Apple Inc. (AAPL) recently launched a new TV ad called “Harmony” which in 30 seconds highlights iCloud service for iOS and OS X. AAPL has been posting a series of iPhone 4S ads which show the all-new voice assistant Siri and the much improved camera and now with the latest ad the focus has turned to iCloud.

iCloud automatically stores music, photos, apps, calendars, contacts, documents and keeps all your iCloud enabled devices in sync. When Apple introduced iOS 5 during WWDC 2011 Steve Jobs took to the stage to talk about iCloud and repeatedly said, “it just works”. The new TV ad in a similar theme conveys that iCloud is “Automatic. Everywhere.”

The ad begins with the all-new welcome screen in iOS 5 which gives you an option to use iCloud and then goes on to show an album being purchased on iPhone 4S which then shows up on iPad 2 and MacBook Air. Then photos, calendar, app purchases, contacts update and iBooks are all shown to sync between different devices.

With the introduction of iCloud users can not only keep their iOS devices in sync but can also backup to the cloud, set up the device without connecting to iTunes and with iTunes Match they can upload their entire music library to the cloud.

iCloud is a free service available on devices running iOS 5 or higher however, if you need to add more space for backup then you could purchase additional storage right from your device.

On Monday, Apple released iOS 5.1 beta 3 to developers for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, adding on the previous beta versions released late last year. Apple released iOS 5.1 Beta 2 on December 12 with Build number 9B5127a. The current beta now uses build number 9B5141a.

iOS 5.1 beta 3 restores a sought after feature by many users, Enable 3G. The Enable 3G toggle allows users to completely shut off their cellular data, something that is currently unavailable. iOS users who use WiFi at work and home, experience heavy battery loss due to the fact that 3G and WiFi are running simultaneously. With this new feature, users can simply switch off 3G and use WiFi and can switch on WiFi just as easily. Apple noted under the toggle feature, that “3G offers faster data speeds but uses more battery power than EDGE”.

The new beta 3 is now available on Apple’s iOS developer program portal and is available to developers to download via OTA update. Apple also released Xcode 4.3 Developer Preview 3 and Apple TV Software Beta 2, as they have with all other beta updates in the past. It also appears that Apple has posted a new API to help developers flag app content that should not be backed up. The addition of these two new features and other security updates may not be the last of the updates, just yet.

iOS 5.1 introduces a new API to mark files or directories that should not be backed up. For NSURL objects, add the NSURLIsExcludedFromBackupKey attribute to prevent the corresponding file from being backed up.

With a beta 4 or the final release, Apple may add more features to help conserve battery life and improve stability.

According to Macworld Associate Editor David Chartier’s source, whom he called “A little birdie”, Fifty percent of iPhone owners who have their devices swapped at the Genius Bar have never plugged them into a computer to backup or sync. Now, it seems that Apple’s iCloud could be a big hit among the group who never syncs. 

Syncing is a crucial aspect of owning an iPhone, it allows users to backup applications, contacts, mail settings, bookmarks and more back to the computer. The backup can be used to recover data in case of theft, damage or setting up a new device. iCloud will now allow users to use wi-fi sync and instantly backup to the cloud without connecting to a computer, something which 50% of users don’t do or do very rarely.

Backupophobes can get away with never touching iTunes after activating an iOS device. But folks obviously need to plug them into some kind of power source to recharge which, combined with a reachable WiFi network, is what triggers iCloud’s automatic backup feature. Sure, these customers can manually reinstall apps one by one from the store, but they have no way to recover any of their data or media purchased on the device. That holds true for contacts, too, if users didn’t sign up for MobileMe or even Google’s free (and, in my experience, terrible) contact sync.

Apple’s Genius Bar, when replacing iPod or iPhones can now be assured that iPods and iPhones are backed up and can properly be restored for the user. iCloud is the next big step for Apple, making it easier for end users, and Apple Geniuses who are trying to repair or replace a defective device.

{via MacRumors}

CopyTrans TuneSwift Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

CopyTrans TuneSwift sounds like the perfect panacea for all your iTunes library backup needs. It offers iTunes to iTunes transfers of entire iTunes libraries between PCs or from PC to Mac. This is done via single file backup archives, which can also be updated incrementally as you add to your current iTunes library. Restoring an iTunes archive to a Mac is achieved by connecting a hard drive to your Mac with the PC archive on it, and using a dedicated restore utility, available as a separate app.

Over the last week I’ve been putting it through its paces to see if it really is the panacea for all of iTunes backup woes and for migration from PC to Mac.

Sometime ago we reviewed CopyTrans Manager from Copy Trans, and our overall impression of their iTunes alternative was very positive, so we had high hopes for CopyTrans TuneSwift.

iTunes, to many people’s chagrin, has become the Swiss Army Knife of media storage for those of us that are part of the Apple eco-system. So rather than just being a repository for music it is now the hub through which we manage a lot of our movies, books and iPhone data / apps. For this reason the thought of losing your iTunes library is probably a heart stopping moment for many. And moving from one computer to another might seem to some like a black art at times, with the ever present spectre of losing your favourite artists music and perhaps not even knowing about it until you get toe urge to hear them again!

CopyTrans TuneSwift is an attempt to mitigate some of that fear for PC users, at least. Note : CopyTrans’ website is a little confusing, not intentionally, but perhaps simply because the whole PC / Mac / iTunes scenario is a bit confusing. But it should be noted that CopyTrans TuneSwift is not a Mac application. So you cannot backup your OS X iTunes library with it. It is a PC only app that has a companion OS X app for migrating PC libraries to the Mac.

So with “TuneSwift” (we’ll drop the CopyTrans bit from now on as it’s a bit of a mouthful), you get a simple to install backup manager which runs on your PC. It offers a simpe big button interface which gives you the option to “Transfer”, “Backup” or “Restore” your PC based iTunes library.

“Backup” allows you to make an initial single file backup of your iTunes library to any storage device; USB sticks included. And to then incrementally update that backup over time as you add more to your iTunes portfolio. And that does include iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad data as well as all the other usual iTunes media.

“Transfer” offers a seamless way to transfer iTunes data between any PC, again including all flavours of iTunes data, and even between operating systems, such as XP or Vista and Windows 7.

“Restore” is the reverse of “Backup” and will restore the state of your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad as well.

I created some test libraries on my PC to test TuneSwift, as well as in Parallels on my Mac, and I also manually moved my entire OS X iTunes library to a PC (something I had been meaning to do for a while) so that I could test moving everything back to a Mac – the main “OS X” feature of TuneSwift.

For my test cases, everything went very well and was indeed seamless. Incremental backups also worked nicely on the PC, and I was able to move external drives from computer to computer and restore iTunes libraries conveniently. But these were contrived test cases, and not actually using TuneSwift on a day to day basis over a long period of time. The reason I mention this is that my final test with a massive iTunes library (that reflected the last 10 years of my hoarding of media and music onto my main computer) failed rather spectacularly when I tried to restore that to a Mac tower. Basically : A lot of files were missing. To be fair this was an iTunes library I created by manually importing everything from a Mac to a PC, and then using TuneSwift to move everything back to another Mac. So it was arguably not real world usage. But nonetheless it should have worked and the fact it didn’t is worrying. Obviously I didn’t lose any data as I still had my original, and my artificially created test library on the PC. But perhaps those of you with huge ageing PC iTunes libraries planning the move to a Mac via TuneSwift should take extra care when doing so. The age, and amount of time my library has moved around may have been a factor in that, and might be a factor in your case too. As with any backup or restore service, don’t delete originals until you know you’ve got your stuff transferred, and do make sure that “Restore” works for you on incremental backups from time to time, and long before you actually use the service for real.

If I hadn’t had an issue with my final big test with TuneSwift I would have rated this app much higher. But unfortunately a backup service should restore seamlessly every time, and TuneSwift didn’t. Having said that neither does Apple’s own MobileMe offer Backup utility, and the only service I really trust with my data is Mozy. But that is a story for another day.

Pros

• Free right now. (Until March 15th, 2011)
• Works great between all flavours of PC and Windows OS.
• Easy to use.
• Incremental backup, as well as single file archive.

Cons

• Restore failed rather spectacularly with a very large, diverse and quite old iTunes library.

Download CopyTrans TuneSwift from here and enter the code TUNESWIFT-TOUCH-REVIEWS under the “Activate” tab to use the software.

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