“Apple gave us a better glimpse inside its software soul during its WWDC keynote yesterday, with company CEO, Steve Jobs taking the stage to introduce iCloud, Lion and iOS 5, the three hearts of the Cupertino tech giant,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “I’ve gathered some reactions to Apple’s announcements.”
Evans reports, “Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones Software told me, ‘The amount of user-facing work that’s going into Mac OS X 10.7 and iOS 5 is truly impressive, especially as it reflects an enormous amount of work under the hood.'”
“What is important is that all Apple’s moves yesterday portray a company applying all of its might to stake the biggest space in the Post-PC age,” Evans writes. “From dropping the word Mac from Mac OS X to the implementation of iPad-like gestures within the Lion OS, Apple is preparing for a different and reinvented PC market.”
Read more in the full article here.
Watching the keynote last night.. I realized that with iCloud, apple killed so many apps/services that so many use.
Bout the only one I’m keeping, dropbox.
Apple stepped on so many toes yesterday 😉
Dropbox wiped out my data when I installed it on a Windows PC I own. I still keep it around for some legacy programs I use that isn’t available on OS X. It worked fine when I installed it on my Mac, iPad & iPhone. So I’m a little wary of Dropbox now – it’s gotten a little bit flakier I think.
Agreed. We saw a lot of the soul if Apple yesterday. “it just works” may be a catch phrase but I think it captures one of the core concepts of Apple.
Yup, adding all of that new technology with doing next to nothing in regards to set up is mind boggling. The “cloud” that so many imagined, and that competitors already started setting up, just got flushed down the toilet.
It seems most competitors added the “cloud” as another thing to constantly need to sync. Competitors actually made it more of a headache than it already is.
Long live Eddy Cue!
It was 2 hours of something new every five minutes or so. A very new way of operating is coming on-line here…
Which is why the stock is tanking, I’m thinking. If all this works as advertised AND people get on board, it’ll be huge, but the change of mindset feels huge, and it’s no guarantee that people will immediately love the Cloud idea.
My wife’s first thought was, “What happens when the cloud gets hacked? Do I lose all my stuff?”
I told her it’s like the transition to digital photos. Ten years ago people were so worried about digital cameras because what happens if you hard drive crashes? You lose everything. Then they realized — slowly — that there were backups, and backup plans, and that the whole system really works well enough to trust it.
I think it’ll take time for people to get their minds around this transition and go with it. Perhaps it could be a bumpy ride short to mid-term?
Your wife is asking the right question. The whole “cloud” concept only makes sense if users’ data is absolutely secure, which seems harder and harder to guarantee. If hackers can break in to B of A and the U.S. gov’t, they can break in anywhere. The question is what’s it gonna take for hackers to finally turn their attention to OS X and now iCloud?
Personally, I have no problem with storing copies of music and photos in the Cloud. But important documents? Not a chance! Of course, email—which sometimes contains very private information—is already stored in the cloud. So we may facing a situation where, no matter how many locks we put on the barn door, the horse has already escaped.
@omalansky:
spot on. There is no way any important document of mine is going to be stored by someone else.
The believers can place blind trust in the word “encrypted” all they want, but there is so much more to privacy and security than Apple (or any other “cloud” terminal-network provider) will admit.
Do you do offsite backups of important documents, such as Mozy or CrashPlan? Then you are already participating in the “cloud” – your data is not fully under your control.
It would be difficult for anyone hacking into iCloud to really find anything worthwhile. Very different from targeting B of A, where you know you can find treasure troves of social security numbers, credit card numbers, dates of birth, etc.
In iCloud you’re going to find billions of photos from kids’ birthdays, forwarded emails with the latest joke, and lots of irrelevant stuff (to hackers). It would take a long, long time for a hacker to sift through all that to hopefully find a bank account number and password, etc. And it’s not like my data is going to be organized and commingled with your data: it will all reside in separate directories, not even catalogued really. Not exactly a good use of time.
Because B of A or the Govt got hacked doesn’t mean someone can hack anything. Also which branch or dept of the government got hacked and for what. Hacking is a broad term and mean many things. However I do feel making something hack proof is virtually impossible.
One glaring omission from Apple’s keynote (at least from the liveblogging I followed), was the complete lack of information on how this iCloud data is secured. Is my data encrypted between my devices and Apple’s servers? How does iCloud secure my data? Who else can access it? Will Apple defend my rights if a third party demands access to my data?
Apple’s new iCloud future makes it very difficult for those of us who don’t want any more of our data floating around out there than necessary. I’m just fine with local wifi sync between my devices, thankyouverymuch.
Then turn off iCloud and quit kvetching.
They said several times that you can encrypt the data flow.
They did say everything is encrypted. If you didn’t catch it, it’s because you were not paying attention.
the government uses almost exclusively MS products. The only bank/credit card compromises I’ve ever investigated have been MS servers.
Most banks now run some form of unix/linux servers. They don’t get hacked.
Is that so? I had no idea… Sounds great if true.
Why are some people resistant to change. As always, the majority don’t get it. What was announced yesterday will have more impact on the industry than even the iPhone announcement. Apple once again has changed the rules of the game. Google, Microsoft and others will be emulating this in the next two years. Just like everybody is attempting to make iPads and iPhones.
Overheard in the boardrooms of HP, Acer, Motorola, Samsung, etc:
“Quick! Call the VP of R&D and tell him to shift immediately from copying the iPad to building our own cloud services.”
“We’ve gotta shift production of those smooth-selling tablets to building massive servers for our new cloud services!”
Thus began the rush to the SamCloud, the AssCloud, the XOOMcloud, and the HP-67 MagCardCloud.
And then Ballmer called together his 30 executive VPs and instructed them to rapidly cobble together the Windows 2012 Cloud with a $100 per seat license and sell it to Dell and Gateway.
Boom!
—Thus spake Jobs
Do you have any links that back up what you are saying here? I’m not surprised if what you are saying is true, but I’d love to be able to verify it.
The “cloud” thing is still a hard concept for many people to totally grasp but once they get it, it will be like an epiphany. For personal use, mobile is where it’s all at. The PC has become like the mainframe. It will always be around but it’s just not relevant anymore in the big scheme of things.
While watching the various presentations from the keynote yesterday, I kept thinking to myself, “Wow, these guys have been really, really busy.”
SJ clearly wants iCloud to wash the bad taste of mobileMe from everyone’s mouths.
It is funny how many people are so worried about having their personal information online when in fact it is already online in some form or another and has been for quite sometime. This is with and without peoples permission.
Whether you want it online or not, its there. You might as well take advantage of it and use it to your benefit.
If you don’t trust the cloud, then you can do a local backup. I will use the cloud but I will not stop using local backup in case the cloud crash.