“Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, by introducing a service that shares files across different Internet-linked devices, takes another step toward sidelining the personal-computer industry he pioneered,” Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows report for Bloomberg.
“Jobs aims to make Apple the center of consumers’ digital lives, further decreasing dependence on Microsoft Corp.’s once- dominant Windows software and Hewlett-Packard Co.’s market- leading PCs,” Satariano and Burrows report. “With iCloud, files will be stored by Apple in remote data centers — known as the “cloud” in technology parlance — and automatically synchronize. That means the same content is available from any Apple gadget, without it cluttering up users’ hard drives.”
Satariano and Burrows report, “‘The PC will be the most visible casualty of the cloud revolution,’ said Steve Perlman, a former Apple engineer and the CEO of online game company OnLive Inc. ‘Apple knows it.'”
Read more in the full article here.
No.
As far as I can tell the cloud synchronizes data across devices.
Data is stored on all devices and in the cloud.
Sounds perfect.
Data ARE stored…
The singular is “datum”, like “medium” and “media”
If you think “data” is singular, what’s the plural?
Uh oh, the thought police are here.
In my dictionary * it also notes the word Data is “also treated as singular”
* Australian Oxford Dictionary
Oh I don’t know, Windows is doing a good job all by itself dismantling the PC industry. Apple is just giving it a leg up to its own assisted suicide.
I switched from a PC to a Mac on the merits of OS X itself. Didn’t need no iCloud to prompt me to switch. Windows 7 is like that spaghetti code you get by piling crapola on top of dung. I hate the way Windows forces you think in a disorganised unintuitive messy way whenever you want to use it.
I’m happy enough pairing my iPhone and iPad with my Mac but I suppose decoupling them into the cloud has its merits but I’d still need my Mac to sync music and podcasts across and act as a backup.
Long live the truck.
Long live the truck!!!
Maybe the truck can be a better truck now. It does not have to pretend to be easy to parallel park!
… all the “sweet young things” – city girls and office workers almost all – driving around in X-Large pickup trucks these days? OK, maybe it’s a sign of US wastefulness … but it’s also a sign that the truck is NOT going away.
I don’t see that as a Bad Thing, either.
Yes, but now you’ll get real trucks. Not cheap, unreliable, inefficient, under-specked, lightweight, plastic trucks.
It’s already begun. Launch the app store on your iDevice and notice in the update section that there is a new tab labeled “Purchased”. You can now see all the apps you ever bought, and which ones are installed, as well as the option to download ones that aren’t installed. Simply tap on the “Cloud”. Very cool!
Cheers for the heads-up Jason, working here in the UK.
WOW!
I discovered this last night, and it was great because I was able to re-download an app that mysteriously vanished off my iPhone a few months ago. 🙂
Ever since I shifted away from Microsoft, I’m very cautious of storing my data in a form that is difficult for me to move platforms. Hence, I’d rather store my data in Dropbox, as I do now, so that I instantly shift platforms. No way do I want to be locked into either MS or Apple. Even all my email data is in IMAP so I am not beholden to any one software platform.
iCloud works on Mac & PC.
There is support for Windows. Basically iCloud is Dropbox in steroids. But it will take some time for some folks to digest this.
Before long others will emulate Apple’s iCloud, offering similar services but with a caveat, their work, disparate pieces all cobbled together with slick marketing to ensure the public that Apple isn’t the only one who has a cloud.
@G4Dualie: a minor tweak: “slick marketing to ensnare the public”
Everyone knows that the imitators will offer their server farms and set up barriers so that you can’t transition from one “cloud” to another. Watch as the branding and fences are erected. Following the Facebook model, the “cloud” is a game of marketers ensnaring th public so sell them more junk they never knew they needed. I’d have trusted Apple more if it hadn’t pissed us off with the mobile iAd crap.
While some will put up with network issues and incompatibilities and gimmicks and the eventual bombardment of advertising (remember, cable TV was originally advertised to be the ad-free alternative to broadcast TV), i want to see the reliability stats and the privacy guarantees and absolute confirmation that there will be no ads wasting precious network bandwidth. The pipe to the ISP is the weakest link in our whole system, why would we want to make this umbilical cord absolutely essential for every single computing operation?
Some of us are capable and happy to host our own data. The local server in our office is the only “cloud” we need, thank you.
This “death of the pc” talk might make catchy headlines, but it’s a bunch of bunk imho. Apple is no more killing the personal computer than Honda and Toyota killed the automobile. Things change, and Apple is leading the charge. But the personal computer is alive and well.
It’s very possible that the PC as we know it will slowly die off, and it is also likely that iCloud will have a major role in that event. The only way we’ll know is by looking back a few years out from the iCloud being rolled out. How well the PC is doing now is not relevant to the impact that ICloud will have since it isn’t even out yet.
Are you kidding? There are millions of people in the world who either 1) can’t afford a PC, 2) don’t want to buy yet another PC, or 3) don’t know what is a PC (grandmothers, etc.). All of them are ideal for an iPod touch or iPad.
“Death” here simply means being relegated to irrelevance in the big scheme of things and that’s an obvious thing to observe. Mobile devices have simply become more important than stationary PC’s.
I get a little tired of “Apple CEO Steve Jobs” is doing X, Y, Z.
It’s Apple, the company, that’s creating iCloud, iPhone, etc. As I recall, Jobs himself even said (I think in an interview with Walt Mossberg) that it was some of Apple’s people who were working on the iPad/iOS who came to Jobs and said they could make it into a great phone OS and release that product before the iPad would be ready.
I just get tired of these reporters making it sound like Steve Jobs is doing everything. Apple has a lot of great people working for it, and it’s not just Jobs’ ideas that go forward.
Those people would be well rewarded by their ownership of AAPL stock and stock options.
I am at a loss as to how the services provided by iCloud will dismantle the industry. Rather, it seems like iCloud will seamlessly integrate the various types of “PC” (personal computer) more and more people have these days – making them more like sort of the same device, only with different form factors for the user to use when, where and how suits him best.
It’s integrating, not dismantling.
You sound like Ballmer. The PC will disappear because it’s no longer necessary for you to have a PC hard disk to store your stuff. You can write a Pages or Numbers document or PDF or whatever and are guaranteed it will be saved in iCloud or on all your devices. You would use your PC less and less and less.
I believe the term PC presents all kinds of a problem of semantics. When I read PC, I interpret it to mean WinTel laptops and desktops. What is truly significant about yesterday’s announcements is the ability to “cut the cord” in iOS 5. All those iDevices can now become primary computing devices independent of whether you are a “PC” or a “Mac”. iCloud will be one more notch in the Apple halo effect that will drive an ever increasing amount of PC users over to the Mac platform due to the seamless iCloud functionality between the iOS 5 and Lion. Lion/iOS 5/iCloud become just one more reason for people to switch and provide a way for iDevice owners to never have to own a Wintel PC ever again should they not require a “truck”. My 2 cents.
“‘The PC will be the most visible casualty of the cloud revolution,’
This means Macs too. For those who were not paying attention, Apple dropped “Mac” from OSX for the first time ever at WWDC. Lion clearly shows they intend to kill it off in favor of their new locked down iOS devices where they can oversee (control and charge for) all your media without fear of you having the ability to copy or share anything they don’t like. The Move to iTunes-only OSX Lion downloads also means embedded DRM, locked-down installer files, and approved installation only to “authorized Mac users” with credit card accounts because they don’t accept cash and won’t mail a CD.
Apple’s move today may also be the turning point where they begin to be seen as killing the goose that has laid the golden eggs. Most people still understand what freedom is, what it means, and walled gardens no matter how beautiful are still a loss of that freedom. The mood in the crowd was notably subdued as the “new features” are wholly derivative and clearly intended to mask the ongoing removal of legacy programming access to root features.
Please take your FUD elsewhere. Your post is filled with non-facts aka lies. ICloud is DRM free. You are free to keep your files on your PC/Mac/iDevice. ICloud provides a means to sync your data with the cloud instead of your PC/Mac.
As for “walled garden” FUD, take that elsewhere. People switch to Apple b/c they get tired of poor performance from “utilities” such as the security riddled Adobe Flash, and the high proliferation of viruses and Trojan software in the Wintel and Android platforms. Microsoft has beat me into a state of reasonableness. I’ve not had to reinstall my OS for 4 years (a yearly occurrence with MS).