Apple iCloud and iWork beta for iOS hands-on

We’ve had a number of weeks to get familiar with iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion , but one headlining feature have been notably inaccessible because it was unveiled earlier this summer. During his WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs touted iCloud as a service in an effort to sync lots of your Apple devices, at no cost. Macs, iPhones, iPads, or even Windows computers can synchronize documents, contacts, calendar appointments, and other data. You’ll even be ready to back up your iOS devices remotely, use an Apple-hosted email account, and store your music inside the cloud. Well, this week Apple finally lit up its cloud-based service for developers, letting a number of us take a sneak peek on the new service.

Apple also announced pricing, confirming that you’ll add annual subscriptions with 10GB ($20), 20GB ($40), or 50GB ($100) of storage ‘atop your free 5GB account. We took our five gig account for a spin, creating documents in Pages , spreadsheets in Numbers , and presentations in Keynote , then accessing them from the iCloud web interface to download Microsoft Office and PDF versions. We also tried our luck at iOS data syncing and the soon-to-be-controversial Photo Stream, so jump past the break for our full iCloud hands-on.

Setup and installation

When iCloud is officially released with Mac OS 10.7.2, you will likely have access to the service after simply updating your operating system. For now, accessing iCloud out of your Mac requires an OS update and a separate iCloud installer. You furthermore may must download beta versions of the iWork apps for iOS, update to 5 iOS 5 beta 4 5 , and update iTunes. When you think about the beta version of iPhoto you will need to download with the intention to access Photo Stream, we’re talking half a dozen downloads, some totalling hundreds of megabytes each. Needless to say you will not have the ability to do any of that in case you are not registered as an Apple developer, so don’t clear the schedule just yet.

It took us a number of hours to get our devices and apps updated, but upon getting the fitting versions of every app running, putting in place iCloud is reasonably straightforward. We found it easiest to update our account using an internet browser, where you may be prompted to choose your language, country, and add a photograph. Then, the lanyard-like credential screen will fade out, bringing you to a fixed of familiar iOS icons for Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Find My iPhone, and iWork.

Mail

If you have been using Mail on Mac OS X Lion, the internet-based app will feel very familiar. The interface, that’s essentially a reworked version of MobileMe, is clean and fast. You are able to show and conceal your mailboxes (there’s currently only access for your @me account), create folders, use rich formatting, archive and move messages, create rules, add a signature and vacation message, and enable mail forwarding. Functionality is somewhat limited beyond that, however the web interface works just fine for basic email. It also syncs seamlessly with the Mac app — in the event you create a brand new message on your browser, this will immediately appear within the drafts folder in your Mac, for instance. The identical goes for the iOS Mail app. Overall, it really is pretty basic stuff.

Contacts

There is a cloud icon inside the top left corner that allows you to navigate back to the house screen from within any app while using the net interface. Clicking over to Contacts brings you to an app identical in appearance to the version in iOS 5. Curiously, Contacts remains to be called “Address Book” in Lion, though we wouldn’t be surprised to peer Apple adopt the previous name by the point 10.7.2 rolls out to the loads. As expected, contacts added on any of your connected devices are synced between all, though we did notice that our Mac’s original list of contacts was duplicated after removing from after which re-adding the device to iCloud. You may favor to disable syncing of individual apps, so that you won’t be forced to maintain your contacts synchronized in case you don’t need to.

Calendar

The Calendar icon within the web interface displays the present day and date, just because it does in iOS and Mac OS. All three versions of the app function in much a similar way, with subtle inconsistencies in terms of the interface. The Mac and iOS versions offer a pop-up calendar list while the net version displays the calendar list always at the left hand of the screen. There’s also a slick date slider on the bottom that you’re going to also find at the iOS app, but not at the full desktop version. If you are using the net version (and do not already sync your calendars with the desktop app), you will have the choice of caching your calendar locally for faster access, though you will likely desire to avoid doing this on a shared system. The app functioned and synced just fine among all of our connected devices.

Find My iPhone

The iCloud web interface includes an icon for Apple’s familiar 6 Find My iPhone 6 service, though clicking through just brings you to the MobileMe login page. Eventually, we imagine possible track your iPhone (and your iPad, iPod, or even your Mac) using the iCloud interface, but Apple clearly hasn’t flipped the turn on that feature just yet.

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iWork

We’ve yet to adopt iWork across the office, but when you have been ready to integrate Apple’s office suite along with your productivity workflow, then you will likely find remote sync and file access to be incredibly useful. We used a beta version of the suite on an iPad, creating sample documents in all of the included apps. We had rather a lot of trouble launching the apps, however, and had to wipe the iPad and reinstall iOS 5 several times just as a way to create a number of documents to sync with iCloud. During our first few attempts, we were only ready to launch each app once during each installation — trying to relaunch an app caused it to crash after a couple of seconds. After creating and syncing documents with all of the three apps, however, we were ready to close and relaunch Pages, Numbers, and Keynote without reinstalling the OS.

You cannot create iWork files using the iCloud web interface, but when you’ve enabled sync in your iOS device, documents you create will appear almost instantly on each app’s respective webpage. From the Keynote tab, you are able to view and download each presentation as a Keynote file, PDF, or in PowerPoint format. Pages documents could be downloaded as Pages files, PDFs, or in Word format, and Numbers spreadsheets may be exported to the desktop version of Numbers, PDF, and Excel. Files are generated in realtime, so you’ll have to attend a couple of seconds before beginning each download. That process obviously isn’t ideal for downloading plenty of files, but when it’s essential to access files in a pinch, it’s nice to find a way. One Pages document we created was corrupted when viewed from the net interface. It also didn’t sync back to the iPad after reinstalling iOS, but this was an isolated incident, and we didn’t experience every other issues.

You can too upload files to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote from iCloud’s web interface. We uploaded an Excel spreadsheet, which appeared instantly on our iPad. After making changes to the document, we hopped back over to the internet interface and exported the updated version to Excel. The power to upload files on to iWork (instead of emailing them on your device) certainly makes the app more appealing.

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Photo Stream

You will not notice an icon for Photo Stream at the iCloud home screen, but we were ready to try the moment photo syncing service with an iPad and MacBook Pro. Images captured with our iPad popped up inside the Mac’s iPhoto app within a couple of seconds of pressing the shutter button. We were at the same WiFi network when snapping photos, though we imagine images will sync just as quickly with devices on multiple networks. You most likely won’t be sharing your iCloud account with anyone else, but when friends or family have access to a working laptop or computer connected to Photo Stream, ensure that you do make sure you turn the feature off before you snap images that you would, ahem, prefer to not share.

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Wrap-up

Overall, iCloud isn’t quite fully baked, and Apple definitely has some kinks to see. But for a free service that’s just entering beta, it’s off to a slightly solid start. We’ll have more coverage once the service rolls out for all Mac OS 10.7 Lion and iOS 5 users, but inspect the gallery up top for a quick study a number of the new features.

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This post is tagged: apple developer, beta versions, calendar appointments, Microsoft Office, web interface, windows computers