“Apple has enjoyed a strong position for several years in the mobile-computing shift that one might argue it kicked off, but there has been a glaring hole in its strategy,” Tom Krazit writes for paidContent. “It’s looking more and more like 2011 might finally be the year in which Apple gets the Web.”
“There have been a host of reports lately about Apple’s plans for something that is being called iCloud, in line with Apple’s affinity for the letter ‘i,'” Krazit writes. “For starters, Apple has been putting the finishing touches on a state-of-the-art data center in North Carolina for several months. It managed to recently acquire the iCloud.com domain name. References to iCloud have been discovered inside developer preview code for Mac OS X Lion, the next version of its operating system for the Mac. AppleInsider believes that the company is readying a combination music-locker/file storage/syncing service that would take Apple’s half-baked Web product, MobileMe, and bring it into the 21st century.”
Krazit writes, “All the announcements that might arrive over the next several months from Apple, like Mac OS X Lion or the iPhone 5 or even another iPad, its Web-services strategy could potentially change the game in more ways than the hardware or software released in 2011.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “GetMeOnTop” for the heads up.]
I hope they jump in and show the rest of the competition how to handle and manage the web.
it’s the network, stupid.
Here in the USA, we do NOT have the network capacity to move everything to the cloud. I have over 500Gigs of audio files, most of which are uncompressed. If I started right this second, it would take me about 23 years to upload that content to the “cloud”. And that doesn’t include the terabytes of HD video content I have either.
It just isn’t possible.
As far as the “cloud”, there is NO CLOUD. Your files reside on a server farm somewhere here on tera firma, and if not backed up both onsite as well as offsite, your “cloud” files will disappear like a puffy cloud on a windy day.
There solution to the network problem may be:
1) for large movie files and thousands of audio files, they probably don’t have to be downloaded in the first place, but have them streamed from a single source. Eliminates the need to waste effort on uploading/downloading/making back-ups either locally or on the cloud.
2) for existing songs and movies that people already own, you can repurchase them for a fee (think of it as a one time upload/online backup fee for all of your songs and movies) or upload them as you would any other songs/videos, which could take a long time.
3) for the rest of iLife derived files, movies, audio, photos and such are small enough to be stored and synced via the cloud in real time. this is of high value to people who generate lots and lots of movies and photos via iLife over the course of many years.
4) for pro solution (i.e. final cut pro video production), there is no cloud solution. they network cannot handle the size and the speed requirement. that’s why they came up with thunderbolt, which will make massive high throughput storage affordable and scalable locally.
i think apple really figured this out from multiple different angles, and not get carried away by the cloud hype.
Or… just keep the cloud in your house.
I am with you ChrissyOne.
With one provisio – need an off-site backup of my private cloud.
Yep. But big working storage will always be at home.
+1
2 clouds are better than 1.
You should move to Seattle. ;P
Too many clouds and you won’t see the sunshine !
Maybe. We’ll see.
Ok, so what happens in a natural disaster? A state of emergency? War is declared? Zombie apocalypse? Everybody’s shufflin’?
How we gonna put on Barry Manilow when we iClouded it & the network goes down?
It’s so much more fun to talk to positive people…
Anyone checked out http://icloud.com ?
It looks like an Apple site to me.
Yes … but it doesn’t support Safari !
“Apple’s half-baked Web product, MobileMe”
Personally, I MobileMe works great for me. I dont really want everything on there but accessing work files, mail, contacts and making sure all my computers are sync’ed, anywhere is fantastic.
True, it is limited by the network speed but so is getting in my car and driving to the store for groceries. It will be interesting to see what this might be all about. Why would Apple make a solution that would be totally controlled by others. Doesn’t sound like the Apple way to me.
“combination music-locker/file storage/syncing service….” Perhaps think different is in order here. Remember all the variations “analysts” came up with for Apple products prior to release? Probably the same here.
21st century for MobileMe would be a very positive step.
As far as a music/movie locker, if it’s iTunes contentt I do not think you would upload your library , iTunes would know what is in it and allow acces to it from any device, I believe that is how LaLa was set up
@ Hotinplaya has it right.
As for the guy crying about his uncompressed audio files, blah blah blah; Apple doesn’t care about you. You are the past. Apple cares about your children. these upcoming consumers will no longer know what a “CD” was. They will never have heard of “Gnutella”.
I know it is popular to criticize MobileMe, but I have been using it for several years and been pretty happy with it. I wish it was slightly less expensive, but I appreciate the value of services delivered without any advertising or other distractions.
I probaly was doing something wrong, but I think I am more savy than the regular user, but I could never get the syncing of my contacts right, adtr the first sync, if I added or made a change to a contact it would never update the other devices contacts, it would
Make a new contact! O still have double and triple
Contacts of the same contact
Last post of the day, I’m at my favorite watering hole and they are having a special drink today
Bin Laden martinis!
Double shot and a splash!
Splash of tomato juice?
Chased by a Jaegermeister.
Frankly, I’m very surprised that people aren’t putting two and two together and see that apple’s cloud strategy includes a web based iweb.
Hey…Hey…You…You…Get offa my cloud!
AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner are prepared to show everyone just who’s web it really is.
If they arr going to make a game changer with icloud its going to need to be something none of us can concieve of.
If its just keeping email, calendar and contacts synced between devices ill yawn. I’ve already got that for free and it works beautifully.
Its called gmail, google services on android and the imap protocol.
I can be on any of my computers or my phone and do email, calendar or contacts and within seconds my phone and other machines show the exact same data.
I really hope its more than that.