AllThingsD » iDisk

What To Do After MobileMe Goes Away?

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 22:25:54 +0000

When Apple’s MobileMe service goes away in June 2012, what happens to the stuff I have stored on iDisk? Will Apple still store my material someplace else remotely on one of its servers that I can access via my laptop? Will I still have some sort of .Mac mail system that I can access when on the road and using a computer other than my own?

Apple says it won’t continue to have the equivalent of the iDisk online storage system, accessible directly from the cloud, after MobileMe gives way to its new iCloud service. It advises iDisk users to copy their online files to their Macs or PCs before next June. However, it says the new service will still support mac.com and me.com email accounts, and they will still be accessible via the Web. It promises details later, but has in the meantime published a document answering common questions about the transition at apple.com/mobileme/transition.html.

Is there a good program that will allow me to capture a Web video, especially a YouTube video, and convert it into an MP4 format file so I can play it on my Android-based Iconia tablet while offline on an airplane?

There are numerous programs that claim to capture Web videos and convert them to formats such as MP4, which is a common and universal video file type. The ones I know about run on PCs or Macs, not directly on the tablets themselves, so you’d then have to connect your tablet to the computer and drag the files over. I can’t recommend one, as I haven’t tested any in years, but you can experiment by searching for “capture Web videos” or “convert Web videos.”

However, there’s a major caveat, a legal one. By my reading, YouTube’s Terms of Service generally bar such capturing, and other websites may do the same. I don’t advise grabbing Web videos unless their owners permit it. The YouTube rules say, in part: “You shall not download any content unless you see a ‘download’ or similar link displayed by YouTube on the service for that content.”

What is a simple way to gather, edit and label a small collection of the pictures for an album (that might later be published in a photo book)?

If you own a Mac, you can do this easily by importing your photos into the iPhoto program that Apple includes on every new computer, and which includes a feature that produces printed books you can buy. There are similar programs on Windows PCs, such as Picasa, which allows you to create albums and then, if you like, send them off to a variety of vendors to be made into a book. Or, from any computer, you can upload your photos directly to an online service like Shutterfly, at shutterfly.com, which will organize them and optionally turn them into a printed book you can order.

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

In and Out Of Office: Putting iPads To Work

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 01:13:10 +0000

While it can perform many of the functions of a PC or Mac, Apple’s iPad— including the new iPad 2—lacks two of the most common and frequently used features of a traditional computer. It has no standard USB port for connecting a flash drive or external hard disk, so you can’t move files into and out of it from these devices. And it doesn’t have a systemwide, user-accessible file system like those on traditional computers.

These omissions have led many readers to ask me how you get files—especially Microsoft Office files and PDFs—into and out of iPads. They have bolstered the contention that the popular tablet is really just a “consumption device,” not a productivity tool.

[ See post to watch video ]

So, here’s a brief primer on how to get such documents into and out of an iPad, and how to view, edit and create them on the tablet. This isn’t an in-depth product review, though I’ve tested every product and method I will mention here. It’s merely a quick, practical guide to how to work with documents on an iPad.

Three faces of creating iPad documents: From left, Keynote, Pages and Numbers apps running on an iPad 2

Before we start, let me mention some caveats. First, to get the most out of documents on the iPad, you have to download add-on apps. Second, while many of these apps can store and organize files, those file systems are silos within the apps. Third, these apps often lack full fidelity with Office on a PC or Mac, especially for complex documents. Fonts and layouts may be changed, and none of the apps I tested was able to display revision histories in Office documents.

Finally, unless you buy an add-on keyboard, typing on an iPad isn’t as easy for many people as on a regular computer. For instance, I wouldn’t want to type a 30-page legal brief on an iPad. But you can use an iPad with Office documents and PDFs.

Creating and Editing Files

Microsoft hasn’t built a version of Microsoft Office for the iPad. But several companies make office suites for the tablet that aim to emulate Office by allowing you to create and export Office-compatible documents, and to import and edit documents created in Office on PCs and Macs.

The three most notable of these are Quickoffice Connect, which costs $15; Documents To Go, which comes in two versions costing $10 and $17; and Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which cost $10 each.

All of these apps are more limited than Office on a PC, but I have found they worked pretty well. All have their own internal file-storage system, and each can be connected to cloud-based services, or can open email attachments or receive wired file transfers from iTunes.

Wired File Transfers

When you plug an iPad into one of the recent versions of Apple’s iTunes program on your computer, and select the iPad icon in the left column, a section appears at the bottom of the Apps tab that is called File Sharing. This module lists all the apps on your iPad that can handle various kinds of documents, and shows you what files they contain. You can then add files from your computer to one of the listed apps, or save the files to your computer, using buttons labeled Add or “Save to….” Even veteran iTunes users may not know about this feature, because Apple hasn’t publicized it much, and you have to scroll down in iTunes to see it.

Viewing Email Attachments

Out of the box, the iPad allows you to view a wide variety of documents attached to emails. If somebody emails you a Microsoft Office file, a PDF file, or other common types of files, you get an icon in the email, and, if you tap and hold your finger on the icon, a pop-up menu appears that allows you to view it in full-screen mode, a function called Quick Look. Just this week, I used this method to review and catch an error in a Microsoft Word document I received from a colleague while riding in a New York taxi with an iPad.

If you have an app like Quickoffice installed that allows saving or organizing documents, or editing them, the email pop-up menu becomes even more useful. In addition to the Quick Look option, it gives you an “Open In…” option that lets you move the document to an app of your choice, where you can store it permanently, or even edit it, if the app allows for that. This “Open In…” option also appears in various apps other than email, so you can move documents from one app to another.

Wireless File Transfers

There are some iPad apps available that allow you to move documents wirelessly if your computer and iPad are on the same Wi-Fi network. One that I have used successfully is called Air Sharing and costs $2.99. It mounts your iPad on your computer as if it were an external drive, and allows you to drag files between your computer and iPad.

Cloud-Based File Transfers

If you back up your PC or Mac files to a cloud-based remote service, like SugarSync, Dropbox, or Apple’s own iDisk, many of these services provide iPad apps that allow you to fetch the files to your iPad, or, in some cases, upload files from your iPad to these services. These apps typically allow you only to view or perhaps store the files on the iPad, but some include the “Open in…” feature to let you move the file to another app where you can edit it.

Sophisticated File Viewers

Some apps for the iPad let you store large numbers of different types of files, view them and even annotate them. My favorite, GoodReader, is a $4.99 app that handles all the Microsoft Office file types, plus PDFs and more.

GoodReader even lets you type notes on, or draw on, PDFs, and then save and email the annotated version. It also allows you to organize files into folders and rename them. And it lets you retrieve files from cloud-based services, without having to switch to a separate app provided by those services. Among the cloud services it supports are Google Docs, Dropbox, SugarSync and iDisk.

Bottom Line

It’s perfectly fair to criticize Apple for leaving out a USB port and a shared file system. The company is reputed to be working on a cloud-based file sharing system that may alleviate these omissions. But, even today, you can work with common file types on an iPad, if you know how.

Watch a video with Walt Mossberg on transferring files to an iPad at WSJ.com/PersonalTech. Find all of his columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com.

Apple Reaching for the Cloud With MacBook Air and N.C. Data Center

John Paczkowski — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 10:30:13 +0000

Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is the future of the MacBook and the future of the notebook as well. But if that’s to be the case, the machine–and Apple’s ecosystem–needs to evolve a bit more to appeal to that strata of user tethered to the high-capacity hard drives that the Air has summarily dispatched.

This being Apple we’re talking about, that evolution is likely already well under way and perhaps–perhaps–being engineered at the company’s massive new North Carolina data center. With its 500,000 square feet of data center space (currently, sources tell me that Apple is considering doubling that) the facility has been built for something. And what better use to put it to than the cloud services that might completely eliminate the need for high-capacity hard drives and give the Air storage to match its performance characteristics.

Were Apple to create the cloud-based version of iTunes that’s long been rumored–one from which users’ entire iTunes libraries could be streamed–and were it to bolster MobileMe’s iDisk and Gallery services with more-robust storage, even the 64GB Air might seem an attractive option to the high-end user. And Apple’s new N.C. data center, which is nearly five times the size of the one it operates in Newark, Calif., may well make both those things possible.

“We believe it makes sense to have a cloud service linking Apple devices to personal photos, videos, games, music and other entertainment–eliminating the limitations and expenses of excess storage,” writes Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes. “We believe such a service would only enhance the loyalty toward Apple and the benefits of using devices in its vertically integrated model.”

Saving to disk is slowly becoming a fixture of the past and, as Apple’s recently rejiggered Apple TV business model demonstrates, streaming is the future. Which makes perfect sense, when you think of the MacBook Air as the future of the notebook.

OS X 10.5.8 Kills Bugs Dead

John Paczkowski — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:17:58 +0000

Apple (AAPL) on Wednesday released OS X 10.5.8, the latest point release to Mac OS X Leopard, even as Amazon (AMZN) takes pre-orders for its next iteration, Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6).

10.5.8 is largely a maintenance update, though it does patch a number of security vulnerabilities (18 to be exact), some of them fairly old.

Among 10.5.8’s improvements:

• Upgrades Safari to version 4.0.2
• Improves the accuracy of full history search in Safari 4
• Resolves an issue in which certain resolutions might not appear in the Display pane in System Preferences.
• Dragging an Aperture image into Automator now invokes an Aperture action instead of incorrectly invoking an iPhoto action.
• Resolves an issue that could prevent importing of large photo and movie files from digital cameras.
• Improves overall Bluetooth reliability with external devices, USB webcams and printers.
• Addresses an issue that could cause extended startup times.
• Improves iCal reliability with MobileMe Sync and CalDav.
• Addresses data reliability issues with iDisk and MobileMe.
• Improves overall reliability with AFP.
• Improves overall reliability with Managed Client.
• Improves compatibility and reliability for joining AirPort networks.
• Improves Sync Service reliability.
• Includes additional RAW image support for several third-party cameras.
• Improves compatibility with some external USB hard drives.
• Includes latest security fixes.

Quickoffice Brings Editing to iPhones, But Put It on Hold

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:04:03 +0000

I am typing these words in a full-fledged word processor on an Apple iPhone. It’s a third-party app that allows you to edit, format or create Microsoft Word and Excel documents, and then send them back to a PC or Mac where they can be opened in Word or Excel. Oh, and it has cut, copy and paste in its word processor — a capability long missing from the iPhone that isn’t due from Apple (AAPL) itself until this summer.

[ See post to watch video ]

Devotees of older smart phones, tired of iPhone hype, will be quick to note this is no innovation. Devices like Windows Mobile phones, Palm (PALM) Treos and BlackBerrys have made these abilities available for years. But, for the 37 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners, it’s potentially a major step forward, closing a hole in a hand-held computing platform that is otherwise more elegant and versatile than any other.

This new app, called Quickoffice, has some nice features. Its cut, copy and paste function is very well designed. It can save files locally on the phone. It has a built-in email function for sending files to others, and it can upload or download files to and from a PC or Mac, or to and from online storage.

But there’s a catch. While Quickoffice, which is also available on other platforms, did work OK in my tests, it has some major drawbacks that keep me from recommending it right now. The product’s maker, Quickoffice Inc., acknowledges these and is working to fix them by summer. But, especially because Quickoffice costs $19.99, a Rolls-Royce price in the iPhone’s app store, you might want to hold off on buying it until the fixes are in place.

In particular, Quickoffice can’t simply load and edit any Word or Excel file you receive as an email attachment. The company claims this is a built-in iPhone limitation, but it’s still a big problem for users. Instead, to get files into Quickoffice for editing, you have to transfer them using a Wi-Fi network from your PC or Mac, or from the iDisk online storage feature of Apple’s MobileMe Web service, which costs $99 a year.

Also, amazingly, Quickoffice shipped without any automatic typo-correcting function or spell checker. For various technical reasons, it couldn’t even use the one built into the iPhone. So, you have to do a lot of correcting of typos once the file gets onto a computer. For instance, the first words of this column, as originally created in Quickoffice, read: “I am typing these words in a full-feledged word pricessor … ” I had to clean them up in Word on my laptop.

The Quickword app on iPhone

And, while you can view a text or spreadsheet file in landscape mode, you can do only limited editing of text documents in this mode, and no editing at all of spreadsheet documents viewed in landscape.

Quickoffice for the iPhone consists of three modules. One is Quickword, the word processor. The second is Quicksheet, the spreadsheet program. These two, also separately available from the app store at $12.99 each, can handle standard Microsoft (MSFT) .doc and . xls files, but not Microsoft’s newer .docx and .xlsx formats. The third module, called Quickoffice Files, merely transfers and displays files, but doesn’t allow editing or creating them. It handles a much wider variety of file types, and is sold separately for $1.99.

Cut, copy and paste is implemented nicely. You simply double-tap to select a word or triple-tap to select a paragraph. Small dots appear at either end of the selection, allowing you to expand or contract the selected section of text. Once your selection is done, you can then cut it or copy it, or change its formatting. To cut or copy your selection, you just choose cut or copy from a popup menu. To paste, you tap once elsewhere in the document, and then select Paste from a popup menu. You can paste text copied or cut from one Quickword document into another, but not into any other app on the iPhone. (Apple will add that ability this summer.)

Quickword is the better of the two main modules. It has an impressive suite of features, including the ability to bold or italicize characters, change fonts and colors, create bullet points, and undo or redo changes. All of this formatting was retained correctly when I transferred the files to a computer, and vice versa. Quickword doesn’t have every feature of Word on a computer, but its feature set is strong.

Quicksheet has 125 functions. It also does formatting of cells well, and has undo and redo. Again, it isn’t as powerful as Excel, but its capabilities are decent. Unfortunately, unlike in the word processor, I found some problems in Quicksheet. In one simple spreadsheet I imported, it failed to properly display text that stretched across multiple cells, and failed to do a simple recalculation that worked perfectly in Excel. Also, it lacks cut, copy and paste.

Getting documents into the app is a pain. Unless you have a MobileMe account, on either Windows or Mac, you have to type a geeky numerical address into a Web browser and then choose a file from your computer using the browser page that comes up.

Quickoffice is an OK start, but it needs a lot of work.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Kinoma Touches Up Clunky Windows Mobile

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:36:02 +0000

Think about a mobile device with a touch screen that’s designed to work with smart software. A single tap on its surface instantly zooms in on images; a flicking gesture moves one photo off the screen and pulls another one on. Menus appear with clever animation, and actions like downloading and emailing photos and videos are intuitively incorporated, rarely more than one step away.

Bet you’re thinking about Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

I’m actually describing a Windows Mobile device. In fact, any touch-screen Windows Mobile device made in the past couple of years can perform the aforementioned functions — as long as it’s running a new application called Kinoma Play.

This much-needed shot in the arm for Windows Mobile comes from Kinoma Inc. and for $30 can be downloaded onto a computer or directly onto a device from www.kinoma.com. It works on touch and nontouch screens alike, though touch features do add a lot of pizzazz. After installation, Kinoma Play seems to totally take over the device’s multimedia functions, hiding every trace of Windows Mobile’s clunky, antiquated, menu-driven operating system.

Kinoma Play in action, clockwise from top left: a media interface, touch-screen navigation, upload to YouTube, picture rotation, search by characters, and photo zoom.

It smoothly opens and displays all types of media, including photos, videos and music. But it’s also a fast search engine for multimedia content on the phone, on the Web or even on your computer via remote search. Kinoma Play works with services including YouTube, Audible, Flickr, iDisk, Live365, Orb and SHOUTcast. And a section called the Kinoma Guide compiles over 100,000 podcast episodes, radio stations, videos, live television and Webcam clips, panoramas and photos into easy-to-browse categories.

After almost a week with this application, I changed the way I thought about on-the-go Web browsing for media. I forgot about typical browser functions like typing a Web site’s name into a URL bar and instead did plenty of things online with my portable device without deliberately thinking about being online.

Kinoma Play is so well-designed that I wish it could entirely replace the dated Windows Mobile user interface, which still lags behind the iPhone’s. But, alas, it’s about media only. It isn’t designed to supplant, and doesn’t change or improve, any of the phone’s more common functions, like overall email and Web browsing, calendar, contacts or productivity programs.

Kinoma is working on Symbian, Linux and even iPhone versions of its application and will release one of those versions by the end of this year.

I ran into a few problems while using Kinoma Play. On three different occasions using two different devices, my touch screen froze when I tried to start the application, and the only way I could fix the problem was by completely rebooting my device. Once in a while, I experienced slow performance, though this could have been attributed to my network connection. And Kinoma Play lacks a one-step shortcut to its home screen; currently, users must press a “Back” soft key on each screen until they reach the home screen.

But the pluses of Kinoma Play outweighed these hassles, especially considering how enjoyable this application was to use. I tested Kinoma on two Palm (PALM) devices running Windows Mobile: the not-yet-released Treo Pro, which will be available here in the fall for an unlocked, unsubsidized price of $549, and the $250 (after discounts and two-year-contract rebates) Treo 800w available from Sprint (S). Both have touch screens that work best with an included stylus, though a fingernail or fingertip worked for me in most cases.

Upon installation, Kinoma Play automatically scans a device’s media and organizes it into categories under a section called My Media Files. I was especially eager to see how photos were handled, so I started out in the Pictures category.

All Kinoma screens have a set of familiar navigational tools that appear as soft keys at the bottom of the screen; they show up when the bottom section of the screen is touched and disappear when touched again. On the bottom left, a “Back” arrow takes users to the previous screen. On the bottom right, a list-like icon represents what Kinoma calls the Menu Pod. When touched, this pulls up three succinct menus — for media, settings and another action related to the program that’s open.

I opened some photos that were stored on the Palm Treo Pro and touched the center of the screen with my finger. A quick tap on the screen zooms in on each photo, and a small inset of the photo with a box representing the magnified area appears on the lower right of the screen. I dragged this tiny box around in the inset image to change where I was zooming. To zoom in on a photo slowly, I simply touched and held my finger on the screen for a longer period of time. A quick tap after either zooming method will quickly snap the image back to normal view.

I moved from one photo to the next as I do on my iPod Touch: by placing a finger on one edge of the photo and flicking left or right across the screen. Rotating was fun and easy to do when I drew a circle on the photo with my fingertip in the direction that I wanted it to rotate. The image followed whatever motion I drew. To rotate the photo 180 degrees, I drew a larger half-circle.

I selected Flickr from Kinoma Play’s list of services and signed into my Flickr account in just a few steps. My photos and those of friends were just as easy to browse as my own photos, thanks to Kinoma Play’s built-in tools. The Menu Pod icon offered a one-step way to play all photos in slide shows; music could be selected to play in the background.

With a touch on the Menu Pod icon, users can add any media to favorites or to an “on-the-go” list. This same tool also sends multimedia to others via email; I used it to send friends photos of a recent trip to California as well as a YouTube link to video footage of Sen. Joe Biden speaking.

Kinoma makes something out of every action. The Menu Pod button seems to jump into the center of the screen when summoned, and each of its three menus spins like a tiny top to get out of the way so another menu can be seen. Other screens seemed to do a mini back flip as they opened or closed. And long lists seemed to bounce when scrolling reached the top or bottom.

In the Services menu, I used Audible to listen to part of an audio book and listened to rock and country songs on Web radio stations from SHOUTcast and Live365.

I particularly liked using the Kinoma Guide, which is constantly updated with material that streams to your devices when you open it. I found a Restaurant Guys podcast in which chef Cat Cora was interviewed, and even saved it for later listening by downloading this seven-megabyte podcast to my device in one clean step. Kinoma wisely adds all downloads to a special section that’s easy to find. The last 100 things you looked at on Kinoma Play can be found in a section called History.

These days in the tech world, much attention is being paid to applications sold on Apple’s App Store for use with the iPhone or iPod Touch. But Kinoma Play is one application that is desperately needed by Windows Mobile users, and it just might remind them that they can better navigate media-related Web services — without having to buy a new mobile device.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find all our columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

5 Days of Technical Problems? MobileMe Really is "Exchange for the Rest of Us"

John Paczkowski — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:40:17 +0000

After five days without comment, Apple today acknowledged that the rollout of its MobileMe suite of Internet services was, in the company’s own words, “a lot rockier than we had hoped.” In a message to MobileMe subscribers, Apple (AAPL) apologized for the service’s troubled debut and its lack of “true push” capabilities and offered them a 30-day subscription extension to allay any hard feelings.

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.

We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.”

Thank you,

The MobileMe Team

5 Days of Technical Problems? MobileMe Really is "Exchange for the Rest of Us"

John Paczkowski — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:40:17 +0000

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.

We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.”

Thank you,

The MobileMe Team