iCloud is a great idea, so is Google Apps, so is Office 365. None are designed to "kill Windows".
iCloud's real purpose is to sell more Apple hardware, not kill Windows. Hurting Windows sales would simply be a side effect.
It's a smart move to put iPads and iPhones on equal footing as the Mac in that regard. If your docs, pictures, apps, and music are all on iCloud, your computers become disposable digital devices. Want a new one? Buy it, all your files are already there waiting for you.
The disposable digital device is a huge idea. Google, Apple, Amazon, and HP all benefit hugely from disposable devices because they all profit hugely from the mass distribution and churn of them. Mobile has a faster consumer turnover than PC's.
For example, my parents have had the same desktop computer running Windows XP since um, 2004 or so I think. Before that they bought a computer in 1995. Most people get a new phone every 1-2 years.
So, upgrade once every 5-10 years or every 2? Which do you think makes Apple more money?
If all your files magically move between devices, and the devices keep getting cheaper, people will naturally upgrade faster. This hurts the Windows monopoly for sure, but the point is not to kill Windows. The point is to increase their own lock-in and device sell rates.
Selling more devices increases profits. That's the point.
I think people are missing the point. Apple is actually moving in the direction of less lock-in as far as the consumer goes. They've basically said that in the latest generation many people won't need to buy any one device to use as a hub or to sync, and no additional device is needed to establish service. They seem to have gone as far as content providers will allow in getting away from DRM, and they support syncing music and pictures across quite a few devices, even PCs. Their being able to negotiate a deal where users can Music-Match (replace their own music rips with 256k DRM-free AAC copies that can sync to many devices) is extraordinary. It's a very smart move. It ensures excellent playback quality, and it likely will get some additional people buying from them as music customer.
Being able to view photos taken with an iPhone or iPad streamed through Apple TV is a nice added feature for those not set up to do it through a desktop or laptop.
In an environment designed for easy transmission and sharing of data lock-in just doesn't seem to apply. It's nothing like having data tied up in a proprietary format that only expensive software can read.
The only lock-in I see is things being addictively simple.
> Apple is actually moving in the direction of less lock-in as far as the consumer goes.
Do you expect that any non-Apple device will be able to use iCloud? Vendor Lock-in is what's important here, and it's definitely been made stronger by this move. Once all your data is in the cloud, do you want to go through all the effort of moving it to a different cloud (if you even can!) or do you want to cough up a few extra $100 to buy from Apple and make things easy.
Do you expect that any non-Apple device will be able to use iCloud?
Given that Apple is supporting Windows for Photo Stream and iTunes Match at least, I would say the answer is closer to yes than you are intimating here.
I hadn't heard of that thank you for pointing it out. This does make things look more optimistic. I would still define it as vendor lock-in though. The iTunes binary might be available for Windows, but Apple still claims control over your experience and your data.
While they are in control of your data, you will be faced with a question every time you upgrade your hardware. Do you want to interact with your own documents and music using a clunky interface, or do you want to use an interface that makes you feel more in control and happier?
The above question is a little contrived, but I believe that it is fairly close to the truth, Apple has always been a company based on making you feel good.
The photos and music are still stored unencrypted on your hard drives, and the metadata is embedded in those files, so no, they aren't controlling your data, any more than Dropbox does.
Do you think any Android phone, or Windows mobile, will be able to use iCloud?
Apple support Windows because there would be an uproar if Windows users bought iPods and iPhones and couldn't use them. They do the bare minimum they have to however.
Everyone seem to forget (or willingly ignore) that there's both iTunes and an iCloud Control Panel (for Photo Stream, Contacts, and Calendar) on Windows, while the current iDisk is using WebDAV ans is perfectly usable on Windows (and Linux too, along with the new CalDAV calendars)
So only apps remain, and you don't really expect Mac OS X or iOS apps to work on Windows.
Upvoted b/c I think your rejection of Cringely is right, but the reason is different. Jobs/Apple are not in this for the money. They simply believe that iOS + cloud is a better way to compute.
Your comment feels like it is giving Jobs and Apple a bit more altruism than I think they deserve. They are absolutely in it for the money, but I think you are also right that they see this as a better way of computing: a way that can make computing better and easier for many people (who, in turn will give Apple more money).
It is a win-win for Aplle and the consumer, which is a great place for a company to be.
It's also true that even if you ascribe absolute altruism to Jobs and all the other stakeholders at Apple (which is a big leap), large revenues fuel their ability to do more R&D, take big risks, drive down costs to increase adoption of their cool tech, etc.
This is what I think motivates Steve Jobs: His insane passion for consumer computer electronics. Juicy and illuminating supporting fact: Jobs's first job was at the HP factory in Palo Alto at age 12. <http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-steven-job...;
"I remember my first day, expressing my complete enthusiasm and bliss at being at Hewlett-Packard for the summer to my supervisor, a guy named Chris, telling him that my favorite thing in the whole world was electronics. I asked him what his favorite thing to do was and he looked at me and said, "To fuck!" [Laughs] I learned a lot that summer."
Every day he works, he energizes that little kid inside him. Not a bad life.
They simply believe that iOS + cloud is a better way to compute.
At WWDC. I won't say anything specific, but I'm beginning to think that Apple's business model is/has been to take all the awesome stuff that people developed in research labs since the 60's, and they're implementing it when/where it makes sense.
Basically, Apple has been in the business of arbitrage of R&D awesomeness. (As opposed to the most common use of R&D as a corporate epeen.) Considering there's decades of unimplemented (or badly implemented) good ideas, this seems like a sustainable model.
>take all the awesome stuff that people developed in research labs since the 60's, and they're implementing it when/where it makes sense.
If this is true, then that is also google's model, except they're doing it with server-side algorithms as opposed to UI implementations/hardware form factors.
You don't think google invented MapReduce, their translation algos, their vision algos, their concurrency models and so on? They get them out of research papers from years gone by. Then they implement them at real-world scale, and iterate them until they're suitably awesome, just like apple does with the ideas they resurrect from academia.
This is analogous to how every perceived leap forward in programming paradigms always seems to end up dating back to 1956.
I think you would see this pattern with every hugely successful company. Microsoft took the work that happened in the 70s to make personal computing possible and developed a business around it at the point it was ready for huge growth.
It is rarely good for a startup to be on the absolute bleeding edge of an industry, but if you can catch the tipping point[0] (and execute well), you have pretty much guaranteed success.
I think they believe it is best for consumers. But I also think that they understand that what is best for consumers is also best for their bottom line. It's naive to believe that the impact on the bottom line did not factor in.
Wow just wow. Maybe that's why they started paying Foxconn employees a few cents extra per iDevice so that they won't violate their employee agreement to not commit suicide? At least they have a job unlike non-employees, right?
There are a lot of examples of Apple's moneymindedness like margins on hardawre, upgrades cost, 30% of app cost etc. but the the most egregious is the 30% tithe on all in-app purchases and subscription content. The fact that they rejected Readability's app for the iPhone and iPad AFTER taking their FOSS code to implement the readability feature is Safari is one of the biggest examples of how Apple is squeezing the last bit of money. http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/
Oh, so now Apple pays salary for Foxconn employees? That's an interesting piece of news. How about HP, Cisco, Intel, Acer, Asus, Dell, Nokia, etc?
How is suicide rate among Foxconn employees compared to average?
Foxconn has had some problems, but didn't rank that poorly. It seems to be more a case of what life is like in China.
"In a survey published in 2010 by Oxfam Hong Kong, Foxconn ranked sixth for corporate social responsibility out of the 42 companies that then made up the Hang Seng index."
You can find other references to that raise by using a search engine.
You mean you have no control over a factory that you're the primary(or only) customer of?
>How about HP, Cisco, Intel, Acer, Asus, Dell, Nokia, etc?
I was replying to your GP post that stated that Apple and Jobs weren't after profit margins only. So you mean Apple is as mindlessly profit driven(if not more) as all those other companies you just listed? Thanks for proving my point. http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/06/02/foxconn-pay-rai...
> So you mean Apple is as mindlessly profit driven(if not
> more) as all those other companies you just listed?
No. Foxconn makes products not only for Apple, but for those and other companies too. Hence my question, why should Apple be responsible for the pay.
And Jobs' desire is not to improve experience for those making the products, but for those using them.
I think we need to realize that PCs (laptops or desktops) and mobile devices (tablets and mobile phones) are good at different things, and going forward will be used for different things. For example, I'm sure everyone (especially on this site) has noticed that software development is kind of a big thing. I don't see any indication that I'll be developing any software on a mobile device any time soon (especially not an iOS device, as far as I know running user-written code is still against the App Store TOS).
As for the "three years" projection, I'm not sure what the article is saying. Our (mobile) data will be in the cloud within three years? Probably. That Apple will kill Microsoft in three years? Absolutely not. No way. Don't underestimate the power of inertia. Even if Apple manages to entirely kill Microsoft's consumer market share (unlikely) they can survive off enterprise customers just fine. I mean, what do you use on a Mac to compose documents? Word. Are there any others? (I don't have a Mac, so feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.)
I don't think PCs are going anywhere. People will always need to get serious work done, and larger systems will always be better at that than smaller systems of the same era, if only for the sheer amount of numbers they can crunch. Mobiles are great products with a tremendous amount of utility, but they're complements, not substitutes.
Cringely is in the business of trying to look prophetic so he makes wild predictions like this to get attention. I don't think anyone, Apple included, things the Personal Computer is going anywhere for the very reasons you laid out above. Even with a wireless keyboard and a Monitor hooked up the iPad isn't sufficient for any serious writing, coding, photo editing, etc... You still need a PC for that.
I think Apple laid out its position very clearly yesterday. The PC isn't going away it's just being demoted. It isn't t he center of your digital universe anymore. But that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
You're exactly right -- Jobs said himself that PCs will be like trucks of the automobile universe and will always be around -- they just won't be used by as many people as often.
Cringely is in the business of trying to look prophetic so he makes wild predictions like this to get attention.
Yeah, but in the long run, he may be right. Has peak Windows occurred? It's not quite clear, but it may have, with the total PC business going at -1% yoy. And when Windows/Office sales start showing big year over year declines, Microsoft will be hurting very badly, if they haven't developed some other revenue source.
The sales rate has reduced due to many reasons unrelated to Apple, saturation is high, repalcement rate is low because they are fast enough for many years etc. etc.
Measuring installed base makes more sense than pure sales. So the PC business going at -1% yoy is not really a good metric. MS is still making money hand over fist, look at their financials.
I mean, what do you use on a Mac to compose documents? Word.
No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice.
Given how seamless the iWork experience is becoming between iDevices (which will be including Macs), how much cheaper iWork is, and how much better the iWork user experience is (they don't have 20 years of feature-cruft littering the interface), there is absolutely no reason for a home Mac user to use Office and few reasons (usually an iron-fisted corporate IT group) for a corporate Mac user to use it.
Google Docs for me on OSX. The no-hassle availability anywhere without an install covers 95% of my document creation needs, the fact that everything's autosaved to the cloud and can be collaborated on, versioned, and exported keeps me coming back, and I don't have to worry about software version compatibility with anyone I share with which is a killer feature.
Anything that requires style or aesthetics gets drafted in Google Docs and then imported into Pages or Keynote for finishing touches, both of which are lightyears ahead of Word or Powerpoint in that regard (at least for 2007/Win 2008/OSX MS Office releases).
Google Docs is Office's closest competitor, but not outside individuals and small organizations, simply BECAUSE it's all stored on "the cloud". BitBucket and GitHub have the same problem. It's not that they're not good products, it's that there are many, many, many very large companies that want to keep their data to themselves.
No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice.
And if you need to do something remotely complex, neither works. Pages is decent for the very baseline word processing; OpenOffice is good for very little of anything.
The overwhelming majority of people use Office because what you call "cruft" is what other people call "important".
I have no doubt at all that there is a small minority of people who absolutely cannot do without some feature of Word that no competitor offers. But that’s a minority, not a majority.
The reason why I’m using Word, why my parents use Word, why my friends use Word (despite not needing any feature it has over Pages or OpenOffice) is that everyone else is using it. Importing and exporting from Pages or OpenOffice to Word is just no fun at all but necessary if you live in a world where everyone uses Word. I don’t want to run that particular type of gauntlet.
(I so enjoy all the times when I don’t depend on anyone else and can create a presentation with Keynote. It’s a dream. But an impractical dream if you are working together with people who use PowerPoint.)
I can't find the link offhand but I recall it being said by someone affiliated with Office that pretty much everyone uses about 20% of Word's features. The difference is in which 20%.
You might have a set of feature needs that Pages covers. I know that pretty much everyone in my company (that is, management and project people--engineers could get by with whatever, that's not a big deal) couldn't use Pages, and their needs are not extreme or out-there.
My experience the vast majority of the time trying to get people to change away from Word is not that Pages doesn't have the features they want, but that they have to learn a new way to do it in Pages.
This is not to discount that as a valid issue. Taking time to learn new software is time taken away from the real business of the company.
I think Apple could help itself by having a rather large "I used to use Word, how do I do XXX in Pages?" help section inside of Pages (and Numbers and Keynote, though Keynote probably needs it less).
This is an old concept that Microsoft themselves used in early version of Excel. I remember that there was a way to get early Excel to use the same commands as Lotus 1-2-3 which, I think, was the main spreadsheet application at the time. I'm going back 25 years though so apologies if my memory is not what it used to be!
The gist is that even though most people only use 20% of the features, everyone's 20% is a different set of features. So by creating a 'lite' version of your software, you actually end up alienating a lot of your users.
I disagree. The usage of features in Word undoubtably follow the power law, so there is undoubtably somebody somewhere who does use any particular feature, but the vast majority of people don't use them.
Pages doesn't have all of the functions and if you can't live without a particular function, it is obviously not a good replacement. However, for the vast majority of users, it has all the functionality that they will ever need and then some, without worrying about getting lost in menus of functionality that they will never care about.
I don't think Word is a best example for that. I'd say the wast wast majority of Word users use very basic features. I've seen my share of documents where spacing and centering was done using spaces…
I think we can all envisage a future where we are exclusively using web-based office suites on post-PC devices. A lot of people are already doing this.
What I can't imagine is a world where we are developing those web-based office suites on the same post-PC devices that they are deployed to.
Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it? Or autocad, or solidworks or arcGIS, or any number of other industrial applications.
For the PC to disappear, somebody is going to need to define a whole new category of much more powerful post-PC devices. I can envisage a superpowered tablet with a bluetooth keyboard that wirelessly links to any nearby display, but that doesn't sound very post-PC to me. And it doesn't answer the question of how to develop UIs for tasks of irreducible complexity without violating iOS's mandatory UX simplicity.
Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it?
No one needs to supplant the workstation form-factor. What we're in the process of is realizing that there are tons of other opportunities in mobile form factors. Try to think of all the workplace activities that involve taking down data on pieces of paper and taking them over to a computer where they get entered. Try to think of all the times when people read off information from a specialized instrument and enter it into a computer. All of these are opportunities for mobile computing.
Totally agreed, one of the biggest industrial users of tablets is in hospitals, which is exactly what you're talking about.
Lots of people do seem to think that workstations will be supplanted though. So much hype about the "death of the PC," the "post-PC era," although I accept that "post" doesnt necessarily imply a world where that thing is totally gone.
Very true! I like to have my documents on my own computer creating backups by myself. There might be people who like to have there documents in the clouds but others don't.
I don't get it. Most of what iCloud does is already being done on smartphones for free. Gmail and Exchange Server both already sync contacts, calendars, and email quite nicely across devices. I haven't had to manually transfer any of that to a new smartphone since long before there was an iPhone.
The music thing is nice too, but it's either a paid solution or an incomplete one. Apple once released a stat that only 10% of the music on iPods comes from iTunes (most of the rest is either pirated or ripped CDs).
It's just like when apple invented rsync. Or like when the invented multi-tasking on telephones. Or when they invented the touchscreen telephone. Or when they invented the dock. Or when they invented all of the things that they tout as innovations, but are really just shinier versions of things that already exist.
I'm not saying any of this is bad; time machine is a lot easier to use for a non-techie than rsync is, just saying that taking an existing technology, putting a lowercase i in front of it, and selling it as a game-changer has been Apple's modus operandi for quite some time now.
I think you're broadly right, but you're missing the key point: apple are adding a lot more than a lowercase i to FOSS innovations: they're adding usable interfaces, polish, and the shiny lowercase i.
Time Machine is a lot more than branded rsync. It's usable branded rsync. And the usability is what makes it a "game-changer" in the consumer market where rsync and its algorithmic innovation isn't.
In many ways, it's the same thing that canonical is doing with ubuntu, except they have sweet sweet luxury hardware money backing them up compared to canonical's comparatively meagre support contract money, or whatever else it is that they do for cash.
Oh and let us not forget: isn't it a key part of the point of OSS is that it's OK, nay even encouraged for people to "steal" the ideas? I thought the concept of stealing an idea, especially a software idea, was supposed to be meaningless? Should the Australian National University have patented rsync back in '96?
Using the idea is one thing, but taking credit for it is another. I think that's where people get hung up. Especially for non-techies that have never heard of (e.g.) rsync, Apple 'invented' versioned backups. This pisses people off that know about rsync because it's giving Apple more credit than they deserve. Apple didn't draw the idea out of thin air and develop it from scratch. They took an existing thing and made it better.
Almost nothing in technology is drawn out of thin air and developed from scratch. If you tried to give credit for every single stepping stone you used to develop anything, all you'd do is confuse the end users, and that's the whole point of what Apple is trying to accomplish: simplify for the user.
Honestly, if I developed rsync, the fact that Apple was using it to power Time Machine would be quite an acknowledgement to me.
I don't imagine that the people with "invented rsync" on their resumés are exactly struggling for income either.
Being able to tell people about your achievements is a lot better than having everyone pre-aware of them anyway IMO.
(Also it should be pointed out that time machine doesn't actually use rsync at all, or anything like it. It uses a totally different and much simpler system, seemingly built on their own FSEvents API and a load of hardlinks.)
Why are hard-links to directories that much faster? It seems like creating a bunch of actual directories with hard-linked files in them is a trivial difference. They still need to scan the files to figure out what has changed, and that's where the really time sink is, no?
Well, consider the case when nothing has changed. All they do is hard link the top level directory and they are done.
2011-06-12 -> 2011-06-13
On my Linux machine when I do rsync backups it has to create a new inode for each file in the new directory whether or not it has changed. Even on a moderately sized directory tree this can take an hour or more (you can benchmark yourself with "cp -al". Try copying your whole disk just for fun). Time machine completes a cycle in 10 minutes or so and that includes the new data copying.
For small amounts of files I agree with you that the hard linked directories would make a trivial difference. Keep in mind that by default Time Machine backs up /usr, /Applications and /System along with your user data which is quite a lot of files in the end.
That's all just creating the new backup's directory tree. The new data copying itself is fast because Time Machine uses the FSEvents API (which is like inotify but more suitable for backing up) so that it knows exactly what it has to back up beforehand (no scanning). If your computer crashes or you switch disks or otherwise screw up your FSEvents DB then it does have to scan the whole disk looking for changes and that can take hours.
So technically it is fast because it uses FSEvents and also because it can hard link directories. If either of those things are missing then the process would be significantly slower.
No. Time Machine uses the FSEvents API so that it only needs to scan directories where files have changed since the last backup, and branches of the filesystem hierarchy whose contents haven't changed can be referenced en masse with a single directory hard link to the previous backup; it's much faster than scanning or re-linking ~1M files and folders, and much more space-efficient (especially the way that hard links are implemented on HFS+).
The key differentiating factor is that the iCloud heralds an era wherein all of your data is decentralized, all of the time, and that this is the default for all users, on all Apple devices, all of the time.
>iCloud heralds an era wherein all of your data is decentralized
You are correct, for all definitions of "decentralized" that are "rigidly centralized, almost appearing decentralized because centralization is so far outside your control"
Disagree. The key point with iCloud is that the primary storage for all your data is on the device the Cloud is used in the main simply for syncing and messaging.
That's why I like the Apple vision - it leaves my data with me. It doesn't lock it up in a cloud somewhere.
Don't forget: Android already syncs all your contacts, calendars, apps, settings etc. App developers can use the sync API to sync files. In OS X-land, I've been using iSync to sync iCal and Address Book to Google Calendar and Google Contacts for about an year now.
I question whether owning someone's data is really as valuable to cloud providers as the article assumes. Not that data isn't valuable, but if it becomes critically valuable and the companies refused to allow users to reclaim it to move to another service, I imagine a law would fix the problem.
Facebook has recognised that it isn't the data per-se that is so valuable, but the connections and relationships that are between that data and others.. ie the way that your data is able to interact with other people's data. The way to lock people in is when a person's data alone is insufficient for them.
A music collection is just a set of licenses for songs. If people have only licensed the songs on a particular service or device they might find it painful to leave but if that pain is less than the cost of maintaining the service then they will leave. But a music community built around song collections would be impossible to leave, unless everyone did at once, or the person was willing to leave the community itself (much harder to replace than songs).
This definitely seems true - which is interesting, since Apple and Google have both been floundering around unsuccessfully trying to create their own community experiences.
Facebook & co are really the prize here - whichever OS company can integrate the most deeply with existing social networks is going to come out on top. If either one of them can let go of the dream of having their own social network, they'll be able to move faster and get the edge.
I suspect that Google are more attached to that dream than Apple. However, they're arguably more capable of pulling it off.
"Having been shown the way by Apple, I expect Google to shortly do the same thing, adding automated backup, synchronization and migration to Android and Chrome."
Yes. But you forgot that WWDC is the time of year that Apple takes old technology and calls it new and magical when then release it on their ecosystem of products.
IIRC, Android sort of does what iCloud does, but iCloud is very different and IMHO a much better offering from a developer perspective. According to Apple's website:
iCloud Storage APIs enable your apps to store documents and key value data in iCloud. iCloud will wirelessly push documents to a user's device automatically and update the documents when changed on any device — automatically.
iCloud allows an app developer to treat the cloud as a natural extension of the iOS device. In-cloud storage is almost as easy to use as saving data locally, and you get push synchronization for free.
This is similar to Dropbox, but baked right into the system APIs. I don't think there is anything like this in Android. You of course can hack something using Google Storage API or Amazon S3, but they are very different beasts from iCloud: while iCloud associate the storage with a user, Google and Amazon associate it with an app. That difference has a huge implication. iCloud makes it trivially easy to synchronize data for one app across devices of the same user. To achieve the same thing with Google and Amazon's offerings, you would have to provide your own code to identify user, isolate data of different users in the cloud, and bring in your own synchronization/push magic. On the other hand, if you want to mine across data of all users - answering questions like the most-bookmarked pages - then you might feel iCloud's extra layer of abstraction getting into your way.
Excuse my ignorance, but NO. Without having read all the details of iCloud, I very much hope the following is possible:
App Foo on my Mac has some data, that it can encrypt into the iCloud, and App Foo on my iPhone get access that data. iCloud is just a storage, but I hope Apps can actually encrypt the data before they load it into the cloud. Now that would be something I would look forward too. Cloud computing is fine, but I want it to be the App developers choice to encrypt the hell out of my data so that iCloud has no idea what I actually own.
Google has cloud storage for all sorts of stuff, but they have access to it.
Yeah, and so does chrome (well, it can sync passwords, bookmarks, etc.)
I'm not sure what else the author wants Android and Chrome to sync. Application data? That's up to the authors of the application, just the same as it is with iCloud.
People are worried about the cloud-killing PR mistake or security breach that will cripple the efforts to get data into these controlled data centers, so this makes perfect sense. Start the focus with something everyone will know: Music. If someone breaks into your music collection... oh no? I was keeping my Duran Duran passion a secret.
Once this catches on, any mistake won't be a crippling one or a business-critical error, just a little frustrating. Gradually promote the other cloud offerings afterward, even if they have been there the whole time. Tied in with Lion's auto-versioning options, this just means everything naturally goes to the cloud, and no one will ever think of it again.
As stated, this isn't to kill Windows, this is to kill the pain of buying more devices. This is the first step to build that confidence and show it off in something people will have fun with.
Indeed. To make your point more explicit: My girlfriend has my old iPhone 3G. Given that iCloud will not be supported on the 3G, she will have to buy a new phone once the MobileMe subscription runs out, to continue to use the handy synchronization features of MobileMe.
Now, it's just calendars and contacts, but as documents, "App state", etc. moves into iCloud, people will feel necessary to update to the latest device more often to be able to use iCloud in its fullest.
Every year you do not upgrade your device, you will miss out on more and more improvements, until your device becomes unsupported (the iPhone 3G was obsoleted well within 2.5 years).
iCloud and comparable offerings will make digital life easier for many people. But it will also be a lot harder to get out of the vendor grip. People will dislike these companies as much as they disliked Microsoft, but will be equally tied to their products.
MobileMe accounts are being extended to a year from now for free, before the service is shut off.
If the phone no longer meets her needs at that time, she can sell it to help fund a new one (or perhaps you will have yet another leftover from another upgrade of yours).
Even an old iPhone can still be used as an iPod, to play games on, and for some WiFi net activities. Old Apple phones have better resale value than any others I've seen.
It sounds like you're complaining about problems that are more hypothetical than real. If you really think that many users are being placed in a bad position, think of it as an opportunity to rescue them with some kind of great app / service that you create. Also, Steve said something yesterday about some open iCloud APIs.
We couldn't possibly help those users, because the MobileMe is built deeply into the system apps. On Android (and I don't want to sound like a fanboy too much here, although I'm sure I do), we could drop in a replacement calendar and email app to replace the system ones. On iPhone, that's a no go.
This title is a classic example of what is wrong with tech reporting.
Every new thing is supposed to be a 'killer' of something else. Whether that be "iPod killer", "iPhone killer", "Windows killer", or, $Deity forbid: "linux killer".
This is not to say that things don't change, just that the sensationalist nature of reporting is unhelpful.
I suggest a new benchmark: the techno-journalism killer. Each time some techno-journalist describes something as a killer they lose a point. If they are right within 1 year, they get 10 points. Within 2 years, 6 points. Within 3 years, 3 points, and within 4 years 1 point.
If the journalist accumulates enough negative points (-10 ??), they themselves get 'killed' (ie deprecated, made obsolescent, removed from the news streams and RSS feeds etc).
After all, if they're wrong that much, they don't deserve our attention.
Seriously, UNIX guys have had this for decades. Ever heard of keeping your user directory and profile on the network server. So when you walk around the office and log into different machines your HOME "travels" with you.
The network server now just lives on a server outside your organization/home what ever. The network speed now becomes the biggest limitation, and there are valid concerns with security as well.
I'm perfectly aware of that. I use OS X as my primary OS. My point is that who ever is saying that iCloud is all about killing Windows is missing the point completely, first because the technology not that new or amazing, and second if it does anything to Windows user base it's doing it indirectly and not as some planned consequence.
What does iCloud have to do with Windows? It's not explained anywhere in the article. The purpose of iCloud is its utility, platform lock-in, and the "cloud" checkbox ticked off in every major Apple product. All of those things will probably kill Windows a little bit, but that's not necessarily the main purpose. If anything, it's positioned against Google.
Platform lock-in is a bit gray. They were talking that for Windows they would use Pictures (or is it MyPictures) folder instead of iPhoto. That probably means that if you are a Windows user but own an iPhone you'll still get iCloud service.
Having been shown the way by Apple, I expect Google to shortly do the same thing, adding automated backup, synchronization and migration to Android and Chrome
Hmm? Google already does most of this stuff on Android, though there are a few small features like sync of app data that are currently missing
Windows 8 not due until 2013
To the best of my knowledge, no date has been set for Windows 8
Jobs is going to sacrifice the Macintosh in order to kill Windows
No he's not - the Mac (particularly laptops) will continue to grow, as it has been over the past year. This is because, as always, there will be a percentage of the market that still needs a desktop-style computer for getting real work done. That percentage isn't going anywhere soon, though they may also buy an iPad / tablet style device.
You can call it post-PC all you want, but the reality is people still need desktops for getting some tasks done and that is likely to be true at least for a few more years.
Definitely agree that Mac's and desktops are not going away anytime soon. For those that need to create and maintain content, the power of the laptop/desktop is still needed. However, the ease of use of tablets and smartphones, combined with a service such as iCloud, are great for consumers that don't need the power or cost of a laptop/desktop.
There is no need for Apple to "kill" Microsoft. Ballmer himself seems to be doing a good job for the last 10 years since Gates left. And with the recent over-priced acquisition of Skype, seems well on the way to killing his own company.
iCloud is a defensive play. It's to prevent Facebook and Google from getting at Apple users' data. At the same time it's boosting Twitter's star. Apple's MO is to be in control of its own destiny, so I wouldn't be surprised if Dave Winer was right and Apple already has some investment in Twitter, considering how tightly integrated it is with iOS 5.
I don't want the hub of my digital life moving to the cloud, where it can be data mined, surveilled, decompiled, accidentally erased, subject to arbitrary subscription ransoms or sold to anyone who will pay.
Remember the big stink about being able to bring your us cellphone number with you to a new provider? The new era of consumer cloud data looks like its going to take customer lock in to new heights. IMO it's time to start rallying for a universal right to export.
1. You can still do whatever you want with your files as they still live on your local machine.
2. You can sync with Windows machines (photos were mentioned as an example in the keynote)
3. You can turn off iCloud
Interestingly, for me the iCloud is the last straw to make me leave Mac.
I recently bought an Android phone, and I've found that Apple really hates co-operating with anything which isn't another Apple product. I could get a new iPhone, but I don't want to tie myself so I forever after have to buy mini macs, macbooks, iphones and ipads if I want to be able to get at my existing data.
Google is much better in this respect, I can get to my google data equally well from all phones and all OSes.
In the keynote they mentioned photos being kept updated on a Windows machine as well. iCloud subtracts zero functionality from any device (though it does change MobileMe, that doesn't seem to be your issue). Once a document is on your machine, you can turn off iCloud and that document will persist on your computer/iPhone/whatever unmolested just like it did pre-iCloud.
What about iCloud (which you can turn off if you want) that upsets you so?
Experience tells me that Apple will integrate iCloud deeply into all their Mac OS X applications, and many 3rd party apps will use iCloud by default, and not offer alternative options (such as Dropbox).
Will I be able to write apps for Android which can access data stored in the iCloud? I will be very, very surprised if we can. Similar to how it is very difficult, verging on impossible, to sync my Android phone with iTunes.
Apple clearly do not want their systems to integrate nicely with others, except where they feel they really have to. The iTunes / Blackberry problems from a few years ago proved to me that Apple will do anything it takes to stop interoperability, except where they want it.
Erm... no. Apple announcing iCloud is kinda like Palm announcing WebOS a couple of years ago, streaming music from LastFM (though iCloud doesn't stream), getting your pics up and down from Flickr, and working on GDocs/Gmail/GCal/Office365.
Windows is an OS. iOS is an OS. Mac OSX is an OS. The iCloud service is designed to allow you to shuffle from one to the other seamlessly but not to replace those machines altogether. Kinda like using dropbox.
Now, is the OS becoming less important in comparison to the services available? Absolutely. Not for everyone but for the average user it certainly is. Will iCloud suceed? Surely it will, but only for those who wish to be tied into Apple products (unless I am mistaken and you will be able to share iCloud uploads with Android or WP devices).
I see the killing of Windows is a natural consequence of the flow of technology. In producing new products that match where the world is going, Apple is part of killing Windows, just like the rest of us. To say 'killing Windows' it's the 'purpose' of a given Apple product is absurd, somewhat like saying the point of driving to work in the morning is to pass a certain traffic light.
"Some will say this is unlikely because of Microsoft’s grip on enterprise sales, but consumers have been leading the IT market for the last decade and the mobile transition will only accelerate this trend."
The mobile transition is a fallacy in my opinion. There is no transition; it is more a compliment to real computing solutions. Do you think large business are going to sacrifice control of their data to a "cloud" rather than their own datacenters and be held hostage to a recurring fee? Or how would you like your employees to be doing spreadsheets and documents on a tablet's virtual keyboard?
While I do believe many consumer needs can be met by mobile tech, the PC will continue to exist for a lot longer than three years simply because of the utility of conventional design. No matter how hard you try, three years from now Windows will still be alive and ingrained into the government and business world for at least three more years after that.
> Do you think large business are going to sacrifice control of their data to a "cloud" rather than their own datacenters and be held hostage to a recurring fee?
Yes. They already pay the recurring fee to their IT department.
Big companies use tons of outside services already. There is no substantive difference between that and moving more of their software and data to a standardized third-party datacenter (which is what the cloud is).
Right now people are speculating with incomplete information. Still embraced by the famous Jobs reality distortion field. If this all comes to pass then there will be a huge opportunity for the first person who can get your data back from either the iCloud or the gCloud.
It's all about ubiquitous computing versus desktop computing. Microsoft's manifest destiny was having a [Microsoft] computer on every desk. Its whole existence is built around achieving and capitalizing on that vision.
We are entering the age of ubiquitous computing. Computers everywhere. Not just for every person or every pocket. But multiple computers for every person for every function that can be augmented.
Apple gets it. Google gets it. Microsoft merely looks like it understands because it is desperately copying everyone else. But really Microsoft is lost. So utterly lost now that we're no longer in the age of desktop computing.
I'm not sure I agree. The Microsoft Kin showed this kind of forethought, but it was perhaps a bit too early, with a bit too lean-featured a phone.
If they had continued the kin-like ubiquity with the Windows 7 phone, and merged that ubiquity with Windows 7 itself, I think it would be a much stronger competitor than it is now; perhaps even pushing Apple and Google on the defensive.
First of all, Kin is a rebrand of the Danger Sidekick business Microsoft bought. All those social media features are inherited from the Sidekick, a product that "got it." A founder of Danger, Andy Rubin, went on to start Android which got acquired by Google and we all know the rest of that story.
Who knows why Microsoft bought Danger. "Phones are looking hot, better buy something." Then proceed to screw it up royally by rewriting everything from scratch on top of Windows CE wasting the entire investment.
Yeah, I don't think Kin is a good example of how Microsoft gets it.
Having been shown the way by Apple, I expect Google to shortly do the same thing, adding automated backup, synchronization and migration to Android and Chrome.
Eh, this is already happening. You can use an Android phone entirely without needing to use a desktop machine. You install apps over the air, no desktop needed. You register the phone over the air, no desktop needed. Your contacts and stuff are synced over the air, no desktop required.
"""And what happens once all our data is in that iCloud, is there any easy way to get it back out? Nope. It’s in there forever and we are captive customers — trapped more completely than Microsoft ever imagined."""
I don't agree with this: Google certainly makes it really easy to get data out of Google Docs, GMail, etc. Isn't it reasonable to also expect Apple to provide local backup facilities?
>Here is the money line from Jobs yesterday: “We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device – just like an iPad, an iPhone or an iPod Touch. We’re going to move the hub of your digital life to the cloud.”
Interesting that devices are only provided by Microsoft and Apple. Somehow I don't see that as a very diffuse cloud. (And certainly not one that will kill Microsoft devices.)
iCloud and the demotion of the desktop makes me wonder if we will see a version of OS X that doesn't require a Mac to run. Apple is in such an interesting place at the intersection of software and hardware.
I think there are too many PC's running windows available at a low price point to make this argument even worth considering. You can get laptops for less than the price of an iPod touch.
Add to that, Windows Live's offerings such as Mesh, Hotmail (with Windows Live Mail client), SkyDrive and Office home and student edition are actually really good despite them not getting as much press coverage.
People only talk about stuff when they are directly marketed at, are hyped or are unhappy. If they are happy, it rarely gets a mention. There might just be a lot of happy Windows users ambling past the Apple Store without even looking (or understanding).
There is a difference between happy and comfortable. Most people using Windows are just comfortable enough not to make the effort to move to another platform. A lot of tech people are just like that (the ones that are not passionate about new Apple machines). On the other hand, these are the people that have less weight on the decisions of new users...
I use Windows 7 and I am happy with it. There are a lot of people in tech who are happy with it. I have switched platforms several times over the years but I always end up back at Windows. People who use Windows are only using it because they are "comfortable" is a very big assumption.
I currently own a PC running Windows 7 and I really enjoy using it. For the most part, Mac OS X and Windows computers can both perform the same tasks, so it really comes down to user preference.
Having used both Windows and Mac OS X, it is funny the little things you miss from one or the other. For example, on Mac OS X, I really missed Foobar2000 (I simply detest iTunes) and Exact Audio Copy. On Windows, I lament that there doesn't seem to be any equivalent to Filemaker's Bento.
In the end, I feel that we need to stop acting like for Windows or Mac OS X to succeed, someone has to fail. There are enough users in this world for both of them (as well as Linux and BSD).
I understand. I used to dual-book my MacBooks because I like the keyboard and trackpad better. I stopped dual booting when Homebrew got good enough for installing lots of open source software on OS X. Also, I have enough Linux servers at hand, that I just use SSH, Emacs, etc. and can really do what I need on Linux from the command line.
Except for rarely booting my Windows 7 laptop, life is simpler using my Mac just with OS X and relying on Linux servers.
Interesting perspective. Ironically I have had a pile of recent Macs (I think it's 8 now from G5 iMac to a mid-2010 MacBook Pro) and always end up back on Windows on an old ThinkPad for some reason or another. Comfort may just be that reason (other than the slight enlightenment recently that a user can be productive on the simplest of tools).
Mesh is such a great product...It's too bad it hasn't gotten much attention. You just tell it what folders to watch and it'll quietly sync those folders across all your devices -- cloud included.
What a load of inflammatory hogwash. iPhone/iPod/iPad + 'Cloud' is so far removed from Microsoft's core market, I can't even imagine how one would come to this conclusion.
As for consumer trends leading corporate trends, I guess that means that in five years we'll all be employed as {whatever}ville click-slaves on Facebook.
Blizzard and Valve have both successfully integrated OSX builds into their pipelines. That's two developers of AAA titles at least, and there's plenty of great indie stuff available like Minecraft.
You do know that DirectX rules the gaming world right? Having 2 developers on mac won't change the fact that all games run faster/better on windows first. Games of the year like Mass Effect 2 (or many other top selling PC titles) were not released on mac.
Meltdown is pointing out the fact that there are many, many good games available for the mac. To run good games on the mac, one simply has to install them, with steam being one of the best ways. It was a stupid question.
Anyway, a more technically accurate answer would've been "cider," but I am loathe to promote such an unsatisfactory compromise ;)
It's an even dumber question because we're talking about the cloud. Sooner then you think we won't even have to install the games or even have them ported to your platform. And once LTE pings are more consistently <50 (40-100 today) even your tablet/phone will be able to offer basically any game.
Right. I mean, I'm not the biggest Apple fan, but in the interest of fairness I thought it was worth pointing out that gaming isn't as much of an anti-mac argument as it used to be, which is what the mtw seemed to be implying.
I didn't see on Steam mass effect 1&2, bioshock, dragon age origins, warhammer 40k, crysis, bf2, avp
The only games on mac are the hyper popular games, like world of warcraft or The Sims. I should know, I have a macbook pro, I tried but had to finally windows.
iCloud's real purpose is to sell more Apple hardware, not kill Windows. Hurting Windows sales would simply be a side effect.
It's a smart move to put iPads and iPhones on equal footing as the Mac in that regard. If your docs, pictures, apps, and music are all on iCloud, your computers become disposable digital devices. Want a new one? Buy it, all your files are already there waiting for you.
The disposable digital device is a huge idea. Google, Apple, Amazon, and HP all benefit hugely from disposable devices because they all profit hugely from the mass distribution and churn of them. Mobile has a faster consumer turnover than PC's.
For example, my parents have had the same desktop computer running Windows XP since um, 2004 or so I think. Before that they bought a computer in 1995. Most people get a new phone every 1-2 years.
So, upgrade once every 5-10 years or every 2? Which do you think makes Apple more money?
If all your files magically move between devices, and the devices keep getting cheaper, people will naturally upgrade faster. This hurts the Windows monopoly for sure, but the point is not to kill Windows. The point is to increase their own lock-in and device sell rates.
Selling more devices increases profits. That's the point.