Apple iOS 5 Review
by Vivek Gowri, Andrew Cunningham, Saumitra Bhagwat & Brian Klug on October 18, 2011 3:05 AM ESTA Brief History
Apple’s affair with cloud services started way back in 2000 when they introduced iTools, a collection of free web-based services to Mac users. In 2002, iTools was renamed to .Mac with upgraded features, new backup tools and a copy of McAfee Virex. The upgrade also brought along with it a rather hefty subscription fee of $99/year, which was frowned upon by the Mac user community.
Subsequently, in June 2008, Apple rebranded .Mac as MobileMe. It let users seamlessly sync their mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks and other system data across multiple devices. Even with the inclusion of services like the MobileMe Gallery and Find My iPhone, the $99/year price tag was hard to justify in light of competing cloud-based services like Dropbox, Gmail, Picasa and several others that offered similar or much better functionality for free. MobileMe got off to a very bumpy start with frequent outages and less than stellar performance; its been widely regarded as one of Apple’s most prominent failures in recent times. In fact, cloud services have historically been an area where Apple has been unable to succeed. But can Apple get it right the fourth time with iCloud?
Given the industry’s to move towards cloud-based storage and services, it was only a matter of time before Apple leveraged its massive iOS user base and the tremendous success of the iTunes Music Store, App Store and iBookstore to let users store their data and media in the cloud and allow them on-demand access to it across devices. iCloud aims to do just that by building on MobileMe and correcting some of its flaws.
What is iCloud? How does it work?
iCloud essentially aims to be what MobileMe should have been from day one. A seamless way to store your content in the cloud, have it sync across all your devices, and give users access to their content on-demand. iCloud backs up a wide variety of content from your iOS devices and your Mac and keeps it intelligently synced across all of them. More importantly, iCloud and all its web applications are free. Each iCloud account comes with 5GB of storage space, with yearly subscription plans for additional storage ($20 a year for 10GB, $40 a year for 20GB, and $100 a year for 50GB). Unlike MobileMe, iCloud is tightly integrated with iOS 5 right from the time you start your device.
Building on the success of Find my iPhone, iCloud also includes support for Find my Mac in conjunction with OS X Lion (10.7) - at the moment, Apple does not appear to be interested in extending iCloud functionality to Snow Leopard. Lion features an updated preference pane for iCloud that lets users control features like PhotoStream, Back to My Mac and Find My Mac in addition to the usual stuff. Additionally, the iCloud pane on the Mac also lets you manage your storage and see exactly how much space is being used by all the devices being backed up to iCloud.
For more on how iCloud works with Macs and Windows PCs, check out the companion piece to this review.
Another feature called iTunes Match is also a part of iCloud and lets users mirror their iTunes libraries on iCloud for an annual fee of $29.99. So regardless of how and where you’ve gotten your music from, if its there on the iTunes Store, it automatically gets legalized and added to your account as 256Kbps AAC rip. Any song from your library for which there isn’t a match on the iTunes store gets uploaded to iCloud as is, and can be downloaded to any of your other devices. iTunes Match is currently capped at 25,000 songs, which should be more than enough for even the biggest audiophiles. This feature should be enabled in iTunes 10.5.1, which according to Apple should be here by the end of the month.
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name99 - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
It's worth remembering that Apple also did not say, on day one, that FaceTime would be available on desktops. In fact they announced
- FaceTime for Phones in June 2010.
- FaceTime for iPods in Sept 2010.
- FaceTime for Macs in Oct 2010.
I'd say, given the FaceTime experience, there is no reason to assume iMessage for Macs won't appear as soon as Apple feels the time is appropriate. (Who knows when that will be, but it will probably be thrown into, to spice up some Mac related announcements, rather than just appearing silently in OSX update 10.7.3).
The limitation to the Apple world may be a bigger hassle longterm, at least in terms of wanting to avoid SMS charges. I guess if you have lots of non-Apple using friends, you need to stick with Viber and suchlike.
The REAL attack on the telcos comes when
- FaceTime offers a voice-only mode AND
- Apple offers VoIP transport to foreign numbers (like Skype does)
My guess is Apple has plans for both of these, but they'll be introduced at the point where the Telcos no longer have the power to screw Apple over (which Apple probably feels requires a larger critical mass of customers than they have today).
alpha754293 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
How does the new iOS affect battery life?techloverLA - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
Hello,I own a Mac that recently got the iCloud upgrade. I turned it on and registered a new .me ID just to try it out for fun. Later when I turned it off, it gave me the message that "turning off iCloud will delete all iCloud data from the Mac. User can still access iCloud data with other iDevices." That scared me a bit, as I thought all my calendar/contacts on my Mac will get deleted. I logged on to iCloud.com and found nothing has been sync'd, so I went ahead and turned iCloud off. Nothing happened to my existing data on Mac. However this makes me wonder, does turning off iCloud wipe off data from the advices? I don't own an iPhone, but am considering one. However I don't want to have to delete data from my device should I choose not to use iCloud. Do you find that true in your test? Thanks.
RosiePerkins - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
I think that if you are so pedantic as to worry about mising calls constantly. Or enough to be thrown by the fact there is no 'repetitive and annoying' alerts, then you should either get into a habit of constantly checking your phone. Which you would be if people were ringing you so often that you always miss calls or text messages.You're being rather lazy by expecting a feature in an already highly advanced phone to compensate for you not wanting to hit the wake button. If you are then unsatisfied with the way you have to wake your iPhone now and then maybe you should reconsider ever having it leave your person. This way there is no need for features that would cause stress for every one else around you.
IndyJaws - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
Thank you for one one of the most thorough recaps/reviews I've seen on iOS 5 - excellent work!One thing I'll share with others at the risk of looking stupid...I couldn't figure out why iTunes kept launching on my 2 computers for no reason at all (phone was not connected at the time). I'd shut it down and it'd start back up, seemingly randomly, from time to time. Silly me, I had iTunes configured to sync to iCloud, but to still launch iTunes when the iPhone was connected. So...the wireless sync would kick in (at intervals much more frequently than I would have expected), causing iTunes to launch. Clearing that checkbox fixed the issue. Just an FYI in case anyone else runs into the same issue - I'm sure there are others, but not willing to admit it!
mashimaroo - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - link
Mirroring in the iphone 4s and ios5 makes doing presentations on my iphone so much easier. I can simply connect it with a vga connector or a/v connector to my aaxa p4 pico projector and im good to go. I can use whatever docs goodreader or keynote. i can even play games with it and stop staring at my tiny phone screen.