This morning I booked an appointment at the Apple store. Nothing really special. What’s interesting is that I’ve done it through the Apple Store app on my iPhone. I actually downloaded the app to do it by using my Apple ID.

So, with the app on my phone I scheduled a Genius bar appointment and during the process they ask you to sign in. Again, I used my Apple ID. The appointment is booked and I received an email confirmation a few minutes later. Nothing fancy until I realized that the name on the appointment is my wife’s name. Uhh! What? Why? I went online and checked my Apple ID account and my wife’s name is nowhere to be found in my profile neither is her email address. We have separate account on iTunes. We probably have the same address though… For the billing address or credit card. which makes me believe that Apple is working on a family pack for Apple IDs

Really simple…

Let’s not forget the two major software releases responsible for all of this:

iCloud infrastructure (including iCloud.com)

iOS5 (iMessage, Notification center, Reminders, etc.)

Then, these apps needed a software update:

iTunes 10.5

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2

Apple TV 4.4

Safari 5.1.1

iTunes in the Cloud services available in more countries

Airport Utility app

Find My Friends app

Aperture 3.2

iPhoto 9.2

iWork suite (Keynote, Pages, Numbers)

Newsstand app

Remote app

iMovie for iOS app

Cards app

iTunes Movie Trailers app

iPhone Configuration Utility

This post will be updated as new information becomes available.

Whaaaat? I can’t believe the attitude and comments of city representatives! (Mostly, the ones at 13:15 and 19:15)

Full disclosure: I am an Apple shareholder. Everything written hereafter are my own opinions. I don’t have any knowledge or little birdie (like John Gruber says) of what Apple is really coming up with in the next release. These comments are made just for fun and there will most certainly be mistakes in my predictions.

First, I think the File System will disappear. As soon as sharing information or documents between apps has been resolved, the Finder and other filesystem hierarchy will disappear.
Second, I think the App Store will become the only place where you will be able to download software. By doing so Apple removes a layer of insecurity and viruses/trojana will have to propagate by other means than downloading ‘image’ file (.dmg)

Mac OS X and iOS will merge into one product
Why? Because Steve Jobs said it in 1997 at the World Wide Developer Conference – Closing Keynote (at 1:01:45)

“Most companies can’t be successful with one stack of system software, rarely can they manage two, and we, I believe, are gonna succeed at managing two for the next several years”.

Steve Jobs talking about the transition between Mac OS and Rhapsody (Mac OS X).

If we extrapolate from it, we can believe that Apple will try to reduce the number of OS they have to support. Apple has already a few versions of iOS in circulation. iPhones on Verizon are not running the same version of iOS than the other ones. At the moment, iPods, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV are running a similar OS which could be ‘merged’. Mac OS X Lion is integrating iOS features “back to the Mac” and the difference between them will slowly fade. I guess that in a future not so far away, Mac OS X and iOS will become One (and only).

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Apple would offer a cloud-based service to host your music online and so you can listen anywhere, anytime your music. It’s a nice idea, no it is a really good idea but what about those pesky MP3 files that many people still download and store. They could probably become the biggest hosting provider of counterfeit materials in the world. I don’t have to tell you that all the music companies would be “pissed” and they would not like Apple for that matter. On the other hand, Apple could host all legally purchased music in the cloud and for almost no additional cost since they already have this huge collection available for download now and they also save/store/manage all your purchased items. (which is really conveniant and nice, IMHO)

So, my guest would go for “real” cloud-based service for all legally purchased songs/movies… All the rest, mp3 and movies downloaded, well, elsewhere, would be accessible only if your computer is awake/available and it will use your own “slow” upload bandwidth.

“This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.”

I wonder if Apple would let Nokia run the iOS and if Nokia would be interested. I doubt it since they are suing each other but it could be a good thing for both companies. I know Apple does not really need Nokia right now but if we look at how the market is evolving. Apple could get a nice boost in the future by partnering with Nokia. Android is now on Samsung, HTC, Motorola and al. And Microsoft is now back at work with Microsoft Phone 7 (still needs to prove itself though)

Secondly, he said: “Apple owns the high-end range” Nothing to add on this one…

Third,

Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms.

Interestingly, I never liked Symbian and I thought it was weird when Nokia decided to invest efforts in the platform. The iPhone was my third cellphone and it is the only one that I thought, “That’s it!” Before that I was always frustrated by some hardware or software stupidities that made my “mobility experience” painful. (Can’t backup my cellphone data, can’t transfer data to my new phone, can’t share contacts, can’t store more contacts, etc.)

You can read the full memo here

The Wi-Fi Hotspot

The Verizon iPhone, at this moment, also has one unique feature: Wi-Fi hotspot tethering. My unit is running iOS version 4.2.6, and I believe that is the version Apple intends to ship to customers on February 10. All other iPhones around the world are currently on iOS 4.2.1.

When next Apple rolls out an iOS update, all iPhones will get this feature. It will be up to individual carriers whether they support it, just as with the iPhone’s existing USB/Bluetooth tethering feature.

But when will that be? I asked, and Apple declined to answer. My hunch is that we got our answer today, at, of all places, the announcement event for The Daily. The Daily requires a subscription — either $1 per week, or $40 per year. They’re using a new in-app subscription payment system from Apple for this — but these in-app subscription APIs aren’t in iOS 4.2. So The Daily launched today, free for a limited time. They announced at the event that this initial free two-week period was brought to us by: Verizon.

So my guess is that a deal was worked out like this:

1. The Verizon iPhone debuts with worldwide exclusive access to the Wi-Fi hotspot tethering feature. This way, all the reviews for the Verizon iPhone will mention a very cool feature that the AT&T iPhone doesn’t have. But what it really is is a feature that the AT&T iPhone doesn’t have yet. But it won’t play that way in the review summaries.

2. Verizon sponsors a two-week free period for The Daily.

3. At some point in the next two weeks or so, Apple holds an announcement regarding in-app subscription APIs (and, I suspect, given this week’s news regarding in-app payments for third-party bookstores, other in-app purchasing changes). At this point, Apple releases a new version of iOS with support for in-app subscription purchasing and the Wi-Fi hotspot feature. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Apple releases that iOS update prior to February 10, the date the iPhone 4 is slated to arrive in Verizon customers’ hands.

That’s all truly just a guess on my part though. I could be wrong. For one thing, The Daily is an iPad-only app, and tethering is an iPhone-only feature. But I suspect that Apple now prefers to keep the iOS versions in sync between iPhone and iPad — and surely, there will be subscription payment apps that work on both devices.

As for how the hotspot feature works, it’s just great.

First, it’s a lot easier to turn on than it was before. Previously, you needed to open Settings, then go to General → Network → Internet Tethering. Now it’s right at the top of the first level in Settings, with a new name: “Personal Hotspot”.

Turn it on, and you get a Wi-Fi hotspot. The name of the network is the name of your iPhone, as specified when you sync it with iTunes on your computer. It’s password protected by default, and Apple even auto-suggests good passwords like “closed53soaps” — two words, all-lowercase, separated by two digits.

When a client connects, you get a pulsing blue status bar, just as with the existing tethering feature. But now, the status bar includes a count of the connected clients. In the same way that you can tap the green pulsing status bar to return to the Phone app during a call, you can tap the blue pulsing status bar to return to the Personal Hotspot settings.

I used the hotspot feature from my Mac and iPad for much of my work so far this week. It works perfectly, and speed is about as good as one could hope for. The iPhone’s battery meter dropped about 5 percent for every 20 minutes of web surfing while used as a hotspot.

Apple has made the iPhone pretty aggressive about ceasing to broadcast the hotspot when there are no clients connected. So if you turn the hotspot feature on and leave it on, but no clients actually connect, there doesn’t seem to be any effect on battery life that I could see. The same thing happens about a minute or so after the last remaining client disconnects.

However, after the iPhone stops broadcasting the hotspot network, when you then attempt to reconnect, you need to go back to the Hotspot Tethering screen in Settings to get it to “wake up” and start actively broadcasting the network again. You don’t need to change any settings on the screen, because you left the toggle set to “On” — you just need to open the Personal Hotspot settings screen to wake it up. Put another way, it seems to me that if you’re going to use this feature regularly, you can leave the toggle switch set to “On”, and your battery life won’t suffer when the hotspot isn’t actually being used. But when you do need to use it, you need to open the Personal Hotspot settings screen each time.

If you don’t like this sort of “extend the battery life at all costs” behavior, you probably don’t like the iPhone anyway.

The hotspot feature works so well that I can’t really see paying for a 3G iPad again. I’d rather have a Wi-Fi-only iPad and my iPhone’s hotspot, when needed, than pay $15 a month for a 3G data service that only works on the iPad itself. It’s not quite as convenient as having 3G built right in to the iPad, but I just don’t use 3G on the iPad all that much. The other big thing is that with iPhone tethering, my MacBook can get online too — one $20 monthly tethering fee, and all my portable computers have 3G access. (Worked great at SFO Sunday morning.)

La version de iOS 4.2 GM (Golden Master) est normalement le terme utilisé juste avant la disponibilité au grand public. La version 4.2 de l’iOS amènera non seulement tous les appareils (iPod, iPhone et iPad) sur la même version, mais également les mêmes fonctionnalités ou presque.

Alors, tout ce petit manège m’amène à penser qu’Apple va distribuer la version de OSX 10.6.5 et de iOS 4.2 en même temps.

Rien d’extraordinaire vous me direz… Effectivement, mais ça démontre qu’Apple a fait des modifications dans OSX pour pouvoir implanté AirSharing et AirPlay à travers la gamme de produit.

Voilà, bon vendredi!

Premièrement, la nouvelle mouture ne permet pas de jouer les fichiers autres que les M4V, MP4 et MOV, tous des formats d’Apple et disponibles principalement sur iTunes. Les fichiers AVI, DivX et MKV ne sont pas supportés et ça ne sert à rien de penser aux autres formats pour l’instant.

Deuxièmement, vous pensiez utiliser l’AppleTV avec un disque dur externe ou un de ces appareils permettant de stocker vos médias (films, photos, musiques…) et bien l’ATV ne le supporte pas.

Seul point intéressant de la semaine concernant l’AppleTV, c’est qu’il est fort probable qu’une version « jailbreak » soit développer ce qui nous permettra peut-être de contourner tous ces petits désagréments. L’AppleTV roulant avec l’iOS, le même qui se trouve dans le iPad, le iPhone et les iPod.