October 12, 2011: Apple launches iCloud, a service that lets users automatically and wirelessly store content and push it to their various devices.
iCloud’s arrival marks the end of Apple’s “digital hub” strategy — and ushers in an age of inter-device communication and non-localized files.
Despite Apple’s denials, it’s “highly plausible” that secret spy chips could have been planted on the company’s servers, said a former Apple hardware engineer.
Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, who spent nearly six years at Apple helping build several generations of iPod, iPhone and Apple Watch, said spy chips could have been slipped into the design of servers used for Apple’s iCloud services, as alleged in a Bloomberg Businessweek story.
“With my knowledge of hardware design, it’s entirely plausible to me,” she said. “It’s very highly plausible to me, and that’s scary if you think about it.”
Update: Apple and Amazon both issued lengthy statements Thursday concerning the Chinese spy chip allegations. We updated this post to include those statements.
Apple denies that Chinese spy chips infiltrated its iCloud server hardware after claims that motherboards used by Apple, Amazon and dozens of other tech companies contained microchips used for surveillance purposes.
Cupertino insists the story is “wrong and misinformed.” Apple also says Chinese spying had nothing to do with the company’s decision to cut ties with a supplier.
iOS 12 adds a great new feature in the Photos app. Now, when you share a photo, you can choose to copy a link to that photo, and share that instead. This is a lot like sharing a file from Dropbox. You can even copy a link to a whole slew of files and share them by sending a single URL.
Shared photos are stored in iCloud, and the link is accessible to anyone that has it, for up to a month. Let’s see how it works.
Apple came out with a new beta for its Shortcuts app that will be released to the public as part of iOS 12 and in the latest build, you can finally take advantage of iCloud syncing.
This is the fourth beta build of Shortcuts and it contains some pretty major changes that make it even more useful for iPhone and iPad users.
This post is presented by iMobie.
These days, cloud storage is pretty much a must. It’s so common that many of us use at least two cloud services — maybe iCloud for photos and music, Google Drive for professional files, Dropbox for work stuff and so on. That means a lot of passwords to remember, and a lot of jumping between windows.
August 4, 2008: Steve Jobs acknowledges mistakes in launching MobileMe, spinning Apple’s bungled cloud service rollout as a learning opportunity.
“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” Jobs writes in an email to Apple employees. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”
The latest phishing scam targets iCloud users, trying to scare them into installing malicious software on their iOS devices.
Some users have received emails recently that push them to fake Apple Support websites. Once there, the sites prompt them to call “Apple Care” because their devices are supposedly “locked for illegal activity.” Here’s how to avoid the scam.
Dropbox just added terabytes of storage to some of its offerings without increasing their cost. This makes its plans stronger competitors against iCloud.
The company is doubling the amount available through a Professional account to 2 TB. Business Standard teams now have 3 TB to share, up from 2 TB.
When Apple moved iCloud data for Chinese customers over to Apple partner Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry earlier this year, a lot of privacy advocates were worried about the implications.
They might have even more cause for concern now, as Apple’s iCloud data in the country — including users’ emails and text messages — is now being stored by a division of the state-owned China Telecom. Apple confirmed the change late on Tuesday.
