“Steve Jobs got a lot off his chest in his Q&A session with developers at WWDC 1997 — the first after he returned to Apple from his years in the desert at NeXT,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“What is perhaps most relevant today, a week or so before Apple is expected to launch iCloud, is the part where Jobs describes his vision for what is now known as cloud computing,” P.E.D. reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Jobs’ closing words read like an iCloud ad: “I can’t communicate to you how awesome this is, unless you use it. And what you would decide in a day or two is that carrying around these non-connected computers, or computers with tons of state in them, tons of data and state in them, is Byzantine by comparison.”
A genius ahead of his time. Of course, his concept can now be updated to reflect some of the emergent technology not available in 1997. It is this type of visionary thinking that prompted my move to Mac OS X, first in 2003, then completely over the past four years. NO REGRETS!
i recall Oracle pushing for NC… Network Computing/Computers…. No doubt Jobs and Ellison shared the same view…
Cloud 15 years in the making 🙂
Such vision
I’m very excited about the coming of iCloud. I was a high school teacher for 30 years. I only used Macs. I built one of the largest school-wide networks in my board. In the early 90s I bought the first large hard drive to serve as a server for my school. It was connected to most of the macs in my school with AppleTalk. Mostly I ran the wiring around the school by dangling wires out of windows. That large hard drive will make you laugh. I bought the first one. It was ONE GB. the person in charge of ordering actually called me to make sure that I knew what it was for and how I would use it. ONE Gig. It was bigger than a standard shoebox. LOL!
So, i finally made an account, anyways… that’s awesome. Haha. I have about the same setup at home. I’m using my airport extreme with an external 2TB hard drive which has been partitioned so each mac in our home (we have 4) get’s it fair share of 500GB 🙂
It’s amazing how quickly hard drive space has expanded and exploded in size! My mother started a software company in the early 80’s. She didn’t buy the first hard drive, that was only 5MB. She waited until the 10MB ones came out and bought one for work. That’s Ten MEGABYTES! Guess how much it cost her: $4,500. If you were to scale up that cost to per GIGABYTE: $450,000. Insane! Now you can pick up a 2 TB drive for about $60!
But there is a battle between cheap drives so you can store stuff locally (music, videos, etc.) and fast always-on bandwidth were you can just stream it all. It’s interesting to see how iCloud has been created to merge both … keep copies of your most recent pix and vids on all of your machines, with your main one designated as the master .. but even that is backed up to the cloud in case you lose it all locally.
Can’t wait for the release of iCloud, iOS5, iPhone 5 … and I’ll need to pick up a new iMac as my 24″ is now 4 years old and starting to creak under Lion.
We purchased two SCSI 40 mb HD’s for a mac SE server using local talk in our school. Cost $1000 for the drives.
The future of Macs: SSD + iCloud. I can’t wait.
If only Ballmer would have listened to visionaries outside of his own prison.
All hail the technostradamus!
iCloud concept is actually different, better version of the cloud that Jobs had since 1989 in professional use and, more importantly, different from what Google or Amazon can offer now.
Apple admits that users want to own their data, not just have an access to it when and if the connection is available/stable. That is why iCloud is so unique — it is rather synchronisation service, not remote storage service.
Exactly. I don’t want to rely on Internet connection. But icloud’s concept of uploading data to the cloud and pushing it to all your devices in the background when I DO have a connection… I’m seriously salivating, as USB flash drives seem almost Byzantine by comparison.
Byzantine indeed!
When I saw this video a couple of months ago, I remember thinking that what SJ described in ’97, sounded a lot like iCloud now.
It’s a new world..
A man came up to me and said
“I’d like to change your mind
By hitting with a rock,” he said,
“Though I am not unkind.”
We laughed at his little joke
and then I merrily walked away
And hit my head on the wall of the jail
Where the two of us live today.”
They Might Be Giants
What an amazing visionary Mr. Jobs is.
God Bless You Mr. Jobs. X
I think iCloud is the natural evolution of the idea, but Apple has been working the concept he spoke of for a LONG time for networked users (not home users) At-Ease, followed by Macintosh Manager, followed by Mac OS X network based and portable home directories. Heck, Microsoft even tries with roaming profiles, but it is no where near as slick, seamless or powerful as the current OS X version.
Once iCloud delivers the functionality of these from the cloud, it will be mature and his full vision realized.
Of course this is scary from the perspective of individual control and privacy. As a server administrator I have the ability to view ANY and ALL of the data as it sits on the server.
Truth…
Your last line is my biggest fear as well. A decade from now, when 90% are in the iCloud… what’s to keep the government from quietly gaining access to it?
Can you say mind police? Can you say 2024?
You think they have trouble with censorship in China right now with their control of the internet… Mind cannot conceive how dangerous this might be…
That’s why nationalized health care is scary by definition as well… If the government controls your health care… they control your life… because without healthcare… you die.
Just food for thought…
I described the iCloud as far back as 1983. Even then it was obvious that communications would be an integral part of the computing experience.
I have always loved watching and listening to Steve Jobs. What is amazing is the archives get better watching each time. Classic visionary mastery, supreme articulation. Thank you Steve.
Apple’s success can be attributed in large measure to Steve’s ability to see the future. ,seize and focus, like a laser on the idea and pull the people together to design and build a product or service that users will like, enjoy, find useful and just works.
My belief is that Steve has taught key people at Apple how to use this process.
He also, I am sure, has laid out what he feels is the future over the next 15 years or so.
So key people not only have a road map, they also understand why he thinks they shoud focus on project A rather than B.
Steve/Apple is more focused on where they are going and what they will design and build years before they unveil the product, than competitors are after the product has been announced.
Hence AAPL!
He’s a time traveler! That’s the only explanation.
He’s certainly been a man of focus and unswayed determination, but his vision of iCloud remains impractical today.
1. To this day few users have Gigabit ethernet connections in their home *necessary* to make this concept practical and transparently workable. Residential high-speed (Cable/DSL) bandwidth often drops well below 50mbps during peak usage times, making working on cloud documents slow, lagging, and frustrating. There’s a data bottleneck at the local ISP level and it’s the kiss of failure for the lofty ideal of “cloud computing” whether you’re GoogleDocs, MS Live, or Steve Jobs’ iCloud.
(To make it happen, Apple needs to cut out all the middlemen while not paving the way for the competition. Somehow. Hmmm. What’s that stockpile of cash for?)
2. Most people/businesses still have major problems trusting big corporate networks with all their sensitive data. For Steve (AKA: God) Jobs to call his in-house tech support when something goes wrong is one thing, but can you imagine all your data disappearing and having to plead over the phone to some underpaid person … in Asia … who keeps asking, “You use collect Rogin?” Can you imagine some server room lackey secretly copying bank accounts, passwords, calendars, or secret product R&D?
Wow … the JEANS ! LOL
Those are pockets for iPhones, one for when you are standing up and one for when you are sitting down. Visionary, even in his sartorial decisions.
Steve Jobs – 15 years ahead of his time
Apple OS – 5 years ahead of windows
Windows 7 – takes 5 years to copy everyone else, poorly
Gates & Palmer – Stuck in the stone age, lost sight completely, look at Windows 8! Tiles so big I can only fit 6 of them in my 27″ monitor? Compared to about 50 icons. Bugger off.
Apple’s current vision for iCloud is to use it more to sync data between devices, not access data directly. So it’s SYNC user data over the cloud, USE user data locally. This is different from what Steve Jobs is describing in the video, and from how Google and Microsoft (and others) see the “cloud.”
Once again, I think Apple is better in tune with current technology and creating the most “useable” experience for users. While everyone else is coming up with streaming services and cloud-based storage (and Apple is doing it too to some extent), the current primary focus of iCloud is to constantly sync data (using the cloud) to the multiple devices owned by the user, but then access that data from each device’s local storage.
With current technology (especially with wireless networks), Apple’s approach provides a better experience for most users. Contrast this to Google and Amazon wanting to store ALL user data online (directly) with things like ChromeBook and Cloud Drive, respectively. It may work great someday, but not today.
When the supporting technology is there, Apple will be there too.
I wonder if ICloud will include “cloudlets” that enable a local network to stay always synced within itself, syncing to the larger cloud when connectivity is available. As one with sporadic and somewhat slow connectivity to the internet at large, the idea seems great. I have six devices right now that would benefit from persistent sync, but wide area network connectivity is not always possible. If it was possible to have a local server to manage the devices locally, while connecting when and as possible to the larger network to maintain their currency, that would be great.
I’m guessing this iCloud thing is going to become another one of those Apple products I didn’t even know I needed.
Probably not, because iCloud is not meant to sync “everything,” only certain things that are most useful to keep in sync. And it’s not meant to replace a local “total” backup process, such as Time Machine. Or direct syncing (including backup) between computer and iOS device.
I use a program called ChronoSync
http://www.econtechnologies.com/
to keep my user data in multiple folders (at different local network locations) in sync. The folders can be anywhere, as long as the Mac running ChronoSync can access them. The sync can be “two-way,” meaning files that were added or modified at either location are kept (and deleted files removed). If the same file was modified at both locations since the last sync, the sync process stops and asks which one to keep. After syncing, both folders have the same files.
So I can use it to keep two “work” folders on two computers (even if one is Windows) in sync. I also use it to separately back up some folders that I have excluded from Time Machine backup (such as the very large VMware Fusion virtual machine files).
The sync can run manually or automatically (timed).