If you’ve owned an Apple device for any extended period of time — whether it’s a Mac or iOS device — you’ve most likely encountered the Genius Bar at the back of every Apple retail store, where friendly, fresh-faced youths in blue t-shirts diagnose your problems and quickly provide a fix. Apple is one of a small few companies that offers such a terrific service, and according to a recent study, 90% of its customers love it.
It seems early iPhone 4S adopters the world over have discovered a new issue with Apple’s latest handset. No, it has nothing to do with poor battery life, but rather a complete loss of signal for no apparent reason. To be clear, this isn’t a new “antennagate” — the issue does not occur while holding the device in a certain position — it’s a new problem that causes the device to lose its signal randomly. Users report they can be enjoying a full five-bar signal one minute, then be greeted by that frustrating “No Service” status the next.
We have no doubts at Cult of Mac that iPhone 4S sales this week-end are going to be a blow out and the first thing people will probably try to do after obtaining their iPhone 4S is to converse with Siri. Well it looks like this morning with way too many people to talk to Siri has gone offline or maybe its just out on a coffee break.
I had a late day yesterday and I’m only now getting around to playing around with and testing Siri. I think the rest of you might have worn it out since it isn’t as snappy as it was yesterday when I tried a few preliminary requests.
Apple is getting set to launch a brand new service that will compliment iCloud called iTunes Replay. The service will allow users to re-download and possibly stream movies they have previously purchased through iTunes, and could go public within the coming weeks.
Today, Apple announced a new service called iCloud which will be available this fall. Apple’s iCloud will be free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users. Users that sign up for iCloud will be able to retain their me.com or mac.com email address and all of their MobileMe mail, calendars, contacts, and bookmarks will move to the new service.
An Apple cloud service has been one of the main focal points for a lot of recent speculation, and a new job listing on the Apple website confirms that the company is currently putting together a crack team of people to build “the future of cloud services at Apple.”
The listing is for a “Cloud Systems Software Engineer” – a full-time role in a “small team” based at the company’s main Cupertino campus. In true Apple style the listing doesn’t reveal a lot of information about this cloud service, however, it does state that the team will be responsible for writing software “which forms the foundation” for some of Apple’s “most exciting new products and services.”
Apple’s only attempt at cloud services so far has been MobileMe, which has left a great deal to be desired for many of its users. Recent rumors claimed that a revamped MobileMe service would soon go live, featuring a digital storage function similar to iDisk which would enable users to store content that could be streamed to iOS devices.
Since Apple has only just started advertising for people to build their new team, it doesn’t look like the cloud service will be launching anytime in the immediate future. It is believed cloud services will be a big part of iOS 5, so the first we hear about it could be at WWDC in June.
Interestingly, since this job listing became famous, it seems to have been removed by Apple.