World of Apple

Apple has posted a support document online outlining several changes that have been made to MobileMe. The changes mainly affect MobileMe’s iDisk service but the “Find my iPhone” feature now takes a more prominent place on the MobileMe navigation bar.

Apple lists the following changes:

• New Public folder page located at http://public.me.com/membername now matches the look of me.com and supports drag and drop of files between folders (when enabled for visitors)
• Allowing visitors to upload, move, and delete files on your Public folder can now be set from www.me.com/idisk
• An iDisk Public folder password can now be set from www.me.com/idisk
• When logging in to a password-protected Public folder with a web browser, entering the generic username “public” is no longer required
• Adds ability to connect to another member’s Public folder while viewing your own iDisk at me.com

Find My iPhone

• Adds Find My iPhone icon to the MobileMe toolbar at me.com
• Adds new URL to go directly to Find My iPhone: http://www.me.com/findmyiphone

Contacts

• Resolves an issue where exporting multiple contacts may result in an incomplete set of contacts

Announced back in June at WWDC Apple has now released an iPhone app allowing access to MobileMe iDisks.

The app which is free to download allows MobileMe users to browse and view files stored on their iDisks, sharing is also available via email.

• View files on your iDisk
• Access Public folders
• Easily share files from your iPhone
• Quickly access recently viewed files
• View iPhone-supported file types-including iWork, Office, PDF, QuickTime and more. (Files larger than 20MB may not be viewable.)

The MobileMe iDisk iPhone app requires a MobileMe subscription and iPhone OS 3.0 or above.

Apple has detailed in a support article some changes that have occurred recently to its MobileMe online service.

In the Mail application HTML mail messages retain their formatting and do not convert to plain text, the unread message icon now appears next to each folder and the inbox. Issues with iPhone OS 3.0 mail searching and email aliases on Mac OS X Mail have now been resolved.

Apple also goes onto to detail the changes with coincide with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and the new iPhone 3GS, owners of the 3GS can now upload videos directly to MobileMe as well as talking about the new “Find my iPhone” feature.

With so many announcements being made by Apple at the WWDC 2009 keynote some smaller items are often overlooked. Now the initial hype has died down these tidbits can be looked into further.

Apple has posted a web page covering several features of Mac OS Snow Leopard, some of these were discussed during the keynote but many are unknown as some were not even present in previous builds of the operating system due for release in September.

Also the presence of ZFS in Mac OS X Snow Leopard server appears to have vanished, it was initially listed as a major new feature of Snow Leopard server.

During the keynote Scott Forstall demonstrated the use of Geolocation to enable iPhone and MobileMe users to find their iPhone anywhere in the world via the “Find My iPhone” feature. But Apple didn’t mention that it intends to release an iDisk app which will enable iPhone users to view and share files stored on their MobileMe iDisk’s.

Despite the iPhone 3GS being identical in appearance to the iPhone 3G one little piece of information on the Apple website states that the screen now has a fingerprint resistant oleophobic coating.

Finally Apple appears to have sacrificed a digital audio port on the 13-inch MacBook Pro to allow for the new FireWire 800 port and SD card slot.

Over the last few days MobileMe members have received emails from Apple informing them that the legacy .Mac website tools will be discontinued in July, web pages will remain live but they will no longer be editable.

Apple also mirrored the message on the .Mac homepage:

On July 7, 2009, we are retiring .Mac HomePage. Your published pages will remain live
on the web for as long as you wish after this date, but you will not be able to edit or delete them using HomePage. If you want to make changes to your existing pages, please do so before
July 7.

Apple goes onto recommend that moving forward users use MobileMe Gallery for online photo and movie sharing and iWeb websites.

Apple has released a comprehensive list of updates which have been applied to its MobileMe service. Apple describes the updates issued today as follows:

Mail
• Compose window address selector shows all email addresses for contacts, not just home and work addresses.
• Newly added email addresses to Contacts appear in the compose window selector without having to logout and login.
• Improved printing of HTML formatted messages.

Contacts
• vCard export supports all text fields.
• Improved results when searching with both first and last names.
• Improved Japanese name ordering.

Calendar
• Faster start time when accessing Calendar for the first time.
• Faster performance when switching between day/week/month views.
• Calendar now retains your last view settings, such as day, week, or month view, as well as showing or hiding the To Do panel.

Gallery
• Faster loading of Gallery home page for visitors.

Login
• MobileMe login has new design featuring news updates.

Apple has announced that the long awaited iDisk file sharing feature is now available for use. The feature allows large files to be shared easily without having to risk emailing it.

We’re pleased to announce that you can now use your MobileMe iDisk to share files with others simply and easily. Instead of attaching a large document to an email and hoping it’s not too big to be received, you can place the file in your iDisk and use the new Share File command in the iDisk web app. It lets you send your friends, family, or colleagues a link they can click to download the file directly. You can password protect the link if you choose to and even set how long it will be available.

Apple has a video tutorial online to demonstrate the process of sharing a file.

The iDisk sharing feature was originally advertised prior to MobileMe’s launch but was pulled at the last minute for unknown reasons.

Last week Apple issued a collection of updates to MobileMe, today Apple has posted another support document detailing updates to Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk, Account, and the login screen.

The following fixes have been applied to MobileMe:

Contacts

• “Keep me logged in for two weeks” checkbox now works reliably

This week Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.6 as well as announcing updates it has made to its MobileMe service, it appears that the combination of these updates has finally delivered push services to desktop and notebook Macs.

When Apple originally launched MobileMe it had to issue an apology due to advertising true push services to Mac OS X that were in fact intermittent. In the apology Apple said that it would no longer use the term “push” until services were “near instant”.

Apple has now updated the associated tech support note to describe how to recieve “near instant” sync services.

The note explains that Contacts, Calendars and Bookmarks will sync “within a minute” with other items such as Mail Notes and third party application data will sync on an hourly basis with Dashboard Widgets, Dock Items, Keychains, Mail Accounts, Mail Rules, and Preferences syncing every 8 hours.

In a support document posted today Apple has detailed updates that have recently been applied to the MobileMe service.

Sync

• Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac sync automatically within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at www.me.com; Mac OS X 10.5.6 is required
• Resolved an issue that could cause some contacts to temporarily disappear on iPhone or iPod touch when syncing with MobileMe over an intermittent network connection; iPhone Software 2.2 is required to take full advantage of this
• Reduces inconsistent data alerts when syncing contacts and calendars between a computer (Mac or PC) and the MobileMe cloud

Mail

• Improves reliability of new email notifications on an iPhone/iPod touch
• Messages just deleted on iPhone, iPod touch, or a desktop mail application now update more quickly on webmail
• Improves startup time for webmail when message preview is enabled
• Addresses an issue that could cause inconsistency between the time stamp for messages in MobileMe Mail and the account’s time zone setting

Calendar

• Resolves an issue that caused some recurring events to have an incorrect number of recurrences
• Resolves an issue that caused certain events to reflect incorrect international time zone or Daylight Saving Time settings

Login

• The login page no longer removes your member name if you mistype your password
• Tabbing between login fields is now supported

Account

• Resolves an issue that prevented some members from purchasing a Family Pack upgrade