iCloud, Mobile Documents Sync and GoodReader

Last night we detailed how it’s possible to sync documents across multiple Macs configured with the same iCloud account through a hidden folder in Lion’s Library called Mobile Documents. As I explained in the article, this folder is actually the destination and sync location for iCloud-enabled apps, such as Instacast and iWork, that have been updated by developers to officially take advantage of iCloud’s Documents & Data. But as it turns out, Mobile Documents can be used for syncing files across Macs “manually” – just drop a file or folder in there, and it’ll show up on another Mac running the same iCloud account. So whilst Mobile Documents is “officially” used for App Store apps that work with iCloud, it can also come in handy as a native “drop box” powered by iCloud.

As many were quick to point out, syncing files between Macs is nice, but “real” syncing solutions like Dropbox come with mobile apps to make sure your documents and folders aren’t simply synced between desktop machines. Since Apple isn’t offering a new version of iDisk based on iCloud – and seems to be moving away from the concept of filesystem altogether – the method I described in the article was obviously meant for owners of multiple Macs – the Mobile Documents “hack” is cool, but it’s not supported by Apple.

On the App Store, however, that are several apps that over the years have tried to re-implement the filesystem on iOS by offering access to a plethora of online sources for your files, such as FTP servers, Google Docs, Dropbox and SugarSync. These “file management” apps like iFiles and iStorage aren’t integrated on a system level, but they work as “aggregators” for documents you may have already saved in the cloud, only they bring them together in a single location.

One of such apps is GoodReader, perhaps the most popular document reader & file manager ever landed on the App Store’s virtual shelves – GoodReader comes with hundreds of features and support for multiple online services, plus it’s also a decent PDF reader with annotation functionalities and an overall good preview engine. As I was playing around with the idea of having Mobile Documents work with an iOS app, I realized one of the latest GoodReader updates introduced full iOS 5 and iCloud compatibility, meaning the app can store its documents and data in iCloud, and will show up as iCloud-enabled app in your account (to check this, open Settings->iCloud->Storage & Backup->Manage Storage on iOS, or System Preferences->iCloud->Manage… on OS X Lion). And if an iCloud-enabled app with Documents & Data shows its contents on OS X under Mobile Documents, it means GoodReader should be capable of syncing its own filesystem back to the Mac.

Indeed, you can use GoodReader to manage files and folders on iOS, and have them available on the Mac as well through iCloud and Mobile Documents. GoodReader will create its own folder inside Mobile Documents, and every change (new file, new folder) you’ll make on the iOS app will appear inside GoodReader’s “Documents” directory. Of course, you’ll have to use GoodReader’s “iCloud” folder to enjoy these syncing features; thanks to GoodReader’s file management features, you’ll be able to create folders and sub-folders, move documents around and delete them, create new text files, rename documents, and more. GoodReader has some pretty powerful features, and it’s nice to see the developers are supporting iCloud out of the box with a dedicated folder on the main “My Documents” page.

Thanks to GoodReader’s support for multiple online services, you’ll be able to, say, move files from Dropbox or Google Docs to iCloud directly from the iOS app.

In my tests, iCloud sync with GoodReader has been extremely fast and reliable. Documents imported on iOS would show up in seconds on the Mac’s Mobile Documents, and vice versa. I was able to move screenshots between my Mac, iPhone and iPad using Mobile Documents and GoodReader, but I also created folders, compressed files, imported PDFs and MP3 files. Because iCloud is based on push technology, files are pushed immediately to the cloud and downloaded on all configured clients, but I noticed that GoodReader for iOS, unlike the Mac’s Mobile Documents folder, doesn’t download a full document as soon as the data is “pushed” from iCloud. Try this: on your Mac, drag a medium-sized PDF into GoodReader’s iCloud folder. Notice how the PDF’s icon and name show up on GoodReader after your Mac has pushed the document to iCloud. But try to open the PDF from GoodReader, and you’ll see the app will require additional download time, as only the main information about the file has been pushed to iOS – if you want to read it, you’ll have to wait for the full download. I actually found this method pretty clever, as it gives me up-to-date file information in seconds, and allows me to download files when I need them. Overall, I’m impressed by iCloud and GoodReader working together to sync files across different iCloud clients.

Why should you care to have GoodReader syncing files that also happen to show up on your Mac? First off, it’s a cool trick. More importantly, iCloud’s push technology works well, and users (like me) may find it convenient to have an easy way to, say, import iOS screenshots on the desktop without using Photo Stream, while still relying on iCloud. Thanks to GoodReader’s support for audio and video, iWork and Office files, HTML archives and text files, you’ll be able to copy a variety of documents from your desktop onto iCloud, and have them synced back to iOS in seconds.

Check out how to sync files with Mobile Documents and iCloud here. GoodReader is available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Revolutionary User Interfaces→

Revolutionary User Interfaces

In an article posted this morning on Asymco, Horace Dediu discusses how the revolutionary user interface of the iPhone served to disrupt the mobile market and unseat the incumbents - Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.

In 2007 something happened which changed the industry. It took a few years to even realize it was happening but by the time it was obvious, it had changed to such a degree that huge companies found themselves in financial distress.

Furthermore, Dediu discusses how over time as new input methods have been created, so have new platforms and new business models - as well as hurting the incumbents of the market. A big question that Dediu poses in his article is that with next revolutionary user interface seemingly being created at a faster and more rapid rate (mouse, click wheel and then multi-touch), what will be the next revolutionary user interface? He questions whether in fact it could be Siri.

My disruptive hypothesis for Siri is that it shifts the competition from platforms positioned on a device to a “coupled” super-platform deponent on broadband and infrastructural computing. Just after collecting enough data and observing patterns in it that give us clarity, It looks like things are about to change all over again.

If you’d like to hear more from Horace on this idea of Siri being the next shift in user interfaces, this week’s episode of the Critical Path would also be worth a listen.

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Customize The Launchpad, Mission Control And Login Screen Backgrounds With Lion Designer

Since Lion launched we’ve covered a few hacks that describe how you can change Mission Control’s and Dashboard’s background, as well as how to change the background of folders in Launchpad - but most of them have required some level of manual file editing and replacement. Fortunately, developer Moritz Wette has made it a whole lot simpler to customize the look of Lion with his app, Lion Designer.

Lion Designer lets you customize the Mission Control, Dashboard, Launchpad folder and the login screen background as well as the Launchpad folder icon. The developer suggests using PNG images that are at the resolution of your screen or are images that can tile - otherwise you’ll end up with something that looks messy. Though if you don’t like how something looks after you’ve changed it, or something has gone wrong, you can easily click the reset button and Lion Designer will return it to the stock look. I gave the app a quick spin and found it worked fine, with my Dashboard now displaying the familiar and soothing linen pattern. Lion Designer is available for free, but be sure to send over a small donation to Wette if you find the app useful to you.

If you’re looking for some other apps to tweak and customise OS X Lion, have a look at these apps that we have covered in the past:

  • Lion Tweaks - Lets you turn various features in Lion on or off, examples include removing the system Window animation, disable spelling correction, enable permanent scrollbars and many more.
  • Launchpad-Control - Hide any app you want from being displayed in Launchpad
  • LaunchpadCleaner 2 - Also allows you to hide apps from Launchpad as well as some more in-depth features.

[Via TUAW]

Use “Mobile Documents” Folder To Sync Files with iCloud Across Macs

 

Hidden into Lion’s ~/Library (which can be displayed in a variety of ways as we detailed in our Lion review) there’s a Mobile Documents folder that’s capable of syncing files across Macs configured with iCloud, Mac OS X Hints reports. Sure enough, the Mobile Documents folder is the directory iCloud uses for Documents & Data, a feature available both on iOS 5 and Lion. Mobile Documents is the same folder that contains data for apps that already work with iCloud, such as Instacast, iWork, or Galaxy on Fire 2.

What’s interesting about this folder when used with two Macs under the same iCloud account is that it provides a basic “drop box” functionality for files that don’t necessarily belong to an iCloud-enabled app. As you can see in my screenshot, the Mobile Documents folder contains data and sub-folders for App Store apps that work with iCloud. In order to follow Mac OS X Hints’ suggestion, I tried to drop a few images directly in the folder – as I’d normally do with Dropbox – using my iMac. In a few seconds, those files were synced back to my MacBook Air. Both my iMac and MacBook Air use the same iCloud account, and have Documents & Data on. Clearly, those images didn’t belong to an officially-registered iCloud app (such as Instacast), but the files were synced back and forth between the two machines.

So what we have here is a cool hack to use the Mobile Documents folder as a temporary Dropbox-like solution based on iCloud. This is interesting because Apple could technically prevent files that don’t belong to a signed iCloud app from syncing across Macs, but decided not to, at least on 10.7.2. If you think about it, this could imply the company will offer some sort of iDisk replacement sometime in the future, or build a GUI for syncing documents back and forth between Macs manually. Or, it could be the foundation for an upcoming iWork for OS X update. Or then again, it could simply be a cool trick that won’t receive any official support from Apple.

If you want to try the Mobile Documents sync (Mac OS X Hints claims the system even supports conflict resolution, which was suggested by John Gruber months ago), I’d recommend you make an alias of the folder, drop it onto your Desktop, and start dropping files into it. Make sure all your Macs are configured with a single iCloud account, and do not delete the documents & data that are already in there, or you’ll lose precious app libraries, preferences, or saved states.

Finally, please note that even if files you’ll sync won’t show up in “official” iCloud apps, they’ll still count against your iCloud storage.

Update: here’s how you can use Mobile Documents with GoodReader for iOS.

Apple Pushes Back Mac App Store Sandboxing Requirement To March 2012

In an email to developers today obtained by iClarified, Apple has informed them that all apps submitted to the Mac App Store must implement sandboxing by March 1st, 2012. Originally Apple had told developers that the sandboxing requirement would take place this month. It isn’t entirely clear why Apple has delayed the introduction of this requirement but it does give developers a few more precious months to implement the restriction and resolve all issues that it might cause for their app.

In the email Apple notes; “Sandboxing your app is a great way to protect systems and users by limiting the resources apps can access and making it more difficult for malicious software to compromise users’ systems”. For those who aren’t familiar with the technical ‘feature’, John Siracusa has a great (and in-depth) discussion of the feature in his Mac OS X 10.7 Lion review on Ars Technica. In short, sandboxing restricts the number of actions that an app can do so that if the software is compromised, the amount of damage it can do is greatly minimised.

In Lion, the sandbox security model has been greatly enhanced, and Apple is finally promoting it for use by third-party applications. A sandboxed application must now include a list of “entitlements” describing exactly what resources it needs in order to do its job. Lion supports about 30 different entitlements which range from basic things like the ability to create a network connection or to listen for incoming network connections (two separate entitlements) to sophisticated tasks like capturing video or still images from a built-in camera.

In its email to developers, Apple also notes that if an app requires access to “sandboxed system resources”, the developer must also include justification for why it needs those entitlements when submitting the app to the Mac App Store. Finally, Apple notes that it is willing to offer developers additional, temporary, entitlements if the app is being re-engineered for sandboxing - but only on a short-term basis.

[Via iClarified, Image via Apple]

Apple Seeds New iTunes 10.5.1 Beta with iTunes Match To Developers

iTunes Match, Apple’s upcoming cloud music service based on “scan and match” technology, was scheduled to launch by the end October. As October went by and Apple missed its pre-announced release date – which Apple’s Eddy Cue announced at the “Let’s talk iPhone” media event on October 4th – it appears the company is now requiring additional testing for iTunes Match, which is available in a new version of iTunes not released to the public yet, iTunes 10.5.1.

A new beta of iTunes 10.5.1 has been seeded to developers a few minutes ago, including the iTunes Match functionality that Apple has been testing since August. From the release notes of this beta, it appears iTunes Match is now also available on Apple TV for testing. iTunes 10.5.1 beta 2 comes with a number of bug fixes and improvements, and Apple notes iCloud music libraries will be deleted at the end of this beta.

iTunes Match is currently in beta for developers and US-only. Rumors in the past weeks suggested another reason for the delay of iTunes Match could be Apple trying to get international rights to launch iTunes Match in additional countries besides the US – a rumor seemingly confirmed by Apple’s Eddy Cue himself, who stated iTunes Match would become available in Canada shortly after the US launch. Of course Apple may have added more countries to the launch list since September, although the company’s website still reports iTunes Match as a US-only service.

iTunes Match will work on iTunes for Macs and PCs, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV.

Powered by Amazon, Flow Scans Products You Can Buy Online

Today A9 Innovations, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, released Flow, a new iPhone app that allows users to scan objects in real-life with the iPhone’s camera, and instantly get results for available “product matches” on Amazon.com. Flow, based on A9’s scanning technology and augmented reality software, can look at a product’s cover or UPC barcode, and find in a few seconds if the selected item is also available for purchase on Amazon.com. Think Google Goggles, only based on Amazon’s retail infrastructure rather than search. Flow works with book and videogame covers, CDs and DVDs and any product barcode, but I’ve managed to find other products such as iPad accessories and Apple gadgets without scanning the barcode, only by pointing my camera at the product’s packaging for a few seconds.

The tech behind Flow for iPhone is quite impressive. As you hold your camera towards a product’s cover or barcode, the app begins “scanning” its contents and matching the image with Amazon.com in real-time. You can see the scanning process in action through a series of colored dots appearing on screen, capturing the “key areas” of a cover – such as the title, lead image, or artwork. Once a product is “found” on Amazon.com, a pop-up overlay appears on screen with options to Buy Now, see more buying options, share it, or even listen to embedded media available on Amazon.com if it’s a CD.

For example, I was able to listen to some Killers and Led Zeppelin songs after I scanned some old CDs of mine. This pop-up interface item is displayed live on screen, on top of the camera view, as Flow takes advantage of augmented reality technologies built by A9. This means that if you have multiple items on your desk, scanning one after the other will close and re-open multiple popups – it’s very neat.

This is our first step towards integrating product search technology with augmented reality,” said Bill Stasior, president of A9.com. “The integration of a live camera display, graphical overlays, and visual recognition technology creates a seamless experience for a customer looking to discover information about objects in their physical surroundings.

Flow uses continuous scan technology developed by A9.com’s visual search team to identify products and provide related information found on Amazon.com. The app displays Amazon’s popular shopping features such as product details, customer reviews and ratings, as well as sharing options via Twitter, Facebook, or email.

In my tests, Flow managed to recognized old CDs from the early ’90s, Nintendo 64 games, Japan-imported PSX, PS2 and GBA games, European Wii releases, DVDs, books, comic books, iOS accessories and various Apple products. The app also comes with a list view, allowing you to delete scanned items, see the best reviews and buying options on Amazon.com, and even the locations you’ve scanned from through Bing Maps. Alternate Matches, descriptions, related products and previews are also displayed when available.

Flow’s impressive scanning technology will only get better with time, and it’ll be interesting to follow the development of the app and see if Amazon will further integrate with its retail and Prime services. You can get Flow for free on the App Store.

Apple Releases iOS 5.0.1 Beta

Right after the statement from Apple regarding the iOS 5 battery life issues and the promised software update “in a few weeks”, the company just posted a beta of iOS 5.0.1 to developers. It’s unclear what’s new in this beta, but it’s very likely testing will focus on battery life before the update is released publicly.

Update: According to the first reports surfacing on Twitter, it appears iOS 5.0.1 beta restores multitasking gestures on the iPad 1 (a feature that wasn’t available in the public release of iOS 5), resolves various bugs with iCloud and, as mentioned above, fixes battery life issues. Pre-release software is only available to registered developers, and users will be able to upgrade wirelessly to iOS 5.0.1 once it comes out “in a few weeks”.

iOS 5.0.1 is available now in the iOS Dev Center.

Apple Promises Software Update “In A Few Weeks” To Address iOS 5 Battery Life Issues

Ever since the release of iOS 5 on October 12th, a number of users have reported battery life issues with their devices, with the new OS seemingly draining more battery than usual after the upgrade. Specifically, the reports that have surfaced in the past weeks focused on the iPhone 4S, which according to several users that have commented on Twitter and various blogs suffers more than other devices due to the iOS 5 software update. A number of “unofficial” fixes have suggested disabling the iPhone’s location features and notifications might improve the device’s battery life.

In a statement released to AllThingsD, Apple has confirmed they have found a series of bugs in iOS 5, and they will release a software update in a few weeks to address the aforementioned battery life issues.

A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.

In the past weeks, many have speculated a possible iOS 5.0.1 software update was in the works to address iOS 5’s battery life issues. Apple didn’t provide an official solution for the problem yet, but expect a software update (which can be delivered wirelessly to iOS 5 devices) to correct the problem soon.

Update: iOS 5.0.1 has been seeded to developers.