Today we have released our first iOS cloud sync beta to a core group of testers. As before, we'll increase the testing pool gradually as we go.
If you already signed up for the original Mac beta – but haven't been invited to the iOS testing yet – there is no need to sign up again. You will eventually receive an email with instructions.
Thank you for your patience, and thank you for your help.
Many people have been asking about the progress of our cloud sync beta – particularly in light of Apple's recent iCloud announcement. We are very excited about iCloud, but it doesn't change our plans for Things.
iCloud is a great step forward for Apple's desktop and mobile platforms. There is no doubt that users and developers will benefit greatly – it’s easy for developers to adopt and powerful enough for most tasks. Having said that, there are certain enhancements we hope to bring to Things in the future, which iCloud in its current form will not support.
In addition, iCloud will be limited to OS X Lion and iOS 5. We know from past experience that it takes a considerable amount of time for many users to migrate to a new OS. Restricting cloud sync support to Lion and iOS 5 is not an option for us.
Fortunately it is also not necessary, since our own solution has been performing so well in the beta. Everyone who subscribed by the end of last week should have received an invitation by now, which – to date – means we’ve invited just shy of 20,000 people.
It turns out that the hard work of making our solution scalable has paid off – our sync service has gracefully handled this increasing traffic – and with usage data on hand from this large group, we can also now confirm that there will be no need to charge for the service. Our cloud sync service will be free for all users of Things.
Internal testing of our iOS versions is also underway. Our approach to the iOS beta testing will be the same as with Things Mac: we’ll start with a small group of testers and then scale it up. This will begin on August 22.
If you want to participate in the cloud sync beta, please use the link below.
We're happy to announce that the first round of test pilots have just been admitted to the cloud sync beta pool. As we stated in our last blog post, we're admitting a small group of testers at first; we'll then proceed with a gradual expansion of the pool as we go.
The new cloud sync architecture has performed exceptionally well in our own internal testing. There is more to the new Things Mac beta than cloud sync however: we have also significantly changed many data-related aspects of how Things works under the hood. These improvements will go a long way – not only in making synchronization fast – but in making Things itself faster and more reliable.
One of the main objectives for us in this first round of testing is to eliminate any issues related to these core changes; once satisfied, we’ll quickly proceed to add more and more test pilots.
If you have not yet received an invitation — please sit tight — and thank you for your patience while we get this underway.
The previous State of Sync posts were fairly technical, at least when compared to other posts that have appeared here in the past. This time, however, I will concentrate on user-level aspects – and I’ll give a timeframe for our next steps.
After the previous post, our tech support team received quite a few inquiries about what exactly our forthcoming cloud sync solution would entail for end users. To help answer these questions – at least those we could answer at that time – we published this FAQ page. Today I'd like to answer some more of your questions – extending and updating that with some new information.
As the name already implies, our sync solution is provided as a service that lives in the cloud. This means that the creation of an online account will be a user’s first necessary step in the configuration of Things for sync.
Of course, Things on the Mac and iOS devices will also need to be updated, in order to enable communication with the cloud server. This software upgrade will come at no charge, and will also sport a revamped database layer that is not only faster, but specifically optimized for cloud sync usage.
Things will sync frequently. While there will be a way to initiate sync manually there should hardly be any reason for doing so. Every change you make is transmitted to the cloud almost instantly. No matter when you quit the app, your data is safe with the server already. Whenever you open Things, switch applications, or wake your computer from sleep, Things will check back with the server to see if there are any updates to pull.
Things will always connect to the server using an encrypted connection. Not only during log-in, as many web sites do, but for every connection. This means that your to-dos will never be sent in the clear.
Without large scale tests, it is not realistic to estimate how much resources our users will consume in the cloud. In particular, the frequency of interactions between users’ databases and the central service. Therefore we will be doing extensive scalability testing before we make an announcement regarding possible costs for the service.
Some users were asking about the future of our existing Bonjour-based WiFi sync. As a matter of fact, our Bonjour sync – in its current form – is incompatible with the database layer improvements I mentioned above. As a consequence, there is no way for us to keep the old sync approach with the improved database layer. What we are planning to do instead, is to rebuild WiFi sync using the same core components that also power our cloud sync technology. We’ll achieve this by putting a little sync server into Things Mac. This is something that might not ship with the initial release of cloud sync, but shortly thereafter.
I’m sure the question on the mind of many readers is: when will I be able to play with Things cloud sync first-hand? As it happens, the integration of cloud sync with the Mac version is a little further ahead of its counterparts on iOS. We have therefore decided to start with a beta of Mac-to-Mac sync first.
Initially, the cloud sync beta will be invite only. Everybody can subscribe, but we will activate accounts on a first come, first served basis as we gradually scale up the beta. We will be starting with a small number of beta testers at first – the idea is to iron out any kinks on the server early on – we will then slowly add more people in order to test our system under increasing load. iOS devices will join the fun once we are confident with everything server-side.
When will this happen? We are expecting to start sending out invitation emails on May 2.
But there is one more thing…
The subscription page is already live. If you want to become a test pilot for Mac-to-Mac sync, please sign up here.
We will publish our next sync-related blog post once the beta is ready.