Wise words from the beard of Jim Dalrymple over at The Loop:

There are a few things you need to remember about iOS 7. First, it’s nowhere near finished in terms of design or functionality. Apple engineers stopped adding or changing the operating system before WWDC so they had a stable build to show during the keynote. It’s not done.

Second—and I’m surprised I even have to say this—it’s a beta for developers. This is not a build any individual user should install—ever. It wasn’t meant for you and installing it shouldn’t even be on your radar.

We will continue to work hard to strike the right balance between fulfilling our legal responsibilities and protecting our customers’ privacy as they expect and deserve.

The Telegraph reports that the European Union has fast-tracked plans to abolish roaming charges within EU member states:

Roaming fees for voice calls, texts and internet access will effectively be completely scrapped under the proposals, which are part of a broader effort to create a single European telecoms market.

The group of 27 European Commissioners voted in Brussels on Tuesday to drive the package through in time for the European elections in May next year, to come into force as soon as 1 July 2014.

This can't come soon enough. Despite the fact most networks across Europe are owned and run by only a small number of larger companies (Telefónica, for example, run networks across most of Europe and, indeed, the world), the costs of using data, calls and texts in another country is absurd. I visited Ireland for Mac Genius training in 2006 and was charged over £200 in one month by my carrier as all the calls and texts I made were classed as international.

No iPad version (yet) and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it requires an Office 365 subscription which means it stays in line with Microsoft's move towards subscription-based software, as well as preventing Apple from taking a 30% cut.

Whilst many of us will no doubt be questioning whether Microsoft Office for iOS is even needed, I think that's missing the point. How many people believe, rather mistakenly, that Microsoft Office is the only app that can open Microsoft Office documents? This eliminates the somewhat-flawed argument that iOS isn't a true contender for business use "because it can't do Microsoft Office"¹.

As Office on Mac and Windows includes Office 365 support then users will be able to store documents on SkyDrive and have them on all their devices which will definitely be of interest to some.

After months of having no juicy Apple News WWDC hit town and has left Johnny, Jordan and Richard deluged with news. Mavericks, MacBooks and a little black box of insanity are only a few of things discussed in this week's show. iOS didn't even get a mention.

It's WWDC discussion time on this week's episode of Back to the Mac

For those starting out on the path towards self-employment and away from a corporate stooge job, FreeAgent recently released a great invoice template generator. Simply visit the site, type in your details and then you can have it sent as a PDF, with a copy sent to yourself for bookkeeping.

Extra credit for using some great looking animations.

More and more of our friends and family are getting a Mac, whether it’s as their first home computer or they’ve switched from a Windows PC. This means that, as Mac aficionados, we’re usually the first one our parents call when something isn’t working right. In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up their Mac in such a way that any remote assistance needed can be done quickly and easily.

If you're the family tech support guru then you owe it to yourself to make sure that any relatives' Macs are configured in your favour. My latest guide on Mactuts+ shows you how to prepare a relative's Mac for remote support that will save you relaying information over the phone, as well as providing information for Apple.

From the Mac OS X Mavericks Technology Overview PDF:

SMB2 is the new default protocol for sharing files in OS X Mavericks. SMB2 is superfast, increases security, and improves Windows compatibility.

[...] SMB2 is automatically used to share files between two Mac computers running OS X Mavericks, or when a Windows client running Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 connects to your Mac. OS X Mavericks maintains support for AFP and SMB network file-sharing protocols, automatically selecting the appropriate protocol as needed.

AFP will still be used in OS X for Time Machine backups and existing network resources but I'm wondering if a future update to OS X will remove any need for AFP to be a requirement in Time Machine.

Time Machine currently only supports AFP share points but can be used on other protocols such as SMB/CIFS by enabling the TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes flag within the preference file.

Via AppleInsider.

Another year, another new version of iOS is released. iOS 7 sure is different and it was announced that the first beta builds would be available the same day. This tends to cause many non-developers to pony up $99 for what they believe is "early access" to Apple's latest mobile OS.

It isn't.

Beta releases help both Apple and developers work to make not only iOS better but to ensure that developers are able to ensure their apps will work perfectly with iOS 7 by the time it's released to the general public.

Unfortunately, it seems every year there's a growing number of people who install iOS 7 yet forget that it's pre-release software and also to be protected under an NDA. The number of active developers who post anything about iOS beta releases is almost zero, the tweets and blog posts we see are usually always from non-developers.

Since the beta releases are aimed solely at developers, there's a few things that developers would be fine with that you're not.

It's BETA. iOS beta releases are just that, they're beta. They're going to be buggy, potentially unreliable and certainly not to be used on your daily device. In fact, they should really only be used on a development device if you rely upon your iPhone day to day. Every year, discussion forums and blogs get filled with people complaining how buggy the new version of iOS is, yet these people have been running pre-release software.

Update or (watch your iPhone) Die. Apple releases several builds of iOS beta throughout their testing cycle and usually you'll need to restore the device every time it happens. Furthermore, beta builds expire and unless you're keeping them up to date, your iPhone will enter a special recovery mode where it will stay until you restore it with a newer beta build.

No warranty with iOS beta. Your warranty isn't void but if you're running iOS beta then the Genius Bar will refuse to help you. You will have to go through the developer support in order to have any issues resolved since there's a possibility that the iOS beta release is causing the problem.

You agreed to an NDA. If you're not a developer but feel you must install iOS 7 beta on your iOS device, remember that you agreed to an NDA the moment you started installing it. You are not allowed to blog or discuss undisclosed features or APIs. If it's not on Apple.com, it's meant to stay that way for the time being. Apple takes NDAs very seriously and you could very easily see yourself booted out of the Developer Center.

Downgrading back to a previous version of iOS used to be a very tricky process but it's not as bad as it sounds and it is possible.

As a non-developer, I'd love to get my hands on iOS 7, but I know it's not finished. I have never registered as an iOS developer since I don't develop iOS apps and both my iPhone and iPad are too important to me to install potentially problematic software. I'm perfectly happy to wait for a more polished experience to arrive rather than tarnish my opinion on it by using pre-release software.

"Can't innovate anymore, my ass"
--- Phil Schiller

OS X Mavericks. iTunes Radio. iOS 7. The new Mac Pro. Speed bumped MacBook Airs. All new Airport Extreme and Time Capsule. iWork for iCloud.

Did I miss anything?

There was a lot to see during today's Keynote. Seriously, the amount of new that was displayed felt almost too much to fit in the two hour presentation. In fact, the whole thing felt incredibly rushed, that they wanted to cram so much into it that every segment seemed to be performed really quickly. All the way through the OS X Mavericks demo, it was almost a blur to see what the new features were.

The keynote started with a new quasi-ad from Apple, entitled "Designed By Apple", that touts the benefit of Apple's core design values, a company that prefers do some things well than a lot of thing half-assed. It was a delightful ad to watch and it reaffirms that Apple is just as focused on providing an enriching experience as it is about delivering a powerful new device.

OS X Mavericks represents the first move away from the big cat names and, instead, opts to use California-based naming. There's feature such as Finder tabs, Tags, Apple Maps and iCloud Keychain, but some of the biggest news was in fixing certain lingering issues within OS X, namely it's poor handling at fullscreen apps with multiple displays and the polarising skeuomorphism that has plagued Calendar and Contacts.

Fullscreen apps now work independently on the display they're on and you can even swipe through spaces on each screen without it affecting the others.

Speed bumped MacBook Airs feature 9 and 12 hour battery lives, thanks to Intel's new Haswell chipsets, something I hope will soon trickle down into the retina MacBook Pros. An argument could be made that the MacBook Air refresh didn't deserve a place during the keynote, but I'd disagree. Intel released Haswell only last week yet Apple now has them in their best-selling portable line. Whilst the refresh might be modest, I'd suggest the introduction of this during the keynote was to remind everyone that Apple and Intel have a very close relationship and Apple will have had access to those chipsets long before anyone else.

Apple even debuted a new AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule, both looking like a very tall AirPort Express and featuring 802.11ac.

The new Mac Pro preview was one of the stars of the show, a cylindrical piece of beautifully crafted aluminium and enough power to run a Death Star. The real shock? It's diminutive size. Expansion is something that is to be taken externally in this model¹. Placed next to an existing Mac Pro and it barely passes the front IO board, it's less than 10 inches tall. That's shorter than the diameter of the smallest MacBook Air screen, it's amazing.

Apple seemed very keen to let us know that iWork isn't dead and even created a slick looking iWork for iCloud, web-based versions of the iWork suite.

iOS 7. Wow. I'm actually not going to write anything about it, you just need to experience it for yourself. The change is dramatic, the features numerous and it's genuinely the most exciting version of iOS there ever has been.

Apple also unveiled iTunes Radio, a free ad-supported service that works in a similar way to iTunes Genius, except with music located in the iTunes Store, not just your own library. For iTunes Match owners, it's ad-free.

The only disappointment was the video stream, with many on Twitter reporting the stream was unreliable. I managed to get as far as seeing OS X Mavericks before it just choked and I had to constantly keep refreshing the page since the Apple TV wasn't cooperating.

You can catch up on everything that happened over at apple.com, and I'd encourage you to do so. You can re-watch the Keynote as well as a whole range of iOS 7 videos and OS X information.