Category Archives: Shameless Rant

iCloud: More Cloud, Less Me and You Can Do That?

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I am sitting in the local Fuddruckers setting up for the monthly Boise Mac User Group meeting when the waitress delivers my chocolate shake. She asks if we were the “Apple” people. I respond yes. She presents me with her iPhone asking why a photo she tried to upload to Facebook keeps presenting her with an error message.

Being “Apple” people I begin to troubleshoot. My first thought is to close down the Facebook App and start over. It is here I discovered running on this iPhone were close to 50 applications. I ask if she had ever closed out of an Application. The response, “you can do that?”

This is a common response to this question. So when Apple made all of the new announcements this past WWDC 2011, I wondered for whom the announcements were attended. Better yet, how many end users will understand 1/10th of the changes heading their way this fall with the release of iCloud and iOS 5?


More Cloud

On June 6, 2011 Apple presented iCloud to the world, declaring it a replacement for MobileMe, admitting it was “not our finest hour”. Apple developers were treated to a list of new features amongst them were iTunes in the Cloud and Photo Stream.

With iTunes in the Cloud users can access each and every song purchased from iTunes for free. For an extra $24.99 annually, users were provided Music Match. Using an iOS 5 on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation), iPad, or iPad 2, or a Mac computer with OS X Lion or a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7 Apple will provide a Music Match subscriber access to songs not purchased via iTunes in 256k quality. The service itself limits a subscriber to 25,000 songs, but iTunes purchases do not count against the limit.

Missing from the service was an iCloud player to compete with Amazon Cloud player and Google Music Beta, both providing Android Apps to play music. However, with the release of iCloud coming in the fall Apple has plenty of time to make changes. In the meantime Apple updated both iOS and OS iTunes applications to allow the push of purchases to all devices. It should be pointed out this does require the user to activate the feature within iTunes, something maybe my Fuddruckers waitress won’t know she can do.

Photo stream is another new/change feature. Photo Stream holds your last 1000 photos, with the option to create albums. All the photos coming through Photo Stream are kept on your PC or Mac. This makes a ton of sense considering my recent purchase of a new iMac with 2TB of storage along with an external hard drive making me very happy.

Essentially Photo Stream replaces MobileMe Gallery, well sort of. I am not sure how Apple will provide users to share their photo with family and friends as they do currently. One thought I have is with the use of Facebook and Flickr, Apple may have simply given up on this service. The keynote addressed the number of photos taken by an iOS device currently Flickr’s service, which is an admission that Galleries is not that popular.

Remains of the Day

iCloud will continue to store your contacts, bookmarks, email, calendar and documents. It will just do it in a different way. It will cost the user nothing. Additionally, iCloud will backup items and iTunes will allow you to download your purchased apps and music a not additional charge. The user will also receive 5GB of storage.

Are these iCloud features going to better than the current free services offered by the likes of Google, Yahoo or Microsoft? With Gmail I get 10GB of storage. I can set up Google Drive for my documents and of course can set up contacts and calendars. Nothing to big hear but it is enough of change MobileMe subscribers will notice, but is it enough to bring new customers?  With no ads, please sign me up for some new accounts.

Less Me

Lost in the announcement regarding moving from MobileMe to iCloud was what will happen to iDisk, iWeb and the price for extra (if any) storage. Currently for my $99 I am given 20GB of online storage for my email, bookmarks, iCal, file uploads and web space.

As mentioned before iCloud will be free with 5GB of storage. There was no mention of some useful features such as iWeb website hosting. This past Monday came word from Steve Job’s iPhone that indeed iWeb was going away based on the emailed question. I would point out that Steve said “Yep” to the number of questions. Users of iWeb can upload their site via FTP to a web host, but it comes with a cost of another service, however considering the cost of hosting to a MobileMe yearly subscription one could save.

The other useful information not mentioned was the possibility of additional storage. I would be surprised if come this fall that Apple isn’t selling additional iCloud storage. How could they sell stockholders on the idea that “we stopped selling MobileMe for $99 a year to offer its main features and then some for free?” I suspect that Apple will find a way to continue collecting the $99, while also collecting even more from iCloud.

Add iOS 5 to the Mix

Getting back to my waitress from Fuddruckers. Adding iCloud to the mix with iOS 5 may on the outside appear very simple to those in attendance and us Apple Fan Boys and Girls. I do wonder what this means to the typical “I only have an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad” user.

Listening to my list of Podcasts this week leads me to get excited about the announcements, but at the same time think wow did Apple complicate things? There are enough changes in iOS 5 that will cause a lot of users eyes to become glazed over. There is an interesting article from MacRumor that over 50% of iPhone users visiting the Genius Bar have never connected their device to a computer. There is the PC free idea for iOS 5 combined with iCloud connecting to a PC isn’t needed, but if you think about the fact that people weren’t smart enough to connect to a PC to begin with, what else will the not do?  It is clear to me the new features are aimed at the Fuddruckers’ waitress to make things easier. However, I am sure you will continue to hear “you can do that?”

The Apple Store Didn’t Want My Money

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I am sure sales staff at the Boise Towne Square Mall Apple Store wanted me to make a purchase, but they didn’t want to earn it. I spent a while before writing this in order to present my experience in a calm way. I also spent a while trying to decide how to begin this article, but know I am writing it not on a new iMac that I drove an hour out of my way to purchase tonight. Before I get into my experience at the Apple Store this evening, let me take you back to Tuesday May 3rd, 2011.

That Tuesday the new iMac Quad-Core machines hit the shelves. I spent a little time Tuesday night going over all the specs and decided that I wanted to purchase with my hard earned dollars. That night I put my mid 2009 model 24” iMac up on Craigslist. I received many offers and ended up with a buyer, however the buyer seemed flaky as I could narrow down a time to complete the sale. Finally today (May 5th, 2011) I completed the sale after many phone calls and text messages. Bottom line it was stressful selling the iMac and not the best of times to sell anything on Craigslist.

Fast forward to a 25 minute drive from my home to the BTSM Apple Store. I arrive excited to purchase the new iMac. It should also be noted my last few experiences in the BTSM Apple Store have been far from stellar. Both were purchases of an iPad, which saw the Apple Store employees being aggressive in not honoring my employee discount. It is a discount from a major US Company and it has been a quite the teeth pulling exercise for the BTSM store to honor the discount.

I digress. Here I am going through what I want with the Apple Sales Person on a floor model and “he says ok, hit add to cart”. I look at him as he was kidding and he was not. The reason given what the Apple Store only carries the base 1TB model. I was really, you don’t carry 2TB models. His answer is still no, not “no I am sorry and some explanation”, but just a plain no. I tell him that I had called earlier and asked if the store had 2TB models and the answer was yes. I repeated  to the Apple Store employee, so you carry 1 and 2 TB models. The answer yes we do.

As I wanted a new machine tonight, I decided to sacrifice the 2 TB model and upgrade the memory. It should be noted that the Apple Store can upgrade the memory with no issues. As I head up to pay the sales person hands me a Track Pad that I had requested. As I am waiting for the iMac I begin commenting that Apple is smart not to include either the Magic Mouse or Trackpad in the box and having the choice was great.

Newimac

The sales person then responds to me something to the affect that oh you will have to buy the Trackpad separately as the iMacs come pre-stocked with the Magic Mouse. I tell him that is not how the Apple Store states it on the Apple website. It should be noted that the BTSM Apple Store employee was unaware of the option to choose. He had to be educated by another employee and myself. It is at this point I dropped the need to purchase at the store that evening. I drove home purchased a new 21.5”, 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 4GB of RAM and a 2TB Serial ATA Drive. I received my employee discount with no problem and it is due to arrive sometime in a week.

I know many will say that this is normal. I call bunk. Boise has had an Apple Store since September of 2010 and I have had the luxury of having a Genius Bar to fix an iPhone and iPod Touch since that time. However, purchasing items the local Apple Store has been a huge disappointment in my opinion. The request I had was not much. I wanted a 2TB model and upgraded processor, with a Magic Track Pad and I am still not sure how I didn’t walk out of the Apple Store with a new iMac.

I won’t bother you with what I think Apple should do, since many of us know Apple doesn’t really do much of what the customer wants but rather what they want. It is stupid in my opinion that Apple is not as flexible with buyers. It is also astonishing to me that I have had such terrible service the last few times I have made or attempted to make purchases.

To me having a local store is not an improvement on the prior situation facing local Boise Apple Product buyers previously. At least with the reseller one could have more of an option in what was purchased, well of course that was after a few weeks wait for its stock to arrive. Bottom line the waste of time and gas makes buying at the local BTSM pointless, when I am not going to receive the level of customer service and product I want. In the end the BTSM store wanted my money, but had no way of earning it and it likely will not any time soon. Oh, and writing this on a Windows Machine makes me feel dirty.

Possible “No New iPhone in June or July” Rumor Correlation

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According to MacRumors an AT&T customer called regarding his iPhone upgrade date being changed.

(The) customer noticed his eligibility date for a subsidized upgrade had been pushed back by over five months.

The AT&T representative proceeded to explain that Apple had informed AT&T that there would be no new hardware for June or July. I was of course skeptical of this particular story as it was an AT&T rep as the source. Considering the number of times a Verizon representative told me the iPhone was coming to Verizon Wireless you can understand why.

Atteligiblty

I decided to look up my account eligibility upgrade via AT&T and something did change. Though my date of upgrade has always been 9-30-11, a new presentation of when I was eligible for upgrade was given. Note that I was given the AT&T upgrade information as well as the iPhone eligibility.

It would seem AT&T went out of their way to let me know I was not eligible for an iPhone upgrade. I am not sure what this all means, but it would appear on the surface AT&T trying to make it clear to its customers when they are or are not eligible for an iPhone update. It also may be yet another signal Apple is pushing back the launch the next iPhone.