If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, a number of Apple's competitors must be blushing in the wake of WWDC 2011. With Cupertino's unveiling of iMessages -- a service that may sound all too familiar to users of RIM's BlackBerry messaging service -- and a number of system tweaks for iOS that mimic the features offered by a number of apps available via the Cydia App Store, it appears that Apple is paying close attention to what their business rivals have been doing.
As stoked as we are to see these great perks coming to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users this fall, we feel there's a few more tricks that Apple could learn from the other guys. Here are five of our favorites.
Despite the recent finger wagging over Dropbox’s privacy policy, the service is, in a word, awesome. Its cross platform viability is the stuff of legends, providing both Dropbox users and application developers alike with a stalwart cloud storage solution to draw upon for their every online need. Have a document you’ve been working on at the office that needs to go home with you? Upload it to your Dropbox. Are you a developer working on an app for desktops, Android or iOS? Does it require storage for anything that it does? Well, you’d better make it sync with Dropbox.
Say, Apple, you maybe could get on that sort of thing with iCloud? Just think of how much more desirable iCloud be if it were to become a viable cloud storage commodity for every app available from the Mac or iTunes App Store. That’d be a cloud computing solution to rave about.
Apple bought LaLa last year. They've built a massive server farm in North Carolina, and they offer some of the best mobile computing hardware on the market today. So why can’t Cupertino get a handle on music streaming? Amazon and Google are rocking streaming services, and while there’s no denying that having to upload your 30 GB music collection to the cloud sucks, being able to stream your entire music library through any web connected computer, smartphone or tablet is nothing but w00tsauce. We’d love to see Apple take a page from the books of their competitors, providing their loyal iTunes users with the a the high-quality music streaming service with an ingenious Apple twist.
Services such as LogMeIn, GoToMyPC and Splashtop all offer compelling remote computing experiences, allowing Mac users to connect to their rigs via most web browser, iOS or Android device. Back to My Mac? Not so much. Requiring a MobileMe subscription and a router that supports either UPNP or NAT-PMP, as well as a set of byzantine set up instructions that can befuddle novice computer users, setting up and using Apple’s remote screen and file sharing solution can often ends in defeat and frustration. We’d love to see Cupertino ape some of the features and functionality that have made other remote computer control services so popular and easy to use.
After all, shouldn’t a service offered by Apple "just work"?
With iCloud and ubiquitous file syncing soon to be a reality for OS X and iOS users, this one is really a no-brainer. Where’s our web-based version of iWork, guys? Are you telling us devotees that you can’t provide us with an elegant web-based interface to create and edit our documents? Seriously? If Microsoft and Google -- companies that gave us the Zune and Google Wave -- can create compelling and easy to use web-based productivity suites for their users, surely Apple can do their users a solid and blow us away with some awesome online productivity options of their own.
So maybe we don't want a direct copy, but we’d certainly like to see Apple hop on the bandwagon for this one. While there’s no denying that HTML5 does a bang up job of presenting rich, interactive web content, it’s still far from being the de-facto interwebz standard that Cupertino claims it will one day be. In the meantime, those of us rocking iOS devices are being denied access to the whole internet whenever we’re away from the computers. Would it be too much for us to ask that iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users be given the option of being able to access Flash content when we want to or turn it off to save battery power when we don’t?
Probably, but if you’re gonna dream, we say dream big.
Follow this article's author, Seamus Bellamy on Twitter
brandonwalkermedia
June 16, 2011 at 10:35pm
wow i just lost all respect for you! flash? HTML5 is far from being mainstream? flash is dying year by year sense 2005 (2 years before the first iphone) in 2005 in accounted for 94% of web content, 2006 89%, 2007 81%, 2009 64%, 2010 56%. in 2011 its expected that it will be 50-48% and by 2014 16-24%. however HTML5 has grown every year. by the end of 2011 it will probably be around 41% up from 32%!
Doc_M
June 16, 2011 at 3:00pm
You want Flash? Why? I have both an iPhone4 and an iPod 2Gen, along with my MacBook. The only place I want Flash use is on the MacBook...and only when I have to. It's time for either a massive fix/update/whatever for Flash-or it needs to die off. Legacy software is just that...legacy. Not a perfect analogy...but does anyone out there miss 5 1/2 inch floppy drives? I sure don't. (And I'm guessing most Windows users don't miss Vista or Win ME, either.)
Doc
krizoitz
June 16, 2011 at 2:27pm
I've tried commenting twice now and it keeps telling me something about a spam filter? Yet no info about what specifically the problem is. Way to encourage user participation guys. guess I'll cross this site off my list.
Count me out for feature 5 by the way, we are better off without that bag of hurt.
jscotta
June 16, 2011 at 2:16pm
1. Apple's released their own API's for file saving to the cloud. Except that you no long have to remember to "save" the document. In Lion, saving is so last year. I've not seen how they plan on doing the sharing (or if I have, I don't recall it).
2. Don't care.
3. Yep, this could be much better. Also, I've not seen how Apple will handle Back to My Mac with MobileMe going away and the current Back to My Mac requiring MobileMe to function. And, yes, it does need to be a "just works" service.
4. "Elegant web-based interface..."? You must be kidding me. Yes, those web-based interfaces do work, but they are not elegant. Also, remember that those web-based office package are not full featured. You lose something in the formatting, in the least.
5. Flash? You must be kidding? The momentum is moving away from Flash (and I thank God).
teejaysplace
June 15, 2011 at 7:49pm
Um, am I on crack or doesn't iCloud do exactly what #2 is describing? And flash blows. Run it on Chrome Canary and not only will it crash every 30 seconds but it will eat up battery life faster than Kirstie Alley at a muffin buffet.
Seamus Bellamy
June 15, 2011 at 8:18pm
Sorry teejay, but as much as we wish it were so, iCloud will automatically push new tunes to all of your Apple devices, and it'll allow you to download any previously purchased music to any of your devices any time you please. However, streaming as enjoyed by Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music users is a sad-faced no-go.
As for Flash, it can indeed be a crashfest under some conditions, but for the time being, much of the web still refuses to give it up for HTML 5 or other viable replacements. Until this changes--because let's face it, Cupertino's not likely to change their mind on allowing it onto their mobile devices--iOS users are missing out one some of the cooler corners of the web.
brandonwalkermedia
June 16, 2011 at 10:46pm
where are you getting your info? i work in the music industry and itunes WILL have a streaming service! (however i will note that it is NOT supported right, as they have only released a BETA to the public. 2 how does the majority of the still choose Flash ( read my post), as they are moving or have plans to move to a thing called HTML5. even FaceBook is moving to adopt HTML5 (at least in some form) or Zanga as another.
Sources: iTunes agreement in iOS 5 Developer Preview, NYT and others.
