Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s iWork for iCloud is now out in beta, as promised at the company’s annual developers’ conference, WWDC. Apple started giving staged early access to developers this week.

The new web-based apps — Pages, Numbers, and Keynote — are intended to be usable by virtually anyone on any platform and will compete with Google Docs and other web-based productivity suites such as Office 365 from Microsoft. Critically, any documents created on iWork for iCloud are immediately synced to all of your Apple devices — iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. In addition, any changes to the documents are reflected on those devices immediately.

Here are some screenshots a developer took for me:

I took some time to play with the iCloud apps, creating and editing a few documents each in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

Despite the fact that they’re in beta, everything feels solid, complete, and fast. Google is all about speed, and I use Google Docs every day, but these documents felt just as fast to me even though they include the signature Apple design and therefore have far more images and backgrounds than Google Docs.

The templates are rich and simple to use, and working on cloud-based documents felt pretty much like working on a desktop application. As soon as you create or edit a document, iCloud displays it and syncs it, which does take some time. But there’s no need to wait for it — iCloud will happily work in the background or when you’re offline.

Keynote themes

One thing that’s important to keep in mind: deleting from iCloud deletes documents from all your devices simultaneously.

There’s no trash can, so be careful what you do throw out. Once you delete a document, it’s gone for good. I’m wondering if Apple will change this as the apps exit beta, but to do so would be to add organization such as folders to iCloud documents, which Apple has resisted doing so far. Still, it’d be important to protect users from accidental deletions.

One oddity: To open an app or a document, you double-click it, just like on the desktop.

That feels a little odd on the web, but I suppose it’s Apple’s little reminder that you’re still home sweet home in iWork no matter where you’re opening a document from.

Images credit: Apple

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s iCloud service now has more than 300 million users, Apple CEO Tim Cook said on stage today at its WWDC conference.

“It took Facebook five years to reach this many accounts,” Cook said.

(Read our live blog of WWDC coverage here.)

iCloud handles backup services and content sharing between iOS and Mac devices. Apple says iCloud has handled 7.4 trillion push notifications to date and that iCloud is supporting 240 million users in Game Center.

Apple also introduced iWork for iCloud, a new version of iWork that lets you create documents from browsers on Macs or PCs. This web-based software will also work with Office documents, and it even lets you drag-and-drop to edit docs.

Importantly, the app appears to work well on Windows machines as well. Apple showed iWork for iCloud on Windows 8 with the Chrome browser on stage, and it looked fluid.

Screenshot via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

All the developers and consumers out there who hate Apple’s iCloud might have a new favorite service with NimbusBase, a a startup that helps sync user data across app platforms.

NimbusBase debuted its cloud service today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY during the Startup Battlefield competition. Essentially, it provides a middle man service that stores your data in already existing Dropbox and Google Drive accounts. Then, when you log in to those accounts from an app, your user app data syncs no matter where you go.

NimbusBase cofounder and CTO Ray Wang [above] said it provides a lot of benefits to both developers and consumers. For developers, it claims to save them weeks or months of backend building time and potentially could save them “thousands of dollars” in data storage cost savings. For consumers, your user data goes with you no matter where you access an app.

Here’s an easy-to-understand example of what NimbusBase could do: In Angry Birds, you could beat a level on the iPhone, but when you play the iPad version, you still have to clear that level. NimbusBase can sync that data so you are always in the same place in the game regardless of which platform you want play it on.

Now you extrapolate that to all kinds of other apps — health, social, business, and so on. Theoretically, there should be a ton of developers out there who want user data seamlessly following users no matter what platform they use.

NimbusBase only works on web apps for now, but it intends to launch Android and iOS versions of its software “soon.”

Currently, it charges developers $500 a year for the service and it only requires adding a few lines of code to install it. Next up, NimbusBase said it plans to add support for Microsoft SkyDrive and other personal services in the near future.

The New York-based company was founded in August and has raised $30,000 in seed funding to date.

Top photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Almost a year ago, MightyText launched with the promise of providing an iMessage for Android, but better: It let you text anyone, anywhere, from whatever device you’re using, whether phone, tablet, or computer. Today, three million installs later, the MightyText platform is moving beyond texting to … everything.

“We’ve opened authentication and sockets on all your devices,” cofounder Maneesh Arora explains.

What that means, essentially, is that MightyText has trusted, secure connections between all your technology. And that those connections can be used to transfer almost anything.

The company is starting with photos, announcing real-time photo and video syncing between your Android phone and your PC or Mac. I watched Arora take a photo on his smartphone and saw it pop up almost immediately on the MightyText app on his MacBook — a much more immediate experience than what you get with iCloud, which typically takes a few minutes, and sometimes hours, to sync photos via Apple’s Photo Stream.

But photo-syncing is just the beginning.

“Everything on your phone should be everywhere all the time,” Arora says. “No one raves about iCloud, and we feel there’s an opportunity. There will soon be billions of Android devices, and no one’s making it easy.”

It’s good timing, and not just because  iCloud just had an outage yesterday. It’s good timing because, while our phones are the most personal of our devices, they can be islands of content and capability that don’t translate well to your laptop or tablet.

So Arora sees the possibility of leveraging his MightyText platform, which is on pace to route about six billion texts annually, for much, much more.

Essentially, what MightyText has created is the plumbing and wiring for a personal data sharing platform, which can then open up an API for any other apps that want to communicate to the desktop or send data and documents to a user’s other devices.

“That’s in our plans,” Arora says. “We also have some professional features coming soon, such as scheduling texts, managing multiple phones, a B2B play for enterprises, especially as BlackBerry moves out of the enterprise and companies need to manage 50 or 50,000 devices centrally. And we’ve seen that people will pay for storage.”

Building a platform for personal sharing has been part of the plan all along, Arora says, calling MightyText more of a productivity play than a messaging app.

“This is just the beginning,” he told me. “We can do any file type, any media type, install and uninstall apps … “

Currently MightyText works on your tablet or laptop via a web-based interface to its cloud software. However, the company has a native Mac and native Windows client in beta right now — Arora was using it as we video-chatted — and they’ve included native OS-level notifications, so your texting and syncing experience will be as real-time as possible.

Also of note: MightyText is currently building a Gmail plugin that will let you text right from your Gmail account.

“We just want to be a useful product,” Arora says. “We’re trying to find nuggets of value throughout a user’s day.”

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple now has more than 300 million people using its iCloud storage and syncing service, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said today on its Q2 2013 earnings call.

During its last quarterly earnings report, Apple announced that it had 250 million iCloud users. So more than 50 million have been added since that time, an increase of 20 percent in just three months.

iCloud is Apple’s cloud service that stores and syncs data like photos, songs, calendars, and email across iPhones, iPads, iPods, and PCs. The service has 27 percent market share among cloud storage services, and more people use it than Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Player, and Google Drive, according to a recent Strategy Analytics report.

While the service is supposed to on 24/7 to seamlessly connect your devices, iCloud suffered an outage this morning and has been hit by several outages in the past few weeks as well.

iCloud image via iCloud.com

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple iCloud services for identity, Game Center, account creation and sign-in, iTunes store purchases are experiencing service failures this morning for some users, Apple says on its system status page.

iCloud is Apple’s cloud service that stores data like calendar events, mail, bookmarks, photos, and iPhone and iPad backups in Apple’s datacenters, and then syncs it across all your Apple devices. It also includes critical services like Find my iPhone, which helps you locate lost devices, and Back to my Mac, which allows you to access your laptop or desktop for critical information while using a mobile device like an iPad.

According to Apple’s system status page, the iCloud failures have been occurring this morning from 4:30AM PST to now. But they may go back farther than today — yesterday my events from Calendar, Apple’s built-in scheduling tool, were not syncing with the calendar on my iPhone.

Apparently I’m not the only one.

AppleID failures are critical issues, since if you cannot sign into your Apple identity, it’s difficult to do anything with iCloud, including setting up a new device, or simply signing into your own account. According to 9to5Mac, Apple’s iCloud services have been experiencing major outages every couple of weeks.

The current outages remind me of Apple’s original cloud and syncing service, MobileMe, which was notoriously unfriendly and unreliable … and of how Steve Jobs dealt with the situation in 2008:

Jobs walked in, clad in his trademark black mock turtleneck and blue jeans, clasped his hands together, and asked a simple question: “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”

For the next half-hour Jobs berated the group. “You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation,” he told them. “You should hate each other for having let each other down.” The public humiliation particularly infuriated Jobs. Walt Mossberg, the influential Wall Street Journal gadget columnist, had panned MobileMe. “Mossberg, our friend, is no longer writing good things about us,” Jobs said. On the spot, Jobs named a new executive to run the group.

I’ve asked Apple for a comment on the ongoing situation and will update this post as I learn more.

photo credit: Sean MacEntee via photopin cc

Apple introduced two-factor authentication to its iCloud and Apple ID login today, adding a layer of security that was proven missing after Wired reporter Mat Honan’s iCloud account was broken into last year.

Two-factor authentication makes your accounts more secure because it’s just an added defense between your information and the bad guys. Some forms of two-factor authentication require that you have a separate dongle that flashes different security codes to enter before accessing your account. Others, such as Google Authenticator, generate these codes on an app on your phone, and others like Facebook send a text message with the code.

Apple will be using both the app and SMS versions, providing security codes through texts as well as the FindMyiPhone app.

You can set up two-factor authentication by going to the Apple ID website and clicking on the security tab. From there, Apple will ask you to identify a “trusted device.”

In 2012, we learned how easy it can be to get into an iCloud account when Honan’s digital life was erased in an instant. A hacker by the name of Phobia was able to access Honan’s Amazon account using social engineering. Once in, Phobia grabbed enough information about Honan to convince an Apple customer service representative that he was, in fact, Honan, changing his iCloud password over the phone. Once the password was changed, Phobia was in and remotely wiped Honan’s iPhone, iPad and Mac, all because Honan has a three-letter Twitter handle.

via 9to5 Mac; iPhone image via LJR.MIKE/Flickr

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Updated at 1:10 p.m. PT with Apple’s response to the issue.

Apple is deleting emails sent from iCloud accounts containing the phrase “barely legal teen,” a sign the company is still strictly distancing itself from pornography and adult material.

The deleted emails issue, which Macworld first revealed, coordinates well with Apple’s history. Apple has removed and rejected several apps from the App Store because they were too pornographic, and it recently removed the 500px app because it was too easy to find adult images.

The phrase “barely legal” is often associated with pornography, but it doesn’t necessarily have be used in that context. For example, an Infoworld reader said he had “barely legal teen” inside a screenplay he had attached in an email and that it would not send.

I confirmed that iCloud is deleting emails such as this by sending an email to myself from an iCloud email account. Here’s what I sent to myself:

That email did not go through. But when I sent the same email without the phrase “barely legal,” it sent just fine.

The phrase “barely legal” does go through on iMessage and through regular email accounts that are sending from Apple devices. It appears to only affect people using an iCloud email account. There’s no telling what other questionable phrases have been blocked as well.

Apple’s iCloud terms and conditions appear to give Apple the authority to do what it wants with content sent from iCloud (emphasis ours):

You acknowledge that Apple is not responsible or liable in any way for any Content provided by others and has no duty to pre-screen such Content. However, Apple reserves the right at all times to determine whether Content is appropriate and in compliance with this Agreement, and may pre-screen, move, refuse, modify and/or remove Content at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, if such Content is found to be in violation of this Agreement or is otherwise objectionable.

Apple told Macworld today that it is a spam filter issue, rather than a censorship issue.

“Occasionally, automated spam filters may incorrectly block legitimate email,” an Apple spokesperson said. “If the customer feels that a legitimate message is blocked, we encourage customers to report it to AppleCare.”

However, even if this is really the case, it’s disconcerting to know that any email with a questionable or spam-like phrase will never be sent from an iCloud email account. And you aren’t even notified that the email did not go through to its intended recipient.

Tim Cook photo via lemagit/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Amazon’s assault on Apple’s iTunes empire continues today as the Seattle company released its Cloud Player app for iPad and iPad Mini, adding to its existing app for iPhone and iPod Touch. Unfortunately, the latest Kindle app update is causing Apple clients some serious issues.

“Our goal is to make Cloud Player the most widely compatible cloud playback solution available, giving our customers the capability to buy their music once and enjoy it everywhere,” said Steve Boom, Amazon’s well-named VP for digital music.

Sounds familiar?

It should, because Apple has said similar things on multiple occasions. The difference is that Amazon actually has the capability to make it happen, as it not only has its own devices but also builds software for other company’s devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and more.

Cloud Player stores all your Amazon music purchases and up to 250 imported songs or free. If your music library is larger — and whose isn’t — you can import up to 250,000 songs into Cloud Player and store them for $25 per year in a feature similar to Apple’s iTunes Match.

You can safely bet that Cloud Player will not be music-only for long, as Amazon continues to invest in digital content of all kinds.

But Amazon isn’t exactly doing the happy dance today. Like all software companies, it has glitches, and one in its ubiquitous Kindle iOS software is causing an annoying issue for iPhone and iPad users: It’s deleting their book libraries. Amazon acknowledges the issue, and it says that it does not currently recommend that users install the update.

Getting all your books deleted is not necessarily catastrophic — users can simple resync with Amazon, presumably when an app update-to-the-update is released, to redownload all their content.

But it is annoying and time-consuming, and it could be seriously dangerous for those users who have sent PDFs and other documents to their Kindles via Amazon’s send-to-Kindle functionality. If you don’t have backups for those files, it’s possible you’d lose them for good.

The issue? Amazon issued a statement to The Verge:

“We have identified an issue with the app update that may cause your app to become deregistered. To register, enter your Amazon account e-mail address and password and all your Amazon content will be available in the cloud. We have submitted an update fix for this issue and are working with Apple to release.”

photo credit: AJC1 via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

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Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s cloud-based messaging application, iMessage, experienced a few hours of service issues, the company confirmed on its iCloud support site Tuesday afternoon.

System status: not good

At 2:15 p.m. Pacific, Apple updated a support site to confirm what disgruntled Twitter users and Apple forum posters had suspected for roughly an hour prior: iMessage is not functioning properly.

The downtime is said to affect “some” users, though Twitter and forum updates suggest that the outage is affecting people in different regions all across the world.

Update: At 3:54 p.m. Pacific, Apple updated its support site and said that iMessage and all iCloud services were working again. The company also confirmed earlier Game Center service issues that affected all users, and FaceTime problems for some.

Tuesday’s service interruption is yet another unpleasant hiccup for the Cupertino company’s iCloud offerings. iMessage may also not be only victim today, as some folks are also complaining about issues with Game Center and iTunes Match.

Why is iMessage always acting an ass?—
Destiny Noel. (@__LoveNoelxo) October 30, 2012

iMessage really hates me talking to @SeriNeri .. SEND MY MESSAGES GOD DAMN IT—
Brofolvski (@Emeryyy) October 30, 2012

Game Center, Apple’s cloud-based game hub for iOS users, experienced its own meltdown at various times late last week and through the weekend, upsetting players of the hot game Letterpress.

Apple did not immediately return a request for comment.

Photo credit: MarkKoeber/Flickr

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple is finally breaking earth in Prineville, Oregon on the 160-acre data center site the company purchased back in February — not too far from Facebook’s Prineville data center.

Almost immediately after purchasing the land, Apple put a small modular center on the site. Eventually, the company plans to have two massive data centers totaling over half a million square feet onsite. When complete, the  facility will join existing data centers in Newark (California), North Carolina, a planned data center in Nevada, and another in Hong Kong.

With over 400 million iOS devices sold, many of them sharing, synchronizing, and backing up data via iCloud, Apple has an ever-increasing data management challenge. Not to mention iTunes’ movie and song purchases, and billions of app store downloads.

The initial cost of the development is just $68 million, but if Apple builds out both buildings, costs will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and perhaps as high as a billion (which is what Apple is planning to spend on its Nevada data center).

Prineville, a little town of just 10,000 inhabitants, must be having quite the construction boom. Facebook is hard at work in Prineville too — expanding its existing data centers to eventually reach a total of almost 700,000 square feet.

While Apple has never allowed photos inside its data centers, Google just released a stunning gallery of images from inside its massive server buildings.

photo credit: Terinea IT Support via photopin cc

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Everyone using iCloud has a new portal to access it, according to 9to5Mac. Apple released iCloud.com to everyone using the content-syncing service, after a trial period.

iCloud allows you link all of your Apple devices and share content across them quickly. It also supports the Find my iPhone, Mac, and iPad apps that display the location of your device on a map, should it be stolen or lost. Apple is integrating the service into all of its products, with the most recent change coming to the iOS 6′s Safari browser. There, iCloud will remember what you’re browsing on your Mac and any tabs you have open and automatically sync those tabs to your iPhone or iPad.

Users can access the iCloud portal by entering their Apple ID and password. Once inside, you encounter a number of apps we currently have on the iPhone and iPad including reminders and notes. Traditional apps such as the calendar, contacts, and mail apps are available as well. You can also access your iWork projects from the portal.

A web presence is just another way to get access to your iCloud, on top of your individual devices. But with a web presence, of course, comes easier access to your iCloud. You should ensure that your Apple ID password is a strong one, completely unique to that account and not saved anywhere, such as in an email or in the Notebook app. If you need justification for taking the extra time, just look at Wired reporter Mat Honan’s experience when a hacker destroyed his digital life after getting access to his iCloud account.

If you forget your Apple iCloud password, don’t expect to hop on the phone to change it. Apple announced today that for the time being, it will no longer change passwords over the phone, according to The New York Times.

The move comes after a hacker tricked an Apple customer service representative into handing a hacker the keys to Wired reporter Mat Honan’s digital kingdom.

Over the weekend, the hacker, aka Phobia, gamed Amazon customer service, who gave him access to Honan’s account. The information Phobia found there provided him enough information to trick Apple and get into Honan’s iCloud account. From there, Phobia deleted Honan’s Gmail account, wiped his iPhone, iPad, Mac, and spammed his and Gizmodo’s Twitter accounts (Honan had linked the two accounts previously).

Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris said this in a statement:

“We’ve temporarily suspended the capability to reset AppleID passwords over the phone. We’re asking customers who need to reset their password to continue to use our online iForgot system (iforgot.apple.com). This system can reset a password in one of two ways – either have a password reset sent to an alternate e-mail address already on record or challenge the customer to answer security questions they had previously set up. When we resume over the phone password resets, customers will be required to provide even stronger identify verification to reset their password.”

At the time, all you needed to retrieve an Apple password was the person’s e-mail address, billing address, and the last four digits of a credit card on file. These pieces of information are easily uncovered with a little digging. Phobia snagged the last four digits of Honan’s credit card after breaking into his Amazon account, which was fairly easy as well.

Phobia accessed Honan’s Amazon account by providing an account holder’s name, e-mail address, and billing address (that last of which Phobia found after doing a “WhoIs” lookup on one of Honan’s websites) to a customer service representative. Once approved, Phobia added a new credit card number to the account, which was later used as “identifying information” to trick a second Amazon representative into letting Phobia into the account. The four-digit credit card number used to trick Apple was listed inside the account.

Yesterday, Amazon quietly told customer service that it was no longer allowed to change account information, such as adding a credit card number or e-mail address, over the phone.

via The New York Times; Image via gflinch/Flickr

Wired writer Mat Honan got hacked over the weekend and lost almost everything.

His MacBook, iPad, and iPhone were all linked to Apple’s iCloud, and the hackers used that service to wipe everything on all three devices, including all the photos he’d taken of his one-year-old daughter. They also got into Honan’s Gmail account (they deleted it), his Twitter account, and Gizmodo’s Twitter account. On the latter two, the hackers posted a string of racist and homophobic messages.

Honan has described the hack in remarkable detail. He learned how it was done in the course of a long conversation with one of his hackers, who revealed many of the secrets.

The details show that the hack was only possible thanks to an appalling lack of security in iCloud — and a correspondingly bad security process at Amazon.com.

While people like Apple founder Steve Wozniak may point to this episode as an example of how our cloud-based future is going to create “horrible problems” — when everything is connected, hackers can get access to everything — the episode actually contains a few more specific lessons.

You need two-factor authentication

Cloud-based services need two-factor authentication so that a password alone is not enough to unlock your account. And you need to use it, when it’s available.

Google offers a particularly good implementation, in which you have to enter a passcode sent to your phone before you can log in on a new, untrusted computer. (Even more securely, you can install Google’s Authenticator app on your phone and let that generate the codes you enter.) A would-be hacker can only get access to your account if they know your password and have access to this code, which in most cases would require having possession of your phone. (And you did remember to set a lock code on your phone in case you lose it, right?) A well-implemented two-factor authentication process is very difficult to bypass.

“Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter,” Honan wrote. “Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. “

Apple needs to get its act together

Apple needs to offer two-factor authentication for its services, and it needs to close a gaping hole in its password recovery process. Until it does, you should not use iCloud.

Currently, the only protection offered for iCloud is a password. If you’re using iCloud, make sure it’s a secure password, not some short, stupid password. Remember, this is protecting your entire digital life (or at least, that portion of it that you’ve trusted to Mac products that work with iCloud).

Even worse, it’s trivially easy for a hacker to bypass the iCloud password. All he or she has to do is call up Apple tech support and provide the account’s email address, a billing address, and the last four digits of a credit card on file. Honan verified this twice over the weekend in calls with Apple tech support and was able to repeat the exploit in the Wired offices.

You absolutely should not use iCloud with the “Find My Mac” feature, which includes a remote-wipe capability. That might make sense for your phone, but how likely is it that you’re going to misplace your MacBook? Using this feature merely opens your computer up to a hack, the risk of which is worse than the risk of losing your MacBook in the first place.

Amazon needs to get its act together

The hackers got access to Honan’s Amazon account through an almost ridiculously easy process, which Honan describes in his article. Basically, all you need is the account holder’s name, email address, and billing address — all easily available information for many people.

Once in, Amazon’s interface let them see the last four digits of all the credit cards on file. One of those was the card Honan used with his iCloud account, which then let the hackers unlock iCloud.

“In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification,” Honan wrote. He continues:

“The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.”

Honan is right: The lack of consistent security policies across cloud-based services, and the corresponding tight connections between many of them, open up a host of vulnerabilities. He wasn’t the only one victimized by this exploit: He notes that he’s spoken with other people who have been hacked the same way.

More problems like this are surely coming. Cloud providers’ readiness is very poor, security executive David DeWalt told me recently. But before you blame “the cloud” for these security flaws, remember that the flaws are traceable to specific companies’ security policies.

The industry needs to take this issue seriously, or all cloud services — and the people using them — will suffer.

Photo credit: Mat Honan via photo pin

Former Gizmodo staffer Mat Honan’s iCloud account was compromised over the weekend, which led to both his Twitter account and Gizmodo’s official Twitter account getting hacked.

Honan’s iCloud account gave the hacker access to the Find My Phone feature, thus allowing them to remotely wipe all the data on his iPhone, iPad, and worst of all, his Mac. Honan’s Gmail account was also deleted in the process, and he’s been locked out of other services, including his phone, which he linked with Google Voice through Sprint.

Initially, Honan thought the hacker broke into his account using brute force, despite a seven character alpha-numeric password that he felt was pretty secure. Apparently, this wasn’t the case.

“I know how it was done now. Confirmed with both the hacker and Apple. It wasn’t password related. They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions,” Honan wrote via his Tumblr page. “Apple has my Macbook and is trying to recover the data. I’m back in all my accounts that I know I was locked out of. Still trying to figure out where else they were.”

Two-factor authentication, which requires confirmation via both an email message and usually a text message, would have probably prevented the hacker from deleting Honan’s Gmail account and kept people off the Twitter accounts, he said. Unfortunately, Honan didn’t have the two-factor authentication turned on. So, if there’s a moral to this story, it’s that you should go enable two-factor authentication whenever possible. (Do it now!)

This still doesn’t fix the problem of fooling the Apple Care technician over the phone. The computer giant needs to step up its security for verifying user accounts if it plans on seriously taking on the likes of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft with its iCloud service — not to mention the growing number of cloud-based storage services like Dropbox and Box.net.

Hacked password image via Raywoo/Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple now has 150 million iCloud users among its device owners, the company announced today on its quarterly earnings conference call.

CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that the company’s cloud syncing and storage service had gained momentum during the last quarter. The new number adds 25 million new users on top of the 125 million iCloud users it named last quarter.

While it has a lot of users, it’s not clear if iCloud is making Apple much money at this point. iCloud is free for the first 5GB of storage, and costs more for extra — $20/year for 10GB, $40/year for 20GB, or $100/year for 50GB. You can use that space  to sync and store music, movies, apps, books, and photos, which you can then access from any of your Apple devices.

iCloud will be deeply built into the latest version of Mac OS X, Mountain Lion, which will be released tomorrow.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple’s flagship service iTunes is in for a much-needed overhaul, according to a Bloomberg report that cites unnamed people familiar with the matter.

The changes are said to include further integration with its iCloud cloud storage service and increased sharing functionality in regards to music, with heavier integration with Twitter and Facebook. The report indicated that Apple was interested in getting permission from music labels to enable features that would allow a user’s friends to listen to purchased songs for free. Google’s Google Play Music app already allows this, but users can only listen to songs a limited number of times.

The company is also planning to improve content discovery on iTunes, with purchases of both music and video. Rival Google just released its own set of discovery features that will largely debut with the latest version of its Android operating system. So, clearly, Apple understands that it’s lagging behind in this fight.

While the iCloud integration will probably increase the number of people using iTunes, the music sharing is something that’s long overdue — especially with the rise of social streaming music services like Spotify. Bloomberg’s sources stated that the music industry is also urging Apple to launch a subscription-based all-you-can-eat music download model. Since this would likely decrease Apple’s media sales revenue, it’ll probably never happen.

The changes are expected to roll out before the end of the year, which would be nearly a decade after iTunes first launched.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After collecting millions of dollars in tax breaks from having a small office in Nevada, Apple plans to give back to the state with new facilities that could cost up to $1 billion.

Apple’s plans, which were first reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, include the construction of a data center just east of Reno and a new shipping and receiving office. If everything goes to plan, Apple will get $89 million in tax abatements from the city, county, and state during the next decade, a tax burden reduction of about 79 percent.

The company claims the facilities in Reno will be used to support its iCloud, iTunes, and App Store services. As a user of all of those, I can definitely appreciate more bandwidth going that direction.

“We hope to build Apple’s next data center in Reno to support Apple’s iTunes Store, App Store and incredibly popular iCloud services,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a circulated statement. “If approved, this project would expand our presence in Nevada and create hundreds of construction jobs over the next year, plus permanent jobs at the data center which will add to our existing total of nearly 400 employees in the state.”

The Nevada data center would be used to support Apple’s data centers in Maiden, N.C. and Newark, Calif., and a planned data center in Prineville, Ore.

Reno photo: jcantroot/Flickr

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

[Update 1:29pm PDT: As expected, the outage did not last too long. Apple has updated its support site to say "all services are online."]

Apple customers may not be able to access their iCloud services today, as the company is experiencing outages. The outages have been confirmed on the iCloud support page.

The current system status for iCloud, which can be found here, says, “Users may be unable to access iCloud services. Normal service will be restored ASAP.” It also lists affected users as “some.” Apple first noticed the down time at 11:42am Pacific time.

iCloud services include mail, iTunes, calendar and reminders, content backup, the “Find My iPhone” feature, and more. Apple had another issue with iCloud only two days ago, when the mail client was “slow or unavailable.” This issue lasted less than a half hour before Apple came in with a fix. The day prior, Apple recorded issues with Photo Stream. This issue lasted closer to five hours.

Some are also reporting issues with the iMessage service, which allows those using Apple products to bypass SMS and instead freely instant message each other. I tried the services on my iPhone 4 and have had no trouble getting in. However, VentureBeat reporter Jenn Van Grove did experience issues sending iMessages. Instead, those messages were going through as SMS messages. If you are on a limited text messaging plan, be careful you’re not using your texts up thinking they’re actually free iMessages. You can tell if you’re sending an iMessage if the text field says “iMessage” in grey before you start typing in it.

via Macrumors; Cloud image via Shutterstock

Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicks off today with a keynote address from CEO Tim Cook and company. This year, Apple is expected to make announcements about  iOS 6, Mountain Lion, iCloud, and fresh Mac and MacBook hardware. (Check out our full round-up of predictions.)

VentureBeat reporters Dean Takahashi, Dylan Tweney, and Heather Kelly will be reporting  live from the keynote at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco starting at 10:00AM Pacific time. We’ll be updating this page with news and photos as it happens. We’ll also be tweeting from the event here, and following up with more in-depth articles on the announcements here.

Here are some of the biggest announcements from today’s keynote:

• Apple introduces thinner MacBook Pro with Retina Display
• Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion has 200 new features, including Power Nap, dictation, notification center, & more<
• iOS 6 revealed: Better Siri w/ iPad support, Facebook integration, & more
• Apple updates Siri for iOS6: cars, languages, games, sports, and yes, iPad!
• Apple takes its maps to new heights: free navigation, 3D, & more
• New MacBook Air powers up with Ivy Bridge processors and a 512GB SSD
• iOS devs earned $2.5B from apps year over year
• Non-Retina-display Macbook Pro adds in quad-core processors, USB 3.0

10:01am – Apple kicks off the event with a Siri video — Siri’s got jokes! “I am excited about the new Samsung. Not the phone: The refrigerator.”

10:02am - Tim Cook hits the stage. “This is our 23rd WWDC. Yes, it’s older than many of you are. This is the longest-running developer conference that we know of anywhere,” he said. This year’s WWDC sold out in 1 hour and 45 minutes — versus 8 days for last year’s conference.

Cook says that Apple now has over 650,000 apps in the App Store, 225,000 of which has been designed specifically for the iPad. Customers have now downloaded about 30 billion apps, and Apple has paid out more than $5 billion to app developers.

“There are such heartwarming stories out there, of what the combination of our incredible devices and your amazing apps have made in people’s lives,” Cook said. He paused, looked down, and looked emotional as he said that last line.

10:10am -A video starts playing, in which a blind man with a German accent is using an iPhone app to walk through a forest. “People write me from around the world, saying ‘You have changed my life,’” the developer of the app for blind people says.

Now there are kids learning anatomy in a classroom in India. Next, the video highlights someone who owns a tiny treehouse in the woods in Vermont, which they rent out using AirBnB on their iPhone.

“Apple makes it so easy for designers like us, for engineers like us, to stretch our imagination,” the Airbnb CEO says in the video.

Now they’re showing a cute little kid with speech development issues using an iPad to learn how to communicate. “iOS is so intuitive for anyone to use, regardless of age,” the developer says. [OMG barf. There's a a bunch of people saying "Thank you" to various app developers.]

Enter, new MacBooks

10:16am – Now Cook is back on stage. “On behalf of Apple, we would like to thank everyone in the developer community for the incredible apps you’ve done for us. Thank you.” He introdcues Phil Schiller, to discuss some “exciting changes in our notebook lineup.”

Here comes the news: First about the MacBook Air, which will once again be available in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes. It will feature a third gen Intel Core processor (Ivy Bridge) and will sport up to a 2.0GHz dual-core i7 chip, with Intel Turbo Boost to 3.2GHz, and up to 8GB of 1600MHz memory. You can now install up to 512GB of flash drive storage, running at speeds up to 500 Mbps (SATA 3). They’re also adding USB 3.0, with USB 3/USB 2 ports on both sides (each port works with both types of USB). It will also get a 720p HD webcam.

It’ll cost you $999 and $1,099 for the 11-inch MacBook Airs, and $1,199 and $1,499 for the 13-inchers. Both models are shipping today.

Next up, the MacBook Pro: They’ll offer Ivy Bridge processors up to 2.7GHz on most models, as well as a quad-core i7 on the larger, 15-inch model. The MacBook Pros can be equipped with up to 8GB of 1600MHz memory, and discrete Nvidia graphics is also an option (Apple claims it’s 60% faster than last year’s). Both models also have USB 3.

The MacBook Pros will be priced at $1,199 or $1,499 for the 13-inch model, and $1,799 or $2,199 for the 15-inch model. Both will also be shipping today.

“Nobody turns over their entire line as quickly or as completely as we do,” Schiller said.

Now the slide reveals a black cloth-covered mystery computer. (The crowd cheers. They like secrets.)

10:25am – “You want a next-generation MacBook Pro to have a killer display…. You want it to be radically thin and light. You want to make something unlike any other notebook today,” Schiller said. “It’s the most beautiful computer we’ve ever made.”

Video on the screen shows that it’s very thin — lower part of the computer’s body is thinner than Schiller’s finger. Nice visual effect there: The black background made it look as if it were a rendering, but it was actually a video of the real computer onstage.

This new MacBook Pro is 0.71 inch thick — only a little thicker than a MacBook Air — and 4.46 pounds. It sports a 15.1 Retina Display with an astounding 2,880 x 1,800 resolution.From a normal working distance, your retina cannot discern individual pixels. The screen is 220 pixels per inch, with 5,184,000 pixels — “the world’s highest-resolution notebook display,” Schiller said.

The new display uses IPS technology for wide viewing angles, and reduced glare by up to 75 percent. It offers deeper blacks and brighter colors, Schiller says.

Lion applications have been updated to take advantage of the display, including Mail, Safari, iMovie, and iPhoto. Final Cut Pro is also being updated: You can now fit a 1080p video at full resolution in the upper right of the screen, with “over 3 million pixels left over” for timeline, video effects, thumbnails, etc.

Apps need to be updated to take advantage of the Retina display – if not, they can be pixel-doubled. Adobe is working on an updated, Retina-ready version of PhotoShop. Autodesk is working on a new version of Autodesk. And game developers are working on this too, including Blizzard for Diablo III.

“Everything inside this Macbook Pro has been redesigned,” Schiller said. The inside is symmetrical, black, minimalistic. It looks like they’ve covered all the logos and chip identifiers. There’s a huge, odd-shaped array of batteries, and what looks like two fans.

The new Macbook Pro sports up to 16GB of RAM, GeForce GT 650M processor (from Nnidia) with up to 1GB of video RAM, and up to 768GB of flash drive storage. It has up to 7 hours of battery life and up to 30 days of standby time. Ports include an SD slot, HDMI (full-sized), USB 3/2 (one on each side), a new, thinner MagSafe 2 plug, and two Thunderbolt ports. The laptop also has a backlit keyboard, 802.11n Wi-Fi. Bluetooth 4.0. HD Facetime camera, dual microphones, and nice speakers.

Schiller touts a few new Thunderbolt devices, and shows off a FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet adapter for Thunderbolt.

10:37am – Now they’re rolling a video. It starts with Jony Ive, naturally.

“To create it, we rigorously questioned the ways we designed and built our portable products in the past,” Jony Ive says in a video.

For instance, the blades on the cooling fans are positioned irregularly (Ive says “asymmetrically”) in order to spread the fan noise across several frequencies, making it less noticeable. (That’s just insane. What’s next? Bespoke aluminum, hand-milled from organic Nepali aluminum miners?)

Pricing for the new MacBook Pro starts at $2,199, and it also starts shipping today.

“And that concludes our notebook lineup,” Schiller says. “It’s simply the best computer apple has ever made.”

OS X Mountain Lion, revealed

10:44am - Craig Federighi comes onstage to talk about OS X. There have been 26 million copies of OS X shipped to date — Apple’s best seller yet. 40 percent of OS X users are running Lion (after 9 months) — by comparison, Windows 7 took 27 months to get to the same level.

He formally announced OS X Mountain Lion, with an interface optimized for multitouch trackpads and mice, as well as easier integration with other devices. There are more than 200 new features, and he’s going to detail 8 of them.

First: iCloud. Several new apps in Mountain Lion, including Messages, Reminders, and Notes, will bring your documents to iCloud. There’s also a new app caled Documents in the Cloud, that will let you access other docs through Apple’s cloud storage service. “It provides a simple new way to access and organize your documents,” Federighi says.

Newest documents appear at the top, and all docs are available across all your devices. Docs in the Cloud works with Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Preview, TextEdit.

The Reminders app now supports multitouch for paging through your reminders, new animations. The Mountain Lion Notes app syncs with your iPad notes. Not surprisingly, the Messages app brings iMessage to the Mac, so you can respond from wherever you are, and your conversations are all available on your Mac, too.

Federighi describes the new Notifications Center as, “A consistent, elegant system based on banners and alerts.” Banners slide down into the upper right corner, just like Growl messages. After they go away, you can bring them back with a two-finger swipe from the right side of your trackpad. There will also be alerts, which function just like banners, except they stick around until dismissed.

Mountain Lion also sports built-in dictation and sharing features. There’s a “share” button in the toolbar in Safari (and other apps presumably), so you can share things to different services. It works in Preview, or you do it from “quick look” in any app that supports that. Sharing is built right into the OS, so you can enter your login (to mail, Twitter, Flickr, etc) from System Preferences.

10:54am – Ferighi calls the new Safari, “The fastest browser engine on the planet.” There’s a new unified search/URL bar, just like Chrome. You can just start typing, and it will autosuggest search phrases as well as items from your history and favorites. There’s an “iCloud” button on the toolbar. Click it, and it shows you a list of all the pages you have open in browsers on all of your devices.

A new tabbed interface supports multitouch gestures in Safari. You can also zoom in with multitouch (like in Lion). But if you zoom further out, you see all your open tabs and you can swipe between them, then pinch to zoom in on the one you want.

Slick feature here: There’s a quick-access “Tweet sheet” in notification center, so you can post a tweet. Federighi shows off by using Dictation to compose a tweet there.

A new feature called “Power Nap” fetches your email, calendar updates, and even syncs your photo stream while your Mac is sleeping. It Can also back itself up to Time Capsule and download/install system updates. “It’s operation is entirely silent … and easy on your battery,” Federighi says.

With AirPlay Mirroring, the Airplay menu now lets you select any nearby Apple TV and mirror your Mac’s screen at 1080p resolution. You also can send audio to AirPlay-enabled stereos and speakers.

Game Center, obviously, brings the iOS Game Center to the Mac. Uses the same account you might already have on iOS. It supports both turn-based and head-to-head gaming across Mac/iOS platforms.

11:06am – Time for another demo: A white-suited racecar driver with a helmet named Racer OS X comes onstage. He’s showing off CSR Racing.

Next they showed off a handful of other features, really quickly, including: Gatekeeper (anti-malware), Offline Reading List (in Safari — a read later feature). For developers, there are 1,700 new APIs. In China, there’s a new Pinyin input method, a Chinese dictionary, 8 new fonts, and sharing support for Sina, Youku, Tudou.

Mountain Lion will be coming to customers next month, via the Mac App Store for $19.99. That’s an upgrade price for anyone with Snow Leopard or more recent, and that single purchase will work across all of your Macs. Developers are getting a Developer Preview version today.

Everything you ever wanted to know about iOS 6

11:10am – Next up: Scott Forstall hits the stage for an update on iOS. He says there are over 365 million iOS devices shipped. Over 80 percent are running iOS 5.

84 of the top 100 social apps are pushing notifications via Notification Centers, he boasts. They’ve sent more than 1.5 trillion push notifications for these apps. 140 million iMessage users have sent more than 150 billion messages, more than 1 billion per day.

Twitter has seen a 3x growth in iOS users since integration, who have sent 10 billion tweets, Forstall said. 47 percent of Twitter’s shared photos come from iOS 5. There are now 130 million accounts on Game Center, with 5 billion score updates per week.

“I’m very happy to announce iOS 6,” Forstall eventually said. It offers over 200 new features, including improvements to Siri like sports awareness. You can ask “What was the score of the last Giants game?”, or “What is Buster Posey’s batting average?” The result shows a stats card.

Siri knows about baseball, basketball, football. Someone asks “Who is taller: LeBron, or Kobe?”

Siri also sports Open Table support, as well as better restaurant data, including average pricing, reviews, etc — via a partnership with Yelp.

“Siri’s become something of a movie buff,” Forstall says. New integration with Rotten Tomatoes includes integrated trailer playing (and likely reviews, and help movie showtimes). Siri can launch apps now too. “Play Temple Run,” and Siri launches it immediately.

There’s a new feature called “Eyes Free,” part of a a partnership with a number of car manufactures. A finger on a steering wheel button can bring up Siri (while your phone remains docked, and the screen remains dark). Car companies working with Apple include BMW, GM, Mercedes, Audi, Toyota, GM, Honda, Land Rover, and Jaguar.

Apple is adding Siri support for a bunch of languages and countries, including Korean, Mandarin (for Taiwan), Cantonese (for Hong Kong) and Mandarin or Cantonese for mainland China. This includes local search support “around the world” and in native languages.

Finally, Siri is coming to the iPad.

11:26am – Next up: Facebook integration. “We are integrating Facebook right into iOS 6.” You can log in through settings, and apps can then access your login for posting photos, locations, updates, etc.

Facebook is also integrated into the notification center, and you can tap to update Twitter or Facebook from within Notification Center. As part of the integration, the iOS API gives apps access to Facebook, your contact list also syncs with your friends’ contact information from Facebook, and Facebook events and birthdays appear in your calendar. (The same integration also appears in Mountain Lion on the Mac.)

There have also been some useful Phone application updates. The popup menu when you receive a call now includes a “remind me later” option so you can remind yourself to return incoming calls. A new “Do not disturb” option turns off notification of push notifications, text messages, phone calls — although you can designate exceptions to who can call you. There’s a “repeated calls” option so you can allow someone to get through if they call twice in under 3 minutes.

11:35am – FaceTime now works over cellular data connections, Apple confirmed. Facetime now links your Apple ID and your phone number, so if someone calls your phone number, you can take the call or reply to messages on your iPad or your Mac.

Two-thirds of all mobile web traffic comes from mobile Safari, Forstall says. Safari in iOS 6 adds ability to view open tabs on other devices (including your Mac), and the Offline Reading List feature. You can also upload photos from within Safari to sites like Shutterfly.

“Smart app banners” let websites display a banner to notify visitors about a native app. A single click takes you right into the App Store to install the app. If they have the app installed, Safari can pass data to the app so you can switch to the app and pick up where you were on the corresponding website.

Your Photostream can now be shared in iOS 6. You can check the photos you want to share, and choose friends from your address book. Friends receive a push notification, and your photos then appear in a shared album in their Photos app. Can also be viewed on a Mac, Apple TV, or web browser.

The Mail app has also received some nice updates. A new “VIP” feature lets you mark someone as an important person. When you get an email from a VIP person, you get a notification on the lock screen, just as if they’d sent you a text message. There’s also a special “VIP” mailbox for access to those messages. You can more easily insert photos and video, and you can open and view office documents within Mail.

Passbook, a new feature to iOS 6, consolidates passes, like airline boarding passes, Starbucks card, QR codes, and movie theater confirmation emails. Templates make it easy for developers to work with this. Passbook integrates into the lock screen, so it pops up on the lock screen at the right time. Unlock the phone, and there’s the QR code. Passbook has geolocation features, too, so if you walk by your favorite Starbucks, the app lets you know.

Forstall then introduced Guided Access, a new feature that allows you to circle controls with your finger that you want to disable, in any app. You can also disable the home button, so it keeps you in the app.

“We’ve been surprised by the number of children with autism who have been flocking to our devices, especially the iPad,” Forstall said.

Guided Access is also useful for schools that might want to lock an iPad-based test onto the screen, so kids can’t go to Safari to look up the answers.

Finally, Apple announces its own iOS Maps app

11:52am -”We have built an entirely new mapping system from the ground up, and it is beautiful,” Forstall said.

Apple’s long-awaited Map app offers worldwide coverage, all with Apple’s own cartography. 100 million business listings around the world are already included for local search (with Yelp integration). Apple is also building a traffic service, which not only shows slow areas but also includes little icons to show incident reports. The traffic functionality utilizes anonymous, realtime data from iOS users to keep the data updated.

Apple’s new Maps app will also include turn-by-turn navigation. Navigation will update ETAs based on traffic, and will reroute you if necessary. It’s also accessible via the lock screen, and is integrated with Siri.

“Are we there yet?” Siri answers: “Relax and enjoy the drive. You’ll be there in 14 minutes.”

The Maps app will also sport a new “Flyover” feature. Apple has been flying over metro areas in helicopters and planes to build 3D models and HD imagery. Maps are all vector-based images, so zooming and rotation is really fast. The app includes pop-up info cards on points of interest, as well as a quick 3D view.

The Flyover view is pretty cool: Pick a spot, and it renders a 3D photographic view that lets you zoom around and fly over that point.

The demo shows why Apple wanted to build its own maps application: This is faster and better-looking than any other maps app I’ve seen, plus it has the characteristic easy-to-use Apple UI and excellent integration with Siri.

Wrapping up, Forstall notes that all the OS X features for China are included in iOS 6 as well.

A beta of iOS 6 is available to developers today. It will ship this Fall, will support the iPhone 3GS and later, the 2nd and 3rd generation iPad, and the 4th generation iPod Touch.

Wrapping up

Now Tim Cook returns to the stage. (To enthusiastic cheers.) He recaps the day’s news: new Retina-display-sporting MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion, and iOS 6.

“Only Apple could make such amazing hardware, software, and services,” Cook said. “We are so proud of these products, because they are perfect examples of what Apple does best.”

This is why people come to work with Apple, he says: “To do the very best work of their lives… and to make a difference to so many people around the world. The products that we make, combined with the apps that you make, can fundamentally change the world.”

“I can’t think of a better reason for getting up in the morning,” Cook concludes.

And that’s a wrap.

New MacBook Air powers up with Ivy Bridge processors and a 512GB SSD

Spoiler alert! Apple is going to announce things on Monday morning at a keynote address kicking off the annual Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). Since speculation and rumors are half the fun (and annoyance) of reporting on Apple, we’ve collected some of our predictions for the big event.

We will be reporting live from Apple’s keynote address bright and early on Monday morning. The event begins at 10AM Pacific at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, Calif. Follow our Tweets, and, on our website, our liveblog and WWDC news.

Let’s put on our detective hats and start with the clues. Above is a photo of the inside of Moscone center on Friday. There are three giant banners. What could it all mean?

iOS 6: Facebook, new maps, and Siri for the iPad

Apple’s first banner confirms the company will unveil its newest mobile operation system, iOS 6, but what will be inside? It looks like the latest version of the OS will add Facebook integration to go with its existing Twitter functions. Facebook integration could make an appearance in the Photos app and Apple’s App Store.

Apple is likely dumping Google Maps for its own mapping tools, one-upping the search giant by adding a 3D option. (In October, Apple acquired 3D-imaging company C3 technologies.) Turn-by-turn directions might be in the pipeline as well.

A new tracking tool to replace the UDID system was reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday. The new system would continue to collect useful data for developers, but with improved privacy controls, such as opt-in tracking and stricter rules for developers to protect users.

Finally, there’s much speculation that mobile voice-assistant Siri will finally make an appearance on the latest iPad. There are also whispers that Apple will introduce a Siri API at the event, which would allow devs to integrate Siri functionality into their apps.

Mountain Lion: A launch date and new iOS-esque features

The Mountain Lion Mac operating system was first announced in February with a vague “Summer” release time. The Mountain Lion Developer Preview has been out in the wild and seen a few updates since then, which means most of the new features are already public. Apple will probably announce an official release date for the OS and a few new goodies. Any new features will match up with Apple’s quest to bring the best of iOS (especially iPad features) to the Mac, such as improved notifications.

iCloud: Social integration and pretty pictures

An update to the iCloud service is pretty certain. A new iCloud feature could improve photo sharing and add social features to the mix, allowing friends to comment on and download your images. Reminders and Notes will likely be drawn into iCloud as web apps. Finally, videos could be synced between devices using iCloud and collected into a stream, like photos currently are.

Fresh Macs and MacBooks: Ivy Bridge, Retina displays

Breaking from tradition, it looks like Apple will announce a Mac hardware upgrade at WWDC, featuring Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors. The most popular possibilities are beefed-up, slimmed-down laptops across the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines, some with Retina displays. The desktop line could also get some fresh blood, with a speed-bumped iMac and Mac Pro.

Apple TV: Maybe an SDK, but no HD TV

This juicy and highly speculative rumor has been getting a lot of attention: Apple will unveil a software developers’ kit for Apple TV. Our own Dean Takahashi would love to see the Apple TV opened up for cloud gaming. The long longed-for iTV, an HD TV made by Apple, is highly unlikely at this point.

The event itself

There will be orange juice, coffee, and pastries for attendees. Cool new apps from third-party developers will be demoed and an Apple TV ad will make its world debut. Tim Cook will be predictably charming, dressed in jeans and a possibly untucked black button down. Two-thirds of the way through the presentation, Cook will morph into a giant fire-breathing dragon and swallow Jony Ive whole before stomping out of the amphitheater, breaking through the Moscone Center’s glass wall, and fleeing into the warm mid-morning sky.

Share your own predictions in the comments!

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple will soon unveil an update to its iCloud storage service that will add photo sharing and social features, the Wall Street Journal reports.

While Dropbox, Box, Microsoft, and Google have dominated the cloud storage conversation in recent months, Apple has mostly stayed out of comparisons because it offers the dumbest (maybe “easiest” is the right word) cloud storage. It syncs your media across all iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), Macs, and PCs, but there is no way to manage what exactly goes where.

But with new functionality that is Apple is likely to announce at its WWDC conference on June 11, iCloud could take a leap forward with more fleshed-out features. First up will be easy photo sharing so others can access and download your photos. You’ll also be able to comment on these photos like you do on Facebook and other social sites.

The iCloud update will also reportedly let you sync notes and reminders using new web apps. That would tie iCloud with the release of iOS 6 and its many new features, including the dropping of Google Maps in favor of Apple’s own Maps software.

Let us know in the comments if you use iCloud now and if you’re looking forward to new features from the service.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple is currently testing a notification system for its iCloud web service via iCloud.com, according to a MacRumors report.

The notifications look pretty much like they do on iPads and iPhones running iOS 5.0 or higher, and presumably, its how the notification system will look when it comes to the latest version of Apple’s operating system OS X Mountain Lion.

And while we know that the company really wants to push iCloud integration in the future, I’m curious if notifications on the iCloud site would be overkill. Sure, the notifications can handle calendar and email alerts, but why bother if you’re already using an iOS device to sync all of these things together.

If Apple were to add a news feed and support for iMessages to the iCloud site, it could make those notifications a worthy addition. However, it would also mean Apple was tiptoeing its way into building a social-media walled garden. Without social and news features, I’d have no reason to spend time on iCloud.com, and I’m guessing many others would feel the same.

At this point, the only clear takeaway is that Apple plans to make its customers use iCloud more often on the web. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Image via MacRumors

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s iCloud service has 125 million users, the company announced today on its second-quarter earnings call. That number is up from the 100 million users Tim Cook said the service had on February 14 during a Goldman Sachs call.

The number shows growth in new users for the service, but when asked about storage sales, Apple sounded less optimistic, hedging without giving exact numbers. Peter Oppenheimer said “pick up on storage is occurring” and dropped back on the 125 million new users statistic.

“Our real desire here was not about selling more storage,” said Oppenheimer. “We just really wanted to increase the customer delight with the whole ecosystem and platform.”

That’s right, Apple isn’t in iCloud for the money. It just wants you to be happy and keep buying computers, iOS devices, and media from the iTunes store.

Signing up for the iCloud service is free for the first five gigabytes of storage. That space can be used to store music, movies, apps, books, and photos, which can then be accessed from any of your Apple devices. If you hit that 5GB cap, you will need to upgrade to a paid iCloud plan. Ten additional gigabytes cost $20 a year, 20GB cost $40 a year, and 50GB cost $100 a year.

The service has only been out for a little over five months, and Cook says customer satisfaction is “off the charts, they’re loving it.”

The bump from free to paid users may just be a matter of time, as people slowly move more of their documents and media to the cloud service. Consumer cloud storage is a crowded field, and Apple is going up against existing powerhouses such as Dropbox, and will face another huge challenger in Google’s Drive service, which launched today.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple‘s iPhoto application for the iPhone and iPad reached one million users in the less than two weeks since its release, according to the Loop.

The company announced the iPhoto app at its March 7 third-generation iPad launch. The app fills a hole in the company’s mobile offering that was previously filled by filter-loving photo apps such as Instagram and other editing software. iPhoto, which already exists on Mac computers, lets you color, edit, re-size, crop, enhance, and add a variety of filters to photos.

iPhoto on iOS is different from its Mac counterpart, however. It takes advantage of the touch screen, and lets you edit specific areas of a photo by swiping a finger. For example, if you’d like to brighten just one face in your photo, you can swirl your finger over the face and make the specific enhancement. You can select various brushes and tools from the bottom of the screen (pictured).

Organizing your photos is different as well. You still have various albums, which are kept on a shelf that looks similar to Apple’s Newsstand. But now you can also put photos into “journals” and share them over iCloud via a public link. You can supplement the photos in a journal with various data, including the date each picture was taken, a map to the location in the photo, what the weather was like that day, and more.

As the Loop notes, Apple is counting users here, as opposed to downloads. The app costs $4.99 to download and is only compatible with the iPad 2, the iPhone 4, and more recent devices.

Image via Heather Kelly

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple will now recognize DVD digital copies as movies purchased through iTunes, which is good news for consumers — especially those who own an Apple TV set-top box.

The company recently announced an updated version of its Apple TV device that features a major software upgrade. Aside from the refreshed user interface, the new Apple TV software allows iTunes users to stream music, movies, and TV shows through the device via iCloud. However, the company neglected to mention that DVD digital copies will also be available through the iCloud service in its announcement.

Film distributors started including a “digital copy” of a movie with the purchase of a physical DVD a few years ago. It was partially an attempt to justify charging more for the DVD, but initially it wasn’t very useful for most people. The experience of watching the digital copy was a bit annoying because it required entering an authorization code to prove you actually bought the movie (if you didn’t have the code, the movie wouldn’t play).

The industry is now shifting its focus from those digital copies to a new UltraViolet platform, which allows the owner of the DVD to watch a streaming version of their movie on various authorized devices. It’s very similar to what Apple is trying to accomplish with iCloud, except most people probably haven’t heard of UltraViolet.

Now that iTunes recognizes DVD digital copies, more people are likely to start using the iTunes movie store rather than buying a DVD from a brick-and-mortar retail store or a digital copy through an official UltraViolet retailer. And that means the film companies will have to give Apple a cut of the profits instead of taking it all for themselves.

Is this the beginning of the end for the UltraViolet platform? It’s really too soon to tell, but the movie companies would do well to amend their own efforts in favor of an official partnership with Apple. For example, giving people who buy a physical DVD an iTunes digital redemption code.

Via Electronista

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Earlier today Apple debuted the third version of its Apple TV set-top box, which enables higher-definition video playback, a new user interface, and some additional integration with the company’s iCloud service.

Overall these are nice changes, and they show the device is coming into its own. But most of what’s new about this Apple TV version is purely cosmetic and shouldn’t have taken over a year to see the light of day.

For instance, the ability to watch videos in 1080p is hardly a new concept for set-top boxes. Many competitors — such as the Boxee Box, Roku, Playstation 3, Western Digital WD Live, and Logitech’s Google TV Revue — already offer the high quality video. And since you can purchase 1080p HD movies and TV shows from the iTunes store, Apple fans have been increasingly annoyed that those purchases weren’t available (in 1080p) on the Apple TV. It’s also worth noting that, as was discovered in September 2010, you can play 1080p quality videos on Apple TV, but the output resolution remains 720. That said, this seems like a minor upgrade.

The reason Apple held off so long on enabling the 1080p playback probably had something to do with the notion that the old Apple TV’s hardware wasn’t good enough to support the high quality video without affecting the user experience. With the new version of the device, Apple has replaced the A4 chip with the faster single-core A5 chip. And while Apple hasn’t indicated that it’s upgraded the device’s RAM, I’d expect some kind of improvement over the 256MB offered in the old model.

When it comes to the updated user interface, there’s really no reason Apple couldn’t have pushed it out sooner. The old UI was mostly columns of text-based options you could scroll through that sat underneath pretty cover-style artwork along the top of the screen. At best I would describe this as acceptable for 2010, but not at all for any stretch of time in 2012. By comparison, the new interface is much more focused on images that I can easily identify from across the room. It’s similar to what I’ve come to love when using my Roku box. This doesn’t change the fact that Apple could have offered a sleeker, more TV-friendly UI at least six months ago.

The new UI also helps Apple further its goal of having the combination of iTunes and iCloud serve all of your digital media needs. The only problem with this is that Apple TV owners were not able to experience it sooner — like when Apple launched the iCloud service in October 2011.

Judging from the comments on VentureBeat’s Facebook Page, most people are still angry that Apple has yet to add access to a full App Store to the Apple TV. Earlier this year, Google rolled out its Android App Store (now called the Google Play Store), which allowed third-party developers to create “app channels” made specifically for a TV watching experience. Right now, the only way to get a third-party channel on the Apple TV is to work with Apple directly and then have them approve it. Apple is pretty particular about who it lets in. Only eight different third-party app channels are available on the Apple TV, and I doubt more will be added prior to the new Apple TV model hitting shelves next week.

Check out the demo video embedded below that VentureBeat’s Heather Kelly shot during the Apple event earlier today.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

On the eve of Apple’s much-hyped iPad HD event, Google has fired a shot right at Apple when it comes to media with its new Google Play store.

Google Play will smartly combine all of Google’s other stores like the Android Market and Google Music into one cloud-based marketplace for all media needs. Just like iTunes, Google Play will be consumers’ one-stop shop for movies, games, music, apps, and more.

And similar to Apple’s iCloud (and Amazon for that matter), Google says Play will ensure that all your purchased media is backed up so you don’t have to worry about losing those files again. You can re-download your files across all platforms if you ever move or lose them. Plus, you’ll be able to store up to 20,000 songs for free, a feature borrowed from the departed Google Music.

However, iCloud also offers more in the way of dealing with your already-owned music with its iTunes Match service. With it, you can listen your already owned music from other sources across your iOS devices.

From playing with Google Play today, it appears to offer a relatively smooth experience for browsing and buying media. Unlike iTunes, Play is completely accessible through the browser instead of through a locally-stored program. After toying around with it, I wish there was a way to browse and buy media from Apple through the browser as well.

As for selection itself, Apple is still chiefly king with iTunes, especially when it comes to music. Every mainstream artist and most independent artists make it a priority to have their music on iTunes but not Google. As Google Play evolves and becomes known as the destination for media on Android devices especially, it could eventually catch up to iTunes.

When it comes to music pricing, Play appears to offer downloads at the same price or slightly cheaper than iTunes. Popular albums Talk That Talk (Deluxe Edition) by Rihanna and Jay-Z/Kanye West’s Watch the Throne were both slightly cheaper from Google. For movies, Google Play offers just movie rentals, whereas iTunes offers rentals and digital purchases. Movie rentals appear to cost about the same using both services.

We’d encourage you to give Google Play a spin as well. Let us know in the comments if you like it and how you think it stacks up to iTunes.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple has decided to disable the push functionality for all MobileMe and iCloud email accounts connected on any iOS device within the borders of Germany, the company confirmed today.

The reason for the move comes after a German court ruling in early February that determined Apple’s e-mail syncing services violated a Motorola patent. While Apple is appealing the decision, for the time being the push functionally has been disabled for anyone in the country. The patent violation won’t affect syncing for calendar and contacts for German iOS users. The violation also won’t affect push functionality for other e-mail clients like Gmail and Hotmail.

It’s worth noting that iCloud e-mail users will automatically have the push functionality turned off when they enter the country, while MobileMe e-mail accounts will permanently have push cut off until Apple gets this situation straightened out.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, considering Google’s rhetoric about not using Motorola Mobility’s patents to hinder other companies. Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola has been approved by the U.S. and E.U., but the deal has not closed just yet.

Via The Verge