Neil Hughes
Apple's interest in further enhancing iCloud was revealed this week in a new job application published by the company and discovered by AppleInsider. The company is looking to hire someone for the position of iCloud Application Developer at its corporate headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
"The iCloud team is looking for a proactive, creative-minded (engineer) to build the next generation of cocoa-based client applications that integrate tightly with a set of cloud based services," the listing reads.
The position requires someone who will develop both new and existing iPhone and iPad applications for iCloud services. Though it offers no indication of what those applications might be, it notes that employees will "build products that people want to use every day."
Apple's requirements for the position include a bachelor of science in computer science with 5 or more years of experience. The applicant must also have strong object-oriented programming and design skills, as well as experience with Cocoa and the iPhone software development kit.
One anticipated addition that could be folded in to Apple's iCloud suite could be a proprietary mapping service from Apple. Numerous job listings discovered by AppleInsider have suggested that Apple is building its own mapping and location services for iOS, which it hopes will "radically improve" on the current offerings.
The iCloud umbrella of services launched in October, replacing Apple's previous cloud-based option, MobileMe. It includes former MobileMe services like Find My iPhone, Mail and Contacts, as well as Documents in the Cloud, iTunes in the Cloud and more.
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
58 Comments
Beyond syncing and storage, what else there might be that's useful in the cloud? That's their job description. To find out and design such application that we would use every day. Looking forward for new ideas.
iCloud.com offers very few features, and the email is excruciatingly slow, ugh!
We do not NEED more apps that rely on iCloud, but we do need better iCloud performance and more features, like being able to post pictures, flickr, and store files like Dropbox.
They need to make iWork documents on the Mac work seamlessly with iCloud.
This whole workaround of downloading and uploading to iCloud.com is a kludgy disaster!
Why does the first line cite the iPhone and iPad? There's no mention of iOS in the job details they posted but it does mention Cocoa. Doesn't that suggest they're looking for someone to help tie iCloud support into Mac apps (something sorely lacking in the current implementation of iWork)? Some interface has to be set up to bridge the divide between the filesystem-based Mac and filesystem-loathing iOS.
iCloud.com offers very few features, and the email is excruciatingly slow, ugh!
We do not NEED more apps that rely on iCloud, but we do need better iCloud performance and more features, like being able to post pictures, flickr, and store files like Dropbox.
And maybe that is what this new job is all about.