Apple sneaks in changes to AppleCare+

Alongside Tuesday's iPhone 5c and 5s announcements, Apple snuck in some changes to its AppleCare+ protection plans -- some for the better, some not so much.

First off, dropping your pretty new iPhone just got a bit more expensive, as noticed by TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino. Although the purchase price of AppleCare+, the special variety of AppleCare for Apple phones and tablets, still costs $99, the price for each accidental-damage iPhone repair has increased from $49 per incident to $79. (You're allowed two such repairs over the two-year life of the plan.) The price of iPad accidental-damage repairs appears to be unchanged at $49 per incident.

[ Also on InfoWorld: All you need to know about the new iPhone. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]

Newly purchased AppleCare+ plans also no longer cover any headphones included with your device. Existing iPhone AppleCare+ plans presumably maintain the coverage and pricing promised at the time of purchase. (We've asked Apple to confirm this; we'll update this article with any information we receive.)

In positive news, the company also brought AppleCare+ to iPod models for the first time on Tuesday -- specifically, the iPod touch and the iPod classic. Apple previously offered standard AppleCare plans for these models for $59 each. The same $59 now buys you AppleCare+ which, as with the iPhone and iPad versions, now covers accidental damage -- although with a lower $29-per-incident fee (again, limited to twice over two years). Unlike the iPhone plan, however, the iPod version appears to cover headphones. Do current iPod touch/classic AppleCare customers get upgraded to AppleCare+, or is that only for new plans? Good question -- we asked Apple about that too.

The iPod touch is a natural candidate for AppleCare+ coverage, thanks to its just-as-easy-to-crack-as-an-iPhone's screen and nearly identical form factor. And the iPod classic, as the one mechanical hard drive-based iPod left, is a natural fit -- it's only a drop away from total failure.

As before, all AppleCare+ plans must be purchased at the same time as your hardware or within 30 days of purchase. The latter requires that you verify your purchase date and submit your iPod for inspection -- for example, at an Apple retail store -- to rule out any pre-existing conditions.

Alas, Apple appears to have dropped AppleCare for the iPod shuffle and nano altogether, though Panzarino notes that Apple has finally brought AppleCare to the UK, France, and Italy on Tuesday.

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Microsoft plans changes to Office 365 targeted at SharePoint Online users

To prevent SharePoint Online customers from feeling boxed in, Microsoft wants to improve the way they upload and store documents in the cloud collaboration server.

Over the coming weeks, Microsoft will roll out a set of changes to Office 365 targeted at SharePoint Online users, including increasing from 250MB to 2GB the size of files that people can upload to their individual SkyDrive Pro repositories and to SharePoint Online team site document libraries, the company said on Thursday in a blog post.

The enhancements are in response to companies' increased use of Office 365, according to the blog post's author, Mark Kashman. "Users are uploading more documents to SkyDrive Pro, teams are building numerous team sites to work with internal teams as well as with external customers and partners, and companies are establishing their corporate intranet sites," he wrote.

In addition to lifting the size limit on individual uploads, Microsoft has expanded the types of files that can be uploaded by adding .exe and .dll files.

Another change will be to increase from 3,000 to 10,000 the number of site collections -- groups of websites organized hierarchically -- that an Office 365 Enterprise customer can create. This improvement will not be applied to Office 365 Small Business and Midsize Business customers.

Microsoft is also prolonging the time that discarded documents remain in SharePoint Online recycle bins from 30 days to 90 days to give users more chance to recover these items. In addition, retaining multiple versions of Office 365 documents will be on by default on newly created SkyDrive Pro libraries.

Thursday's announcement comes shortly after Microsoft increased SkyDrive Pro storage from 7GB to 25GB and doubled the size of Exchange Online mailboxes to 50GB.

Microsoft is in a dogfight with Google, as Office 365 and Google Apps battle for customers large and small that are looking to move their email, calendaring, office apps and other collaboration and productivity tools to a vendor-hosted public cloud service.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

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