Top AppAdvice News & Apps Of The Past Week
June 5, 2011
It's almost here: WWDC 2011. After tomorrow, we'll know what Apple has to offer for the future. And yet, we already know a lot more than we did just one week ago. In a move decidedly unlike Apple, the tech giant began the week by sending out a press release. With it, iCloud was announced BY NAME! We also got confirmation iOS 5 and OS X Lion were to be discussed at WWDC.
Meanwhile, there was app news too.
Here are the top stories of the past week:
WWDC, WWDC, WWDC!
Apple Announces iCloud, iOS 5 & Steve Jobs At Next Week's Keynote
In what many might consider a surprising announcement, Apple just announced the details of next week's WWDC opening Keynote. With it, the tech giant officially announced iCloud, a new cloud service offering, as well as the company's intent to officially unveil its next generation Mac software, OS X Lion. In addition, Apple confirmed Apple CEO Steve Jobs would speak at Monday's keynote.
Last, but not least; Steve will be unveiling on stage iOS 5, the next generation OS for the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad.
No Surprise: Music Labels Onboard For iCloud Service
Hours after Apple’s unexpected press release that discussed its new iCloud service, comes news not all that surprising. The company is said to have reached agreement with each of the four large labels to bring music to the cloud, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Although Apple has not yet officially announced what iCloud is, we’ve known for awhile now one of its components is to provide music “in a cloud.”
Up until today, Apple had signed three of the four major recorded-music companies, including Warner Music, Sony Music, and EMI Group. According to The Journal, the fourth, Universal Music Group is expected to sign this week.
Is Apple About To Merge iOS & Mac OS? WWDC Schedule Points That Way
Apple has been surprisingly slow at releasing this year's WWDC schedule. We speculated it would be big, and now that Apple revealed the details of the sessions, it seems like they might indeed have something huge to announce.
If you look at the first day of sessions, sent to us by various developers (above), Apple is following the launch keynote with an Apple platforms kickoff, followed by a developers tools kickoff. Both are addressed to iOS and Mac OS X developers and they have never done that before. Usually, they hold a simple state of the union on the tools and the platforms, telling people about the new features. A kick-off sounds like a relaunch to us; a reboot, just check your thesaurus.
Indeed, while Steve Jobs made it clear that iPhone OS, now iOS is based on Mac OS X, it's really not that similar. Yes, you can develop for both of them using the same language, but the interfaces need to be redone, and there are still many differences. If Apple merges the two, this could allow cross-platform development between all of Apple's platforms. Actually, they even have a "Designing User Interfaces for iOS and Mac OS X Apps" session scheduled ... convinced?
Apple Assumes Ownership Of iCloud.com Ahead Of WWDC
Apple has now taken ownership of iCloud.com, following the company's purchase of the domain (which we first reported on in April, earlier this year). As you can see in the above screenshot, Apple, Inc. is now listed as the official owner of the domain.
A couple of days ago, Apple announced in a press release that its cloud-based service would be called "iCloud." Furthermore, the company noted that Steve Jobs (along with a team of Apple executives) will unveil the product at WWDC 2011's keynote address, which is scheduled to take place on June 6, at 10 a.m.
iCloud and OS X Lion Pricing Rumors Start Raining Down
Apple, who announced iCloud on Tuesday, is keeping otherwise quiet about its planned pricing structure for the remote media storage and streaming service. As expected, though, small rumors are bubbling up in these last few days before June 6's WWDC keynote presentation.
Neil Hughes of AppleInsider has received a couple tips about Apple's forthcoming approach, and -- on the surface -- they both seem pretty plausible.
First, iCloud services are said likely to be free for every Mac user who upgrades to OS X Lion. However, that only applies to basic utilities, as premium streaming services for music and movies would obviously come with monthly or yearly fees.
Secondly, Mac OS X Lion itself will presumably carry an inexpensive price tag, much like Snow Leopard did when it launched back in 2009. Explains Hughes,
Whether Apple will choose to go with the same sub-$30 pricing of Snow Leopard when Lion goes on sale is unknown. But software now plays a very small part in Apple's bottom line, and the company is said to be interested in ensuring that users quickly upgrade to the latest version of Mac OS X, through incentives and low barriers to entry... Apple executives are said to have so much confidence in Lion, they believe the new operating system will help the company carve away even more market share from traditional Windows PCs. The idea is near-ubiquitous adoption of Lion on Macs will go a long way in promoting the Mac platform and further expand Apple's market penetration.It is possible Apple could implement an exclusive Mac App Store sale on Lion like it does for some of its other in-house software, but it's hard to imagine the price being too high wherever you buy the OS. iCloud Will Be Free, For Limited Time Apple’s new iCloud service will arrive for free, according to the Los Angeles Times. However, Apple will eventually charge $25 for a yearly subscription. But, what does $25 get you? Accordingly:
Dubbed iCloud, the service initially will be offered for a free period to people who buy music from Apple's iTunes digital download store, allowing users to upload their music to Apple's computers where they can then play from a Web browser or Internet-connected Apple device. The company plans to eventually charge a subscription fee, about $25 a year, for the service. Apple would also sell advertising around its iCloud service.Of course, assuming this story is correct, the definition of “free” could mean different things. Apple To Pay Between $100 Million & $150 Million In Advanced Payments To Labels Apple reportedly has four major music labels on board for iCloud, but how much did that cost the Cupertino, CA company? According to a recent article by The New York Times, Apple is paying each company between $25 million and $50 million in advanced payments, meaning the company could "fork over between $100 million and $150 million" in total. As reported by The New York Times:
Apple will fork over between $100 million and $150 million in advanced payments to the four major music labels in order to get its iCloud off the ground, three separate sources told The Post. The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant has agreed to pay the labels between $25 million to $50 million each, as an incentive to get on board, depending on how many tracks consumers are storing. The size of the advance payments have been a major hold-up for Google, which had been negotiating with the music companies and now will likely have to pony up higher fees to get a rival cloud service into action, said music industry sources.Indeed, this agreement with music labels is what may give Apple's cloud-based service the edge over competitors. During Eric Schmidt's interview at the D9 event, the Google CEO noted that Google and music labels "couldn't come to terms." This is why Google's cloud-based music service "does not scan-and-match users' music library and prevents people from downloading files once they’re up in the cloud," as noted by 9to5Mac. Why iOS 5 + Lion + iCloud = WWDC: The New iCloud Explained Apple has already announced they will be unveiling a new cloud service called iCloud on Monday. Yet, besides the few rumors surrounding some music distribution deals, nobody really knows what iCloud really is. Following yesterday's discovery, based on the conference schedule, we spent some time thinking about what iCloud will be, and what the banner Lion + iOS 5 + iCloud = WWDC really means. Well, we think we've figured it out. It's actually pretty obvious, here is our take: In a nutshell, we believe Apple will be unveiling the Dropbox killer that Jon Gruber heard about back in October. That is, it's going to allow developers to move the data part of their apps to Apple's online servers. Twitter Photo-Sharing Coming To iOS 5 Twitter, the social networking monster is about to get into the photo-sharing business. To do so, it might have found an equally impressive partner: Apple, by way of iOS 5. This news comes from TechCrunch, which sees Twitter making the announcement at the D9 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California this week. Other News Apple Now Worth More Than Microsoft & Intel Combined A recent article by Cult of Mac has drawn our attention to something extremely interesting, and a little breathtaking, too. At the close of markets yesterday, Apple (APPL) was worth more than Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) combined. Impressed? I am, too. Here are the details, outlined by Cult of Mac:
- Apple (AAPL) — $317.60 billion
- Microsoft (MSFT) — $201.59 billion
- Intel (INTC) — $115.21 billion