After years of missteps, Apple finally got the cloud shortly before Steve’s death in 2011. Replacing MobileMe with iCloud brought a slew of new features to IOS devices. In-the-air syncing, iMessage, wireless backups and PC-free operation were great starts to the iCloud service, and I think the following additions will put Apple light years ahead of the competition.

1. Unify Apple IDs. I have a trail of Apple IDs dating back to the early days of the iTunes Music Store. My three or so IDs are tied to specific content that I don’t want to part with. And my iCloud Apple ID is different from my FaceTime ID which is different from my Apple Retail ID. Having the ability for Apple ID veterans to merge these identities would cut down on password headaches and improve the overall Apple experience.

2. Optional auto updates for apps. iOS4 does a great job of removing the digital housekeeping tasks from the end user but I find myself updating apps several times a week. I think there should be a setting to allow users to opt-in for nightly updates when available.

3. Better File Management. The vision for IOS abstracts the user from the underlying file system. While this helps users concentrate on their content, it makes for a difficult process to do something as simple as including a file attachment in a new email message. Implementing a “File Center” for files hosted on iCloud or a Spotlight enhancement to include and interact with iCloud files would solve this in a simple, intuitive way, opening up convenience for desktop and mobile users alike. Jobs may have envisioned Dropbox serving this role when he made the unsuccessful push to acquire the startup in 2009.

4. Photostream for Music. As I wrote earlier last year, 2011 was all about revolutionizing the music experience by leveraging the cloud. Much to my disappointment, I still have to tether my iDevices to my computer to get content not purchased through Apple on my devices. And with Amazon and now Google making big plays in online music sales, this is becoming more and more true for me. Not to mention smaller artists who sell tracks directly from their own private sites. While I understand why this would be a hard business sell for Apple to make to the big labels who have traditionally dragged their heels on digital innovations, wifi syncing for all my digital content- regardless of the origin- would put the magic back into iCloud.

5. Tighter Mail Integration. Having my Exchange account synced between my desktop and iDevices isn’t an iCloud feature, but I see value syncing my folders and smart mailboxes that keep me as organized at my desk while I’m away from the office. One of my favorite things about Google Chrome is having my bookmarks, history, account log-ins and preferences synced between computers and if Apple can pull this off with OSX and iOS applications, it could be a true game changer.

iCloud has a ton of potential and is already making my life easier by taking care of syncing behind the scenes to simplify my digital content management. It’s an incredible opportunity for Apple to showcase their digital ecosystem and retain users.

The iPad is Apple’s flagship “post PC era” device, but I’m not sure we’re ready to ditch our laptop shackles just yet. The magical aura surrounding my unboxing of the product was cut short when I pressed the power button for the very first time. As the screen began to glow for the very first time, I was quickly met with the “must connect to iTunes” screen- no cosmic intro video or helpful setup assistant here. This might one day become a post-PC device, but not without a digital tether to the machines of today. I hope that future versions of iOS will allow some onboard functionality without the need to first connect to iTunes.

Once the iPad synced all my stuff- photos, podcasts and apps, it was time to see if this tablet could really fit in my digital life, or if it would live as the evil middle child between my Macbook and iPhone.

If there’s one thing about the post-PC era the iPad demonstrates it’s that technical specs don’t really matter. The screen is bright, construction rigid, camera FaceTimeable- and overall the experience is speedy with great graphics performance. I don’t know the exact performance rating of the A5 dual-core chip powering my iPad, but if I did, it wouldn’t affect the overall experience. As more devices like the iPad come into our lives, I can see consumers relying far less on the hard-sell tactics of hardware specs instead concentrating on usability and overall value.

The iPad’s true potential lies in the wealth of applications available through Apple’s App Store. I downloaded my staples- Dropbox, Twitter, Weather, Amazon and Kindle. I was shocked how the iPad channeled my inner gamer with SimCity HD, Plants vs. Zombies, Words with Friends and Angry Birds Rio. The iPhone’s smaller real estate was never enough for gaming but the iPad is the Goldilocks “just right” size for handling and viewing. The new titles make perfect use of multitouch and old friends like SimCity that began as a PC favorite have been slickly translated for a touch experience.

Apple’s iBooks and the Kindle app are great additions. I spent the weekend reading Tina Fey’s BossyPants from iBooks and the experience was great. Unlike a paper book, I was able to set the font size, style and brightness perfectly. Highlighting and notes were great for memorable quotes. And a subtle trail at the bottom of the page let me know how long before the end of chapter and book, disappearing when not used. It’s amazing that each iPad can house thousands of ebooks, easily fitting an entire library inside the iBooks application. For minimalists and frequent movers, this should cut down on the volume of physical books we have in our lives. Of course, nothing iBooks offers can replace that old book smell or signed copy from your favorite author.

After a month of use, my iPad is chipping away at the time I’d spend on my laptop. I prefer my iPad for light browsing, socializing and media consumption- roughly 80% of the tasks I used my home computer for. With iOS 5 on the horizon, I hope Apple begins to untether iPad from the traditional PC. To be a truly next generation device, the iPad needs to stand strongly on its own and be ready to hit the ground running out of the box.

Alan Dodaro is the Business Development and Marketing Coordinator, working out of the Chicago office.

QR Codes Are So 2010 — 2011 Is All About The NFC
In 2011, NFC has nothing to do with football — although you might be able to buy the next game’s tickets by swiping your cell phone at the ticket booth. NFC stands for Near-Field Communication, and it’s coming to a mobile platform near you. Near-Field Communications is a method for transferring bits of data over short distances. One popular use (already very prevalent in Japan as Mashable mentions) is mobile payments. A number of big players like Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft are already rumored to bring support for NFC-based technology to their existing platforms. Time will tell as to whether or not we’ll be able to replace our wallets with our phones.

Java Creator Leaves Oracle, Joins Google
The man known as the godfather of the Java programming language and former employee of the Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems, James Gosling, is now at Google. Normally, such a move wouldn’t mean so much but as we know Oracle has raised a copyright/patent lawsuit against Google over their implementation of the Java technology in the Android platform. While it’s been a bit of a tug of war thus far, it’ll be interesting to see what effect the acquisition of the Java inventor will have on the suit and whether or not this sets any precedence for future suits.

Firefox 4 Beats Internet Explorer 9 in Initial Release
With all the buzz around the release of IE9, I think many were surprised to see Firefox 4 blow past Microsoft’s new browser in terms of downloads. While Microsoft has been typically slow to push users to the new version of their browser through Windows Update, I suspect them to do so more hastily than they have in the past. Microsoft has seen a sharp decline in the use of their browser over the past decade — and for good reason. They’ve refused to follow standards and have, in my opinion, set the web back at least 3 years. But IE9 is a great step forward, and I applaud Microsoft’s efforts to not only create a fast browser, but to listen to developers.

However, I think the bigger story might Google’s Chrome browser eating away at both Mozilla and Microsoft’s browser market share…

It’s no surprise that the company that ‘thinks different’ thought differently about how to position themselves (and the new iPad 2) to the 13,000+ temporary SxSW residents of Austin. Once again, they did what now seems obvious… they found a great retail location, installed hardwood floors, painted the walls white and put oversized product hero shots in the windows… and they created this ‘pop-up’ store in 3 days.

What resulted was what we’ve now come to expect from the launch of any new Apple Product (read as slight upgrade): long line-ups, sold out product and lots and lots of conversation. The interesting part however was being there to witness the process of how that conversation radiated. From pre-opening tweets about a possible store (due to unusual amounts of Apple hooded employee sightings) to the posts and critiques about how Etsy had an even better temporary store, the conversation about the Apple Pop-Up moved like a wave into the presentations of keynotes and material of stand-up comedy and podcasts.

It was instant and you could feel the conversation moving… arguably and sadly, maybe even more than the conversation about Japan (at least initally).

So, what’s so impressive? After all, SxSW is a community where a Pee Wee Herman sighting will radiate in short time and many brands like Etsy and Playstation set up temporary shop. The difference is that at SxSW, being part of a conversation is now a requirement and even creating some ‘buzz’ is becoming table stakes. The true challenge is to be one of ‘the top conversations’ and whether they did it by design or not, Apple once again filtered to the top of the conversation.

As for the shortage of product, I like how my new favorite podcaster, Chris Hardwick put it… “temporarily sold out product at a temporary store can only be considered temporary sadness.”

As for Japan, the hot topic of ‘influence’ was put to work and the conversation about Japan was there as well… The SxSW community raised $65,000.

Note: Check out Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist Podcast #69 with a tiny, but special guest appearance by Darren Wood and Jim Kim (near the end).

iPad 2

This is the obvious post – I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Cameras, faster processors, and 33% thinner. And white! Amazing. Check it out.

What do these features mean for marketing? There are the obvious uses of these new features on the consumer end. But how will the relate to things like customer service? Could companies start utilizing FaceTime for customer service, or product support? There is plenty of room for more innovation in this space, and it may help the adoption of FaceTime – something I seldom, if ever, use.

The feature that I am excited about is the bump in processing speed – something Apple needed to add so it would keep up with the onslaught of competitors ramping up to launch. The experience I have working with developers on projects is that the iPad has a limited ability to run deeper experiences, so more processing speed means bigger ideas, and better execution.

Lastly, the addition of HDMI capabilities means more ipad to TV relationships leading to an even bigger experience.

The App vs. Web Dilemma

An interesting article this week on the trends of how people are using their smartphones – and the consensus is that the browser based experience is being left behind. Sure there seem to be uses called out for browser based experiences, like news, search and commerce, but web use on mobile devices is now 37% lower than app use.

It’s not a lie that there’s an app for most things, and might be the future that your next search engine is an app for a specific topic, and instead of searching for a webpage in Google, you’re searching for an app in the App Store or Marketplace. Source

Tracing your UI
The nice thing about touch interfaces is just that – they’re touched. Something as simple as letting someone play with your app and looking at the screen after can show an abundance in information.

The rise of Near Field Communication (NFC)
Some of the more exciting tech that was shown at the Mobile World Congress this year was in the vein of near field communication (NFC). The prospects of near field communication are quite profound – essentially the ability to use your phone to transfer data through near contact. Like RFID, NFC would allow you to pay at a point of sale, or transfer contact information for example. One of the large differences between RFID and NFC is security: NFC was built specifically to be more secure. Read more on CNET.

The new subscription model
Over the past week or so both Apple and Google released subscription models for their app stores, drawing a straight line from publisher and consumer. There are some key differences between the two:

source

Apple’s model allows publishers to set the price and recurrence, and all payment is handled by the iTunes store limiting those purchases to strictly Apple devices (surprise). The Google One Pass is a lot less limited – not only do they only take 10%, but they also allow their One Pass system to work across various platforms such as web, tablet, and smartphones. Google’s subscription system is smarter too allowing for metered billing and single content billings.

HP WEBOS

Introducing the Pre 3

What chances does yet another OS have in the evermore saturated world of mobile? Apple, Google, and RIM in the forefront, Microsoft training to win ground, and now HP rekindling the WebOS software it acquired with Palm. Is it worth it? I know one person in the CM Calgary building that might say yes. Anything can happen, there is no clear winner yet.

Palm may be dead, but their Pre is back, and so is WebOS. Personally I like the simplicity of WebOS. The ‘card’ based system makes it easy to multitask, and a simple flick will close an app. It’s clean and easy to understand. The obvious downside to WebOS are the apps available: a whopping 8000.

The hardware itself is said to be massive. The 3.6″ screen AND slide out keyboard make it a handfull, but for some they’ll be glad to still have the physical keyboard. Have a look at this hands-on video for a walkthrough.

GOOGLE ANDROID

Google introduces the App Inventor Beta
Dream of developing apps for your Android, but have no frakking clue on how? Check out App Inventor. Think of it as a WYSIWYG for app development: sure it won’t make the prettiest or most efficiently coded apps, but it’ll let you knock out a prototype. Pretty rad.

Android app store sees 861.5% growth… from 1.3% market share
So what’s 861.5% growth on 1.3% market share? 4.7%. Numbers can be deceiving as it’s a long way up to the 82.7% currently held by Apple, but if Google can maintain this rate of growth, Apple better watch out.

APPLE iOS

March 2nd is what you may have been waiting for
Been holding off? Pay attention March 2nd as it’s speculated to be the release of iPad 2.

WINDOWS PHONE 7

Update is not boding well for Samsung owners
Microsoft’s update for its mobile OS has caused some of their phone line up to self-destruct on install. The problem is an error message that fails on the phone and doesn’t allow for rolling back to the previous version of the OS. Generally the bricking of your user base’s phones en mass is not the best idea, especially when you are trying to penetrate the market.

RIM BLACKBERRY

Your MP is tweeting is eating a ham sandwich
One thing that Blackberry is loved for in IT groups in all forms of business is it’s ability to be locked down and controlled closely by a governance body. This means users of these phones often don’t have access to the on-board cameras, ability to install applications, and access to some high level settings. The Canadian Government has made what might be considered a large step for a government body of its size: it’s now allowing Facebook and Twitter apps to be installed on member of parliament Blackberry hardware.

FIN

If you’re anything like me, you enjoy a smart solution that keeps your data syncronized across everthings you own. I wish more was like this, but unforunately, it’s not. I like to sleep soundly knowing that if anything where to happen to my physical machines the important part would not be lost – the data.

I’m currently a heavy user of Evernote, I use it for everything, and with the premium account I know my data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. I even have it set so if I recieve a document via email, it is automatically stripped and moved to evernote for immediate cloud storage. The thing that has always bugged me about Evernote is it isn’t terribly smart. It stores everything how you like it and will perform full text searches within images – which is rad; however there is a whole internet out there you could potentially augment the data with.

Enter Springpad.

This is your file box with brains. Save a post about a movie: it stores the obvious data (title, etc) but pings other APIs to give you more. That movie you’ve saved now has links to iTunes, Amazon, IMDB, Rottentomatos, Netflix, and more. So that note you saved that was just the title, is now the entire IMDB entry including summary, cast, producers, etc. Smart.

To do this is handles your notes a little differently – when you go to save something, you instead search for that thing instead of just typing it in. This works via text search query, UPC scan, or even geolocation. Nifty. You have notebooks you can store certain objects and sort by certain criteria easily. It’s free, works on iOS, Android, and Chrome (no desktop app, but you it’s not needed with the HTML5 web app), and doesn’t require a subscription. Springpad is still in Beta.

There is downside that makes it a dealbreaker for me… your data is not encrypted. I use Evernote to store things I wouldn’t want going across an unencrypted connection. What this does provide is an opportunity to spread out a bit and use Springpad in lue of something like Delicious with its webclipper, as well as my todo lists, and other little tidbits I need to remember. Things I need to keep on hand can be Springpad, but Evernote will continue to be my filecabinet.

The moderately quiet beast of Windows Phone 7 has suddenly made some noise – as do many beasts on their death bed, crying out into the night for help. Common speculation is that the Microsoft mobile solution is barely hanging on in the mobile market, but not before trying all the bandages on for size.

So in the spirit of windows having some of the bigger news this week, we’ll lead in with them.

WINDOWS PHONE 7

Microsoft goes Finnish
The biggest news hitting this week has been the adoption of Windows Phone 7 by the hardware giant Nokia. The announcement by Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop caused the 1500 person team responsible for the development of Symbian, Nokia’s own OS, to walk out of the building.

Ever since the announcement took place on February 11th, Nokia’s stock has dropped 18% draining 5.5 billion Euros*.

Elop is quoted in the Microsoft press release: “Today, developers, operators and consumers want compelling mobile products, which include not only the device, but the software, services, applications and customer support that make a great experience,” Stephen Elop, Nokia President and CEO, said at a joint news conference in London. “Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It’s now a three-horse race.”*

Perhaps the gravity of the situation is the clobbering both Microsoft and Nokia are getting from Android and Apple iOS, it may be natural that the two team up to really take this to market. One of the profound issues with Nokia is it’s already teaming with complexity – the manufacturer currently has a line up of 25 phones. The addition of Windows Phone 7 to the mix just creates more of an issue. A lesson learned from Apple is that a good device, with one or two options, paired with a good OS ensures a clean experience. This is perhaps the same issue that Google faces, but the Google OS is at least desirable, free, and in some cases profitable to hardware manufacturers.

Symbian currently holds 31% of the Global OS Market Share.*

Windows Phone 7 and Kinect
Microsoft released at the Mobile World Congress that it will be allowing integration of Windows Phone 7 into the xbox Kinect experience. This opens the door to a plethora of opportunities to develop the integration of home and mobile, but the most obvious integration would be the obvious one of gaming. The demo presented shows the ability for a person on a windows phone to control the incoming balls in the dodgeball demo of Kinect. Kinect and Windows Phone 7 integration.

They’re updating, about time
One thing that is known about Windows Phone 7 is that Microsoft is exceptionally slow to update the OS. Users of Windows Phone have been waiting for something to happen ever since a dataleak caused by using Yahoo Mail on your phone.*

Low and behold, there has been an annoucement that an update is neigh! And it’s somewhat nostalgic…

Update 1. Copy and paste functionality (sound familiar?) and performance enhancements.

Further updates include: SkyDrive integration, Multitasking and IE9.

GOOGLE ANDROID
Android top of the ad impressions game
One of the places that Android is shining, aside from the volume of devices running the OS, is the ad impression business. Currently Android holds a 54% share of the current mobile ad impressions, a slice that’s 26% bigger that iOS, according to a report from Millennial Media. It was noted though that actual ad click-through in iOS was higher than Android.

Playstation to go

One of the latest Android powered smartphones is also a gaming device. The Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY is an entry into the portable gaming space. It’s a four-inch display with slide out playstation controller, capable of playing 3D games for up to 5 1/2 hours and the Andreno 205 GPU is able to run games at 60 fps. See a demo on Gizmodo.

Facebook gets the front seat
There’s plenty of news circulating that Facebook has its own line of phones coming out – and there are at least two manufacturers aligned to this. There has so far been news from both HTC and INQ as having the Facebook phone. The HTC line of phone’s seems to be more closely aligned with Facebook and Zuckerberg as seen in one of their latest press releases. The INQ appears to be a third party take on a Facebook integration concept as seen here.

Make Android your own
Akin to the mii’s and avatars of Wii and Xbox, you are now able to Androidify yourself. This is a free app from Google touting “Just like the Android platform is open, the Android robot can now be freely customized.”*

Androidify Yourself

Gotta make the tablet stick
There’s a lot riding on Motorola Xoom to really carry the Andoid Honeycomb OS. So far tablets are launching and failing as they continue to rely on Android 2.4 Gingerbread as the operating system – a mobile phone OS. The Xoom was used in Google’s keynote last week when they launched the release of Honeycomb, but what is the damage being caused by devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab and HTC Flyer doing to the notoriety of Android in the tablet market? Hopefully Xoom can play the Savior of these failures and ultimately the OS.

Android Honeycomb Demo

Want to learn more about Honeycomb or the Motorola Xoom have a look at Google’s Press Event (1 hour)

APPLE iOS
When in doubt, make it smaller
The current apple rumour floating around the web is the iPhone Nano. Basically the indication is that there is a smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone to be released this summer. The new iPhone Nano will be one third the size of the current iPhone 4 and will rely on ‘cloud-based’ storage instead of storage directly on the device.*

Alongside this rumour, there is an inkling that the mobileme service that is currently $99/year will be made gratis.

Apple wants you to ditch your paper subscription
Apple’s latest launch on February 15th was the implementation of subscriptions in the App store. This model allows for a recurring payment to process based on the customers selected preferences. This would most likely mean we will begin to see more ‘freemium‘ services start making their way to the app store. Apple’s press release can be read here.

WEB OS
HP Touchpad

Word is out that WebOS is making a come back on HP’s new tablet, the TouchPad. The Touchpad features a 9.7″ display, front facing camera, integrated IM and SMS. One of the more interesting features is the incorporation of HP Touchstone. Basically Touchstone allows you to simply share data between your Palm Pre and the Touchpad. If you are viewing a website on your Pre, you touch it to the Touchpad and that URL opens in the browser on the tablet. It also intergrates so you can answer calls and recieve text messages on the Touchpad as well. You can see more on the HP landing page.

That’s it for this week.

The mobile space is a huge, swirling flux of people, devices, and infrastructure, So i’ll break it up into the big players, Apple, Android, and RIM.

APPLE

The Daily

It would appear that there has been something lacking from the iPad – subscription based infrastructure. Now, any tech savant will no doubt say – why am I supposed to pay for content that I can curate myself for free?

I am one of those. I have my streams of RSS feeds that I can moderate in Flipboard, Flud, Pulse, or any other RSS reader – so how will this be meaningful to me? Will this just be another regurgitation of the multitude of posts that I already consume? Is it curated in a way that is meaningful?

We finally got The Daily in the Canadian stores late last week, and in general the consensus is a bit underwhelming. To me it holds no benefit over getting a newspaper subscription online. The buggy interface jutters and twitches as you try and navigate content, and your not given the news that’s relevant to you – something that you would expect digital to be the perfect agent for, but it grants you the typical blanket news you would get from any other source. The facts are you can get news from a free RSS reading app that would be more poignant to your interests than the waffling of what might as well be the 6 o’clock news.

Have a different experience, let me know!

iOS 4.3 Beta 2

Apple is building out it’s newest version of iOS with a few new features we should keep in mind as we look at developing for the platform. The first has to do with that little black Apple box that some of us have in our living rooms: AppleTV.

In this next iteration of the iOS, Apple has added the ability to stream video directly from the iDevices to your AppleTV (Airplay). Now this may not seem like something new, I’ve been able to do this for a while, but the big news now is that it is available in app. Say you have a product walk-around video in an app you are producing, normally the user would have to watch this video on the screen the app is native to, but with 4.3 you are able to provide the ability to watch it on the TV in their living room. This extends to other media like audio as well. Nifty.

Also with 4.3 we will be able to use the iAd network full screen on iPad.

iAd Producer

This may have slid under some radars over the past couple months, but Apple has introduced iAd producer. Basically it’s WYSIWYG software used to build out your iAds – akin to say, Flash. You can get it here, but you have to part of the Apple developer program (which if you are interested in mobile you should be part of anyway ).

ANDROID

The growth of Google

News this week is the insatiable growth of Android in the mobile market. I mean it’s a hard OS to resist for hardware manufacturers being open source. It also appeals to the lower income markets to as it’s readily available to skin and repurpose to various phones. 615.1% is a phenomenal growth trend.

The Problem with Google

The other side of the google coin came up this week as well with the failing Samsung Galaxy Tab. Reports say that the return rate for this device is reaching up to 16% (compared to Apple iPad’s 2%). This coupled with the less-than-impressive number of sales in general and it would appear to be a flop.

The problem is less likely to be the fault of the hardware, or the Android OS, but the combination of the two. The Galaxy is running Froyo and not Honeycomb (Google’s tablet supporting OS), which could be the cause of a less than stellar user experience.

For a bit of a backstory on the problem seen with Google’s platform: they have a horrible update adoption rate of 4%. This means as new versions of the OS roll out, only 4% of consumers/manufacturers are committing the update. This leads to a wide discrepancy in OS making owning and developing for Android slightly more difficult.

The Motorola Xoom

This is the latest in the line of highly anticipated Android tablets, and unlike the Samsung Galaxy Tab, it does run Honeycomb. You can check out the official landing page for the Xoom for more info.

RIM BLACKBERRY

What else is there: the playbook

This device was met with skeptical eyes – what could RIM possibly bring to the table with a tablet? or it has suit written all over it. But it was one of the stars of tablet infested CES. The device boasts an UI reminiscent of the late Palm’s WebOS, a 7″ LCD display, 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, and the dazzling ability to perform ‘true multitasking’. Current tablets and phones don’t multitask in the purest sense of the word – they simply save the state of the app and reopen it on demand. The Playbook allows services to run behind the scenes so you could, for instance, have a movie playing, switch to your browser to check out a URL and leave the movie playing in the background. Check out the preview ad from Blackberry. And check out the landing page.

Fin

Thanks for reading. Hope it has been useful. If you have any feedback please send it my way.

Darren is a Sr. Designer in our Calgary office.