iCloud and iWork for Mac

I was quite surprised to learn that Apple have not quite fully integrated iCloud into Numbers, Keynote and Pages. Surprised and disappointed.

It seems that in the iOS environment the workflow is pretty well streamlined: you work on one iDevice and it is synced with the other via iCloud. It's not so simple when you also want to work on it on your Mac! That involves downloading the file from iCloud manually, working, then re-uploading. Not quite a seamless workflow.

I'm hoping that Apple addresses this soon.

iOS 5: Quick First Impressions

I managed to download iOS 5 for my iPhone last night without too much trouble. There was a point were it complained that it could not restore the backup, but as it turns out this was due to everyone trying at the same time!

My first impressions are good. I really like the notification centre, it is much better than the previous implementation as the alerts do not get in the way of what you are doing. It also is much more helpful, because you can see your 'alert stream' history.

I'm also impressed with wifi sync and photo stream, but I'd like to use them some more before commenting.

I'm not too fussed on Newsstand. I don't read any 'traditional' publications so I pushed it to the last screen on the phone!

Those are my quick first impressions!

iOS5 Release Day!!

Apple will release iOS5 later today, and I'm looking forward to the new features. The most useful one for me will be the new Notification Centre. The iOS 4 implementation was useful, but slightly annoying because of the blocking behaviour. I'm indifferent to iCloud (apart from photo syncing, that's welcomed) as we use Spotify.

What I am not looking forward to is the app instability that comes with a large update!