Apple new hour long speak.....cloud computing?

[justchris86]

I think it's sweet! Does anyone know how secure it is?

[Khazul]

Secure in what sense? Over the wire security or general storage security or security of personal information?

I would hope that apple are one of the more responsible organisations as for as storage security goes given they have credit card details for a very huge number of people and therefore must be one of the main targets for hacking and attempting to obtain that information and so perhaps have quite a bit of experience of fending off such attacks.

I think I am more inclined to trust their security than many others (google, yahoo, msn even whos internals I know quite well). Of course, there is no guarantee that that experience was applied in creating cloud services. Any issues with mobileme that anyone knows of? If yes - then you hope they learned, if no, that you hope all was well

[Bizon]

I don’t feel entrapped in Apple’s strategies because for me there aren’t any better options, and in fact when there is better options it’s Apple that’s offering them.

I hear about people’s preference for Windows or Android and why, and those are valid points for them, not me. There’s nothing they are doing that I can’t do or am interested in.

Some people just refuse to believe that.

Good answer. Same reason why I choose to drive to work and not walk. However, I don't pretend that the car company or gas companies for that matter don't have me by the balls.

what?

Just saying it’s your choice to buy into it because it has benefit to you which is fine.

What I am saying, is that the choice is not really a choice because the alternative is not desirable. For example, I could walk to work but driving is soooo much easier and as such, the car company and gas company have a hold of my wallet. However, I fully understand this and accept it, just as you accept the fact that they have made it very difficult to switch your habits away from apple.

Of course most successful companies do this but I think Apple is in a league of their own with this kind of stuff.

[Khazul]

@bison - I dont really get what you are specifically complaining about.

What specifically is it you actually want instead?

To me the big difference between the apple iphone+ipad+mbp+atv+cloud thing vs random shit on random devices from everyone else is that all works together really smoothly and TBH - does cost much either once you have the hardware.

Ease of use and convenience wise - if you have a heap fo apple devices - its almost a no brainer - even if like me you have never bought a single tune from itunes and the vast majority of you music is CD and vinyl rips and a few house party compilations from amazon on crappy mp3 etc.

Actually for the latter its great - 128kbit or whatever mp3 may get upgraded to something far better for not alot of cash if iTune can find them - worth it just for that.

For years and years MS has had vision of doing all this - having the perfect 'end-to-end' story, levering the windows desktop, windows mobile and all the server infrastructure and MSN/Live services and media center and the creative and otehr mp3 players etc to unify them all into something like this. They never did and noone liked their phones eitgher and there software is still really expensive and windows phones, PC laptops build quality and UI quality is still a world away from apple's gear. They failed - and still failed when they tried to strongly influence hardware design.

Maybe google can do something - they certainly have the backend expertise to do it, but TBH - there #1 experiences of user experience is still their very basic search engine front end. OK, so chrome etc, android etc - but in reality these are still learning experiences for them.

I think Apple got something that noone else got - make the user interaction really nice, make the devices really nice and build up from there. Add the services later, dont waste time trying to implement and support every conceivable format and standard - you will never do it - even MS cant with all their resources. The other lesson, when do try to do this in collaboration with 20 different partners - even with a finite set of APIs and standards, you still end up with 20 different ways of doing things with 20 different user experiences ranging from utter shite to really good but you still dont end up with a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

I spent 15 years of my like in one of the above companies trying to make this kind of stuff happen - hats off to apple - they are doing it (my lot lost the plot along the way IMHO, so I left). 15 years ago Apple were a bizarre niche who wouldnt stop trying to do what nearly every other company and died from doing - ie going it alone with their own computers in the face of the pc onslaught. Then they made the ipod - a high quality nice to use powerful device and it all changed.

15 years ago the race was between Symbian, MS, and the palm devices, then later the blackberry all chasing business users and chasing business function instead of usability - they missed the point and lost the plot. Apple chased usability and build quality on the ipods and eventually put what they knew about that into phones - the rest is history. Windows smartphones, symbian smartphones, blackberry's are all a minority now and nobody I know actually likes them that much.

As for me, well last year I finally gave in and got an iphone 3gs. I had an old ipod before that years ago. Never bought anything off itunes, didnt really like apple machines that much, but occasionally used them in studios when I had to. So bought my first apple when I quit and went on my own - really to learn iOS development. So got my first mac (an MBP) this year in march. Touch pads, user interaction etc has really grabbed me. The consitency and build quality really grabbed me. I finally gave in and started using itunes - still never bought any music of it, but use it as a media player at least now.

Apple TV was so cheap we got one out of curiosity. It aint full HD - we dont care, but its certainly getting so much use - mainly for airplay and saves firing up a computer for randomly sifting round youtube and some other stuff.

For music production I got an iPad - also useful for development too a couple of weeks ago. Since that time, it has quickly become the most used computer in this house for email and web etc - always having to fight off the wife who has really taken to it, so shall probably have to get one for her as well. My MBP has taken over my audio production work as well as serving as my OSX and iOS dev box and for various reason gets more general use now than the PC (partly becuase I cant be bothered to wait for the PC to start up when OSX starts so much quicker). Turned out to be an excellent Windows 7 laptop as well, so it also a windows 7 dev box. My actual PC (which is a powerful i7 one) is more or less relegated to games now and for that its great.

We even got a mobileme account for the idisk - the all-devices sync of files was simply so useful and unlike drop box I could easily dump stuff into it from an iphone.

With all of that - I have no qualms at all about paying for icloud and associated services and extra storage if needed. I dont see it as a trap, instead I see it more as liberating all the apple devices a bit more.
We use drop box too - alot of people I work on music with also have it and its really useful in its own way.

Apple aint perfect at all - there are some things about the restrictions and semi-closed nature of all their platforms that pisses me off. OTOH coming from one of the more open worlds (but in other ways very strongly chasing lock-in scenarios) and having direct experience of the chaos that leads to, experience has taught me that control isnt always a bad thing and when you control everything, sometimes it can even be a really good thing for users - consistency, quality etc. Its depends on whether the company behind it is still driven primarily by innovation and users and technology or whether its is just chasing short term money and has long since ceased to give a shit about users/customers etc.

MS went to hell after Bill G left - no one filled his shoes and no one really could as in order to do so, they had to be more senior than Balmer. Sadly Steve Jobs is looking really ill these days. I have to wonder what apple will be like purely in the hands of business people and without their user focussed visionary and whether it will go to hell as well...

Im not a fanboy at all - but I definitely have to respect Apple - at one time as the enemy and now as a generally happy customer. From working in this world for years, in hindsight - no one else could have done it as well - they were all to small or too fragmented or just not chasing the right thing.

Sorry - just realised this is a really long post

[Bizon]

@bison - I dont really get what you are specifically complaining about.

I actually am not complaining about anything. More less commenting on their and other companies’ tactics to keep you wanting more.

[Khazul]

@bison - I dont really get what you are specifically complaining about.

I actually am not complaining about anything. More less commenting on their and other companies’ tactics to keep you wanting more.

OK - well given a choice between a company this does thinks to make you want more and a company that does things to make you loathe hate and detest them and pray for some loon to drop a nuke on them - which is your choice?

[beats me]

Just saying it’s your choice to buy into it because it has benefit to you which is fine.

What I am saying, is that the choice is not really a choice because the alternative is not desirable. For example, I could walk to work but driving is soooo much easier and as such, the car company and gas company have a hold of my wallet. However, I fully understand this and accept it, just as you accept the fact that they have made it very difficult to switch your habits away from apple.

Of course most successful companies do this but I think Apple is in a league of their own with this kind of stuff.

I could replace my Macs with PCs, my iPhone with an Android phone, my iPod with a Zune, my iPad with a Xoom, and my Apple TV with a Google TV. Why I would want to do that I have no idea, but the fact is none of them would talk to each other and work together as easily and flawlessly as Apple’s products. You seem to think this is an issue when it should be blaringly obvious that it’s a huge convenience.

That’s like saying you don’t want a house. Instead you want a single room attached to an RV, attached to a mobile home, attached to a tent, attached to a crows nest, attached to a tool shed.

[Greeg]

Apple is like socialism - central planned system which tells you what you want, what you need, which doesnt really give you the choice (when you buy one of their products). People in US dont know it - if they lived in real socialism or communism crap for few years then they would never buy anything from company with such strategy. United Europe is changing into such central planned crap too ...

There are amazing services such as Dropbox, but since it's Apple then everyone will now talk about the "iCloud" for the next year. They have just too many fanboys

[beats me]

Apple is like socialism - central planned system which tells you what you want, what you need, which doesnt really give you the choice (when you buy one of their products). People in US dont know it - if they lived in real socialism or communism crap for few years then they would never buy anything from company with such strategy. United Europe is changing into such central planned crap too ...

There are amazing services such as Dropbox, but since it's Apple then everyone will now talk about the "iCloud" for the next year. They have just too many fanboys

I think you might be on to something there. People who have problems with Apple come from a societal or family background where they were always told what to do and there’s no discussion or options. At least that would explain the frothing outbursts from some haters.

I still think dropbox is the better option and I’m a huge fanboy. That’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions about Apple fanboys from haters. They think if Apple doesn’t make it directly then we won’t use it, or if Apple doesn’t make it then it’s not available from a third party, or if Apple does make a version of something we’ll just blindly favor that despite it’s shortcomings. All lies.

[beats me]

Just read some of the Apple fanboy blogosphere on iCloud and there’s already a lot complaining about it’s shortcomings, at least in regards to music. The main point of disappointment is the fact you can’t stream play with it. You can only download music you already bought to a computer or idevice. The music still takes up drive space which you may not have so what’s the point? BUT there are already third party apps already out there that let you stream your media from your computer to your idevice over wifi or 3g. Wow, we actually have options that weren’t made by Apple. Shocking!

Also you can only access it through iTunes or the iPod app on idevices logged in with your Apple ID, unlike Amazon’s and Google’s services where you can access your music from any web browser on any computer.

Again, this is coming from fanboys. All the hype comes from news services…the same people who think you can’t make it through a day without knowing what Lindsay Lohan is up to, or how LED drink coasters are all the rage.

[Khazul]

I don't think they said anything about it being a streaming service. I recall something about upto 1000 tunes synced to a mobile device and everything available on a pc or mac.

So it's basically an evolution of iDisk backed by the various apple stores and the rest of MobileMe from the keynote and demos etc. TBH that's rather more useful in many parts of the world than streaming which can be very hit and miss - even on supposedly good high bandwidth internet providers, never mind on a train - which TBH is about the only time I listen to music on my iPhone.

The use of ITunes to access is entirely expected as well. Even Amazon have an application to ensure safe bulk downloads rather than rely upon a web brewer and inflict a load of extra clicking etc on users.

I don't think Apple are much of a fan of web interfaces to things TBH - even airport base stations have no web interfaces unlike virtually everything else. Mostly I like the airport until etc - that was until I decided I wanted to use the iPad for most systems management here (printers, nas, routers, etc)

[beats me]

I don't think they said anything about it being a streaming service. I recall something about upto 1000 tunes synced to a mobile device and everything available on a pc or mac.

So it's basically an evolution of iDisk backed by the various apple stores and the rest of MobileMe from the keynote and demos etc. TBH that's rather more useful in many parts of the world than streaming which can be very hit and miss - even on supposedly good high bandwidth internet providers, never mind on a train - which TBH is about the only time I listen to music on my iPhone.

The use of ITunes to access is entirely expected as well. Even Amazon have an application to ensure safe bulk downloads rather than rely upon a web brewer and inflict a load of extra clicking etc on users.

I don't think Apple are much of a fan of web interfaces to things TBH - even airport base stations have no web interfaces unlike virtually everything else. Mostly I like the airport until etc - that was until I decided I wanted to use the iPad for most systems management here (printers, nas, routers, etc)

I mostly posted about the shortcomings of iCloud and Apple fanboys complaining about them because of the “brainwashed fanboys will just love whatever Apple tosses at them” comments, which isn’t true.

As I mentioned there’s other options available on Apple’s products that make up for whatever shortcomings Apple offers directly. But usually down the road Apple both innovates while also adding standard features people have been begging for and especially when there has been successful competitor products that already do it.

There’s been much discussion on how many of the new features included in iOS 5 were either already available from outside app developers, made available on jailbroken devices, or in some cases Apple outright forbid other developers from doing (using the volume up button for taking pictures). Some consider that unethical but it’s not breaking any laws.

[Trent]

When you look how technology was derived it essentially was a cloud to start with.

Late 60/Early 70s - Applications ran off a mainframe server aka Server Side (Essentially a Could)
Computers progressed with faster processors and more memory this resulting into applications residing on their computer aka the User side.
Now the industry seems to be taking a step back, but in a hybrid sorts. The application on the user side and the data on the server side.
I personally believe the cycle will keep flowing. And we'll keep moving between cloud and local storage until faster connections exist.

The Cloud is not the end of the world---it's just so the world can see and steal your data.

[H20nly]

The Cloud is not the end of the world---it's just so the world can see and steal your data.

Shhh. The sales team doesn't want to discuss this.