iCloud

New report says deep organizational issues are hampering iCloud progress

Cody Lee ∙ November 24, 2014

A new report is out today claiming that Apple's iCloud ambitions are being stymied by a wealth of organizational issues. Jessica Lessin of The Information spoke with roughly a dozen current and former Apple employees, who say these issues are holding up releases and complicating products.

Lessin uses the work-in-progress iCloud photo project—codenamed Hyperion—as an example. First unveiled in 2011, Steve Jobs' vision for seamless photo-syncing has yet to be fully realized. iCloud Photo Library is a step in the right direction, but it missed the initial iOS 8 release and is still in beta.

iCloud Photos app updated with new uploading capabilities

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Apple updated its iCloud.com Photos app today, enabling the ability to upload photos. The feature, which developers have been testing on the iCloud beta site for the past two weeks, allows users to upload images to iCloud Photo Library.

Previously, those with iCloud Photo Library enabled in iOS 8 could view, download and delete their photos on iCloud.com, but there was no way to upload them. Now users can upload images—including those not taken with an iOS device.

iWork for iCloud gets new languages, fonts, easier file renaming and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 21, 2014

As first reported by German blog Macerkopf.de [Google Translate], Apple has refreshed its iWork for iCloud suite of productivity web applications with several new features and improvements. Pages is now available in eight new languages: Deutsch, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Hebrew, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, with bidirectional support for Arabic and Hebrew.

Keynote and Numbers have gained support for the same languages with the exception of Arabic and Hebrew. All three web applications have gained easier file renaming and a couple other editing features.

Apple testing upload functionality on iCloud Photos

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 27, 2016

As part of yesterday's batch of Apple app refreshes, among them the iMovie for iOS update which has enabled support for iCloud Photo Library and the ability to share videos with iCloud Photo Sharing, Apple has now added upload functionality to a beta version of the iCloud Photos web app available to registered iOS developers.

The features makes it easy to use a desktop computer to upload JPG images using the web interface at beta.icloud.com, making them available on all iOS devices and Macs that have iCloud Photo Library turned on.

Tim Cook flies to China in response to iCloud phishing allegations

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 22, 2014

Apple's boss Tim Cook went to China to meet with a top Chinese government official in Beijing amid allegations of government-backed phishing attempts on users' iCloud accounts, according to a report by the state-run Xinhua news agency, relayed by Reuters Wednesday.

The meeting coincides with reports by GreatFire.org, a Chinese web monitoring group, alleging that the Chinese government sponsored man-in-the-middle attacks that redirected local users to a fake iCloud.com login page in an effort to harvest Apple ID user names and passwords.

Following iCloud phishing attempts, Apple issues browser security support doc

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 21, 2014

Following a report Monday by Great Fire alleging that the government in China attempted to compromise the security of Apple's users by redirecting local traffic to a fake iCloud.com login webpage, Apple on Tuesday confirmed it was aware of the phishing attempts and ensured its servers had not been compromised, according to a CNBC report.

The company also took additional steps in the form of a new support document which teaches unsuspecting users how to verify that their web browser is in fact securely connected to the genuine iCloud.com login page.

Chinese government apparently collecting iCloud credentials through phishing attacks

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 20, 2014

The Chinese government is reportedly phishing iCloud credentials of millions of people by staging a so-called man-in-the-middle attack which redirects unsuspecting users to a spoofed webpage that appears shockingly similar to the real iCloud.com website, Great Fire reported Monday.

Fooled users who type in their username and password into the fake web form risk exposing their iMessage communications, photos, contacts, reminders, calendars and other personal information associated with their Apple ID to a third-party. The problem is further accentuated by the fact that the popular Chinese browser Qihoo does not warn users that they're visiting a fake website.

iCloud Photos is now available for iOS 8.1 beta users

Timothy Reavis ∙ October 18, 2014

Ahead of October 20's public launch of iOS 8.1, Apple has released iCloud Photos to users running the iOS 8.1 beta on their devices. Qualifying accounts will be able to access iCloud Photos to view their iCloud Photo Library on the web through the beta version of iCloud.com.

Reports indicate that iCloud Photos looks and functions much like the stock Photos app on iOS, with the ability to view photos and select them to download to your computer.

iCloud Photos will require iOS 8.1, Apple confirms

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 17, 2014

Apple on Friday unofficially confirmed that a new Photos web app will be available through the iCloud web interface, most likely after iOS 8.1 launches next Monday. As we previously reported, visiting the beta.iCloud.com/#photos URL used to produce an unusual error message indicating a web-based version of the iOS Photos app was in the works.

Folks who have signed up for iCloud Beta should now visit the same URL as there's a brand new webpage showing teaser graphics and the message saying “To use iCloud Photos on the web, upgrade your iOS device to iOS 8.1”.

All iCloud services currently down for some users [updated]

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 17, 2018

If you're having issues with some, or all, of your iCloud services you're not alone. It appears that several of Apple's iCloud services are down for a number of users. We've seen numerous complaints of it on Twitter, and Apple has updated its System Status page to reflect the outages.

A few of us here at iDB are experiencing iCloud issues—I specifically am receiving pop up warnings on both my Mac and iPhone saying that my iCloud password is incorrect for various applications. Others have reported that they are unable to access iCloud.com, or iCloud backups.

iOS 8 bug in ‘Reset All Settings’ feature deletes iCloud Drive files

Cody Lee ∙ Updated June 11, 2018

A new bug has been discovered in iOS 8 that will indadvertedly delete iCloud Drive documents. MacRumors reports that selecting the 'Reset All Settings' option from the Reset menu in the Settings app of iOS 8 will erase iWork-related files in iCloud Drive.

The issue here is that when the 'Reset All Settings' option is selected, users are specifically told that "no data or media will be deleted." But that doesn't seem to be the case with iOS 8, as MacRumors says it has confirmed the process is also deleting select files.