ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
allthingsd.com
ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#2It just seems to me that companies like SugarSync (and maybe Dropbox - I don't use it) have been doing this for years. I'm confident that Apple will improve some of the media streaming experience, but their real genius is in marketing these products b/c this has existed for some time.
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#3It would seem that this guy has never actually used more than one Android device.
Cause Android has done this from the very beginning, syncing data and apps through your Google account. Which is free.
Indeed it has been awesome. When I turned on the Samsung galaxy 10.1 I got at I/O this year, it already knew my wpa key. That was just the latest in a series of small touches that have gone completely unnoticed by those living deep within the apple ecosystem.
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#4It just seems to me that companies like SugarSync (and maybe Dropbox - I don't use it) have been doing this for years. I'm confident that Apple will improve some of the media streaming experience, but their real genius is in marketing these products b/c this has existed for some time.
iCloud is not (just) a hard disk in the cloud (as Steve Jobs said during the keynote). More defining is the API that makes it seamless for applications (and consequently users) to sync data to the cloud.
In that sense, it's not just another Dropbox. In a year, the average iOS app will automatically sync data across devices using iCloud, while there is no simple knob you can switch to store it in Dropbox instead.
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#5It just seems to me that companies like SugarSync (and maybe Dropbox - I don't use it) have been doing this for years. I'm confident that Apple will improve some of the media streaming experience, but their real genius is in marketing these products b/c this has existed for some time.
iCloud is not (just) a hard disk in the cloud (as Steve Jobs said during the keynote). More defining is the API that makes it seamless for applications (and consequently users) to sync data to the cloud. In that sense, it's not just another Dropbox. In a year, the average iOS app will automatically sync data across devices using iCloud, while there is no simple knob you can switch to store it in Dropbox instead.
> In a year, the average iOS app will automatically sync data across devices using iCloud, while there is no simple knob you can switch to store it in Dropbox instead.
Which is, frankly, scary: imho, you should be able to easily switch your "sync provider" seamlessly. (For healthy competition, for privacy rights)
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#6It just seems to me that companies like SugarSync (and maybe Dropbox - I don't use it) have been doing this for years. I'm confident that Apple will improve some of the media streaming experience, but their real genius is in marketing these products b/c this has existed for some time.
iCloud is not (just) a hard disk in the cloud (as Steve Jobs said during the keynote). More defining is the API that makes it seamless for applications (and consequently users) to sync data to the cloud. In that sense, it's not just another Dropbox. In a year, the average iOS app will automatically sync data across devices using iCloud, while there is no simple knob you can switch to store it in Dropbox instead.
I will have to see the full implementation of iCloud to understand the difference. Again, can't speak for Dropbox even though they're the market leader. But SugarSync has this syncing functionality already and has had it for at least 2 years.
You can sync to the cloud and access files from the cloud OR you can actually choose files/folders to sync across hardware. For example, if I say that I want to sync my music folder across my Macbook Air and my Thinkpad, any time I make an update on one machine, it flows through to the other machine's hard drive. Similar with documents. If I choose to sync a Word document across machines and I edit it and save on one machine, in seconds it updates on the other machine should I open it there. It's all seamless - happens in the background without me having to push it from machine to machine.
Re: the API point, SugarSync has had one since 2010: http://www.sugarsync.com/developer. Haven't developed with it at all nor have I used an app that uses it, so can't speak for its flexibility.
P.s. I swear I'm not a SugarSync employee - just a very satisfied user since 2008 ;-)
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#7It's true; iCloud has the potential to be a massive lock-in mechanism, ensuring that people will continue to buy Apple devices for years on end because buying anything else will mean manually moving your data out of iCloud - which probably won't be easy for the average user.
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#8It's not that others haven't done it before. It's that Apple hasn't done it until now.
That is the big thing. Not the technology in itself.
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#9Quote - " Who wants to go back to emailing documents to yourself, or firing up Dropbox to move media from one device to another, when iCloud will–if it works properly–obviate the need for both by enabling change-on-one-device, update-to-all computing that’s ostensibly effortless and invisible?"
" Add to that a price point of free and a software-driven ecosystem like the one Apple’s developed and, well, that’s an offer not easily refused. Not easily duplicated, either–particularly for more fragmented platforms like Android"
Hmm. Never used Android before or just paying it back Mr. Writer? Apple patted him in the back and John is just doing his best in response. WSJ is Apple's guerilla marketing arm.
Re: ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
iCloud is not (just) a hard disk in the cloud (as Steve Jobs said during the keynote). More defining is the API that makes it seamless for applications (and consequently users) to sync data to the cloud. In that sense, it's not just another Dropbox. In a year, the average iOS app will automatically sync data across devices using iCloud, while there is no simple knob you can switch to store it in Dropbox instead.
I will have to see the full implementation of iCloud to understand the difference. Again, can't speak for Dropbox even though they're the market leader. But SugarSync has this syncing functionality already and has had it for at least 2 years. You can sync to the cloud and access files from the cloud OR you can actually choose files/folders to sync across hardware. For example, if I say that I want to sync my music fo…
You can sync to the cloud and access files from the cloud OR you can actually choose files/folders to sync across hardware.
There is a huge usability difference between putting a file in some folder, and having it synced, and automatically syncing all relevant data in an application.
This is easy to underestimate for us technical people, but it is very difficult to explain my mother that she has to put files in, say, Dropbox on her iPod Touch to be able to access it on her iPad. Do something on the iPod Touch, have it available nearly instantly on the iPad in the same application, she understands.