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iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

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11–20 of 139 posts

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#11
People are worried about the cloud-killing PR mistake or security breach that will cripple the efforts to get data into these controlled data centers, so this makes perfect sense. Start the focus with something everyone will know: Music. If someone breaks into your music collection... oh no? I was keeping my Duran Duran passion a secret.

Once this catches on, any mistake won't be a crippling one or a business-critical error, just a little frustrating. Gradually promote the other cloud offerings afterward, even if they have been there the whole time. Tied in with Lion's auto-versioning options, this just means everything naturally goes to the cloud, and no one will ever think of it again.

As stated, this isn't to kill Windows, this is to kill the pain of buying more devices. This is the first step to build that confidence and show it off in something people will have fun with.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#12

I think we need to realize that PCs (laptops or desktops) and mobile devices (tablets and mobile phones) are good at different things, and going forward will be used for different things. For example, I'm sure everyone (especially on this site) has noticed that software development is kind of a big thing. I don't see any indication that I'll be developing any software on a mobile device any time soon (especially not…

I mean, what do you use on a Mac to compose documents? Word.

No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice.

Given how seamless the iWork experience is becoming between iDevices (which will be including Macs), how much cheaper iWork is, and how much better the iWork user experience is (they don't have 20 years of feature-cruft littering the interface), there is absolutely no reason for a home Mac user to use Office and few reasons (usually an iron-fisted corporate IT group) for a corporate Mac user to use it.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#13
Right now people are speculating with incomplete information. Still embraced by the famous Jobs reality distortion field. If this all comes to pass then there will be a huge opportunity for the first person who can get your data back from either the iCloud or the gCloud.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#15
What does iCloud have to do with Windows? It's not explained anywhere in the article. The purpose of iCloud is its utility, platform lock-in, and the "cloud" checkbox ticked off in every major Apple product. All of those things will probably kill Windows a little bit, but that's not necessarily the main purpose. If anything, it's positioned against Google.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#18
I question whether owning someone's data is really as valuable to cloud providers as the article assumes. Not that data isn't valuable, but if it becomes critically valuable and the companies refused to allow users to reclaim it to move to another service, I imagine a law would fix the problem.

Facebook has recognised that it isn't the data per-se that is so valuable, but the connections and relationships that are between that data and others.. ie the way that your data is able to interact with other people's data. The way to lock people in is when a person's data alone is insufficient for them.

A music collection is just a set of licenses for songs. If people have only licensed the songs on a particular service or device they might find it painful to leave but if that pain is less than the cost of maintaining the service then they will leave. But a music community built around song collections would be impossible to leave, unless everyone did at once, or the person was willing to leave the community itself (much harder to replace than songs).

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#20

I think there are too many PC's running windows available at a low price point to make this argument even worth considering. You can get laptops for less than the price of an iPod touch. Add to that, Windows Live's offerings such as Mesh, Hotmail (with Windows Live Mail client), SkyDrive and Office home and student edition are actually really good despite them not getting as much press coverage. People only talk abou…

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