods…and the savings!

These types of bundles are time-limited opportunities to buy a collection of apps for whatever you want to pay! The bundles are exclusively constructed and are made for anyone looking to discover the best apps from around the globe. And The Name Your Own Price Mac Bundle 5.0 is no exception.

The deals keep on coming at Cult of Mac Deals!

This time around we’re offering an iOS 7 Dev Bundle that will teach you to build and monetize your own apps for 79% off the regular price – just $79 – and a portable, lightweight Handheld Luggage Scale that keeps you from second-guessing the weight for your cargo for only $19!

Last week, Alex Kibkalo, a former Microsoft employee living in Lebanon, was arrested on charges that he had sold the Windows 8 source code in retaliation for a bad performance review. What was most shocking about the arrest was the means by which Microsoft gathered evidence pinning the crime on Kibkalo: they went into his personal Hotmail account and read his email to figure out it was him, without a court order to do so.

Apple would never do something like that by reading iCloud email without a court order, right? It’s not that simple, actually. Like Hotmail, Yahoo, and other webmail providers, iCloud’s terms of service specify that Apple reserves the right to read your email at any time.

When an app reaches the Top Ten Grossing List in the “Graphics and Design” category of the Mac App Store, and remains there since its March 2012 launch, there’s a good reason behind it. The app we’re offering this time around through Cult of Mac Deals fits that description…and then some.

Need to quickly lay out documents and get them ready for publishing? Swift Publisher is a page layout and desktop publishing app that is designed to streamline your workflow – and you can have it for just $9.99.

Use Google’s Chrome on your Mac but Safari on your iPad? Do you wish you could use iCloud tabs to open that browser tab that’s open on your iPhone? You need CloudyTabs, a Mac app that puts iCloud Tabs in your menubar, and opens them in your default browser.

Every single day, iPhone and iPad owners ask Siri millions of questions. Each and every one of those questions must be analyzed by Apple using computer-intensive natural language processing, translating it into a form that a computer can understand.

That takes a lot of computer horsepower. But how much?

If you’ve been thinking about ditching your iPhone for an Android-powered smartphone, but you’ve been put off by the time and effort it takes to transfer all of your data, you no longer have an excuse not to make the move. Motorola just updated its Migrate transfer tool to support iPhone users who want to make the switch.

Using Migrate, users can transfer all of their contacts and calendar entries from their old iPhone to a new Motorola handset in just a few simple steps. It all happens without wires, and it’s completely free.

A good, strong password may be the only thing standing between your identity and some cyber criminal lurking in the shadows of the web. With mSecure you can be sure your information is 100% safe from hackers and identity thieves.

Right now you can get mSecure for 55% off the regular price – just $9 – courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.

iOS users that long for something other than Safari will be delighted to know that Google has released a free update for Chrome for iOS.

The new updated includes an Autofill feature that lets users complete forms with just a few clicks, similar to the autofill feature Apple introduced in iOS 7 with iCloud Keychain. Along with some stability enhancements and bug fixes, Google has also improved image searches by adding the ability to long press on an image to search for related images.

Here are the release notes:

If you picked up a new iPhone 5s this year, you’d better take good care of its home button, because you can no longer pick up a cheap replacement on eBay and fit it yourself. The repair experts at mendmyi have discovered that Apple pairs every Touch ID sensor with an A7 chip, and if you install a home button that doesn’t match up, Touch ID simply won’t work.

CNNMoney has hit out at Apple by saying that it should momentarily forget about its position as an acclaimed product manufacturer and instead “focus on its mediocre software.”

While acknowledging that Apple builds some of the most coveted laptops, tablets, and smartphones around, writer Adrian Covert nevertheless singled out the company’s suite of software applications as the “one dark cloud” which looms over Apple. Although apps like iPhoto, Pages, iCal and Mail are functional enough, Covert claims, better alternatives exist, while iTunes and defunct social network Ping are varying degrees of broken.

Ember, the awesome scrapbooking tool for Mac from Realmac Software, has been updated to support Apple’s new OS X Mavericks update. It also comes with “two huge new features,” including the ability to search for colors, and the option to store your Ember library in iCloud.

Apple’s iWork for iCloud apps have been made unavailable ahead of today’s iPad event, pretty much confirming that we will see updates for Pages, Keynote, and Numbers during the keynote. “In just a few short hours, you’ll be able to create and edit documents, and enjoy great new features,” a notice reads.

Could you be persuaded to give up your iPhone and switch to Android if you were given a really simple tool to transfer all of your important data? Motorola is certainly hoping so with its new web-based migration tool that takes all of your contacts and calendar events from iCloud and puts them on a Moto X.

1Password, the popular password manager from AgileBits, has today been updated to finally support Wi-Fi syncing between Mac and iOS devices. The update also adds the ability to change the built-in browser’s user agent, and improves support for the latest iOS 7 firmware.

Apple reported some system outages early Wednesday, with multiple services going down between 9:30 and 11:00 am. Game Center and FaceTime were also down for a shorter period of time around 9:30, an outage lasting till 9:45 or so. Here’s what that looks like:

Multiple Services – 9:28 AM – 10:57 AM – Some users were affected
Users may have been unable to make purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, Mac App Store, or iBookstore. Users may also have been unable to access iTunes in the Cloud, iTunes Match, or restore purchases from an iCloud backup.

If you were trying to connect to the App, iTunes, or Mac App Stores during this time (or the iBookstore), you may have had trouble. You may have had trouble accessing iTunes in the Cloud, iTunes Match, or restoring purchases from an iCloud backup. It wasn’t you, luckily, but Apple.

Here’s how to find out in the future whether it’s you, or Apple, that’s not letting you use the services.

Apple has today restored push email services on iOS devices in Germany almost two years after it had to be shut down following a legal battle with Motorola. The Cupertino company announced the change in a new support document, which explains how users can restore push services on their iOS devices.

Today’s the day you’ll probably have to start paying for iCloud storage, folks — if you’re a former MobileMe subscriber, anyway. After giving us 25GB of iCloud storage absolutely free for two years, Apple has now ended the offer and dropped all non-paying iCloud users down to the basic 5GB plan.

If you need more than that, you’ll have to sign up for a subscription from today.

If you were a MobileMe customer enticed to join the iCloud by Apple’s offer of 20GB of free storage, get ready to pony up for more: Apple is emailing people telling them to prepare to start paying for iCloud storage come September 20th.

If you head over to iCloud.com, you’ll notice that it has been completely redesigned to match the look and feel of iOS 7. The new iCloud website has been in beta all summer, and Apple has made it publicly available on the eve of tomorrow’s iOS 7 launch.

The web versions of Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Notes, Reminders, Find My iPhone, have all been revamped to match their iOS 7 counterparts, and the iWork suite is also available. Apple demoed the web versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote at WWDC in June.