Yesterday Apple had more then a little to talk about. With the announcement of iOS 5 shipping this fall, the demo’s of OS X Lion coming next month, and perhaps the most intriguing announcement, iCloud. For a long time Apple has failed to take advantage of cloud service, failed to show that they understand the cloud. Lets see if they get it now.
When people hear “to the cloud” they think of “a big hard drive in the sky” ~Steve Jobs, and they would be right. Traditionally the cloud has served as nothing more then storage, and in some cases procession (OnLive). Services like Box.net and Dropbox have made it possible to store a certain Gigabit amour of files, and then allow us access to those files any where their is an internet connection and on almost any internet connected device. Apple appears to be taking a new approach to the cloud. How?
iCloud is more of a large push notification service, instead of the focus being storage, it’s all about sync. For example. Apple announced a service called PhotoStream. When you take a picture on your iPhone running iOS 5, it is sent to the cloud and then pushed to all of your other iOS 5 devices and your Mac (using iPhoto) or Windows machine. Apple will store the last 30 photo’s you take in the cloud and the last 1000 you take on your phone. The rest of thee storage will be your problem. Apple believes the the personal computer is becoming hub. So how does this work with PhotoStream. While your mobile devices and the cloud are storing a limited amount of data, or in this case images, your Mac or Windows device is storing all of them. So your computer is acting more like a big back up. Here is how Apple explains it:
iCloud is so much more than a hard drive in the sky. It’s the effortless way to access just about everything on all your devices. iCloud stores your content so it’s always accessible from your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.* It gives you instant access to your music, apps, latest photos, and more. And it keeps your email, contacts, and calendars up to date across all your devices. No syncing required. No management required. In fact, no anything required. iCloud does it all for you.
It really is an interesting concept, and one I actually like. Having everything synced. I really have to come back to PhotoStream. If you take the bulk of your pictures with your phone (as I often do) this offers an interesting opportunity. Photographers often use a system that takes a WiFi equipped SD card and beam all of there photo’s that they take to there computers. I recently saw an interesting take on this. A photographer was using this WiFi SD card system except it was sent to is Droid 2, his droid 2 then sent the pictures to his server, his server then instantly published them to his site. If developers take advantage of the PhotoStream API, you could take a picture and have sent through iCloud (or a 3rd party if Apple allows it) and then publish to your site or store on your server. Even if Apple didn’t allow it on the phone side, you could still see it happen on the computer side.
I personally like the fact that Apple is using the cloud for sync and not storage, it really saves people like me a lot of time, and this certainly is making me consider coming back to an iPhone. It will be interesting to see just how smooth this system is when it is implemented on large scale, how carriers will allow you to use (caps will be a small barrier), and how developers make the service even better. We will put the service through its pases when it becomes available in the Fall.
Moving away from images, lets talk about apps, contacts, and music. Now when you purchase and app (and even apps already purchased) and you get a new device, all you have to do it let iCloud push the app back to your phone. Apple was very adamant about killing the cord. You can buy a new iPhone or iPad and never even look at your computer. Again, this is how Apple explains it:
You download a lot of apps. And now you can see them in one convenient place: your purchase history on the App Store. Since you’ve already purchased these apps, you can download them again — at no additional charge — to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. And when you purchase new apps, you can have iCloud automatically push them to all your devices.
It works much the same way with your contacts, documents, calendars and music. I will let Apple explain it:
When you set up iCloud, you get a free me.com email account. iCloud automatically pushes new email messages to all your devices, so your inbox is up to date everywhere you check it. And iCloud keeps all your folders in sync, no matter which device you’re using.
Calendar
Update your schedule in one place and see your changes everywhere. When you have multiple devices, iCloud updates them with your most recent appointments — saving you time for all the other things you have going on. You can also share calendars with other iCloud users. A datebook your whole family can add to. Or a team schedule that every player can access. As soon as someone adds or edits an event, iCloud updates it wirelessly on everyone’s devices.
Contacts
With iCloud, your entire address book is on whichever device you’re using, anytime you need it. Say you add someone to Contacts on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. iCloud automatically sends the new contact to Address Book on your Mac or to Outlook on your PC. So you don’t have to connect your device to your computer to keep track of all those names and faces.
iBooks also benefits from the new iCloud sync services. Every book you download and read stays in sync on all your iOS 5 devices:
Open the iBooks app on your iOS device or the iBookstore on your Mac or PC, and get a personalized reading list of your past book purchases. Just like with apps, you can download these books again to any of your devices. Buy a new book, and it appears everywhere. And when you start reading on one device, iCloud conveniently saves your place. Just leave a bookmark, highlight text, or make a note and they’re automatically pushed to all your other devices, too.
iClound also backsup data on your iOS devices. Such as Text messages, Ringtones, Device settings, App data, and Home screen and app organization.
For more information on all the features of iCloud hit the source link, and stay tuned for demo’s when we get this in out hands, this Fall.
Source: Apple.
~Zephaniah Washington
Editor-in-chief.
