

ICloud: The Mother of All Halos - jsherry
http://allthingsd.com/20110608/icloud-the-mother-of-all-halos/

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stanleydrew
It 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.

~~~
saturdaysaint
As an iOS user, I understand that Android's always been cloud-centric, but I'm
curious (and a bit skeptical) if this has really entailed everything that
Apple just unveiled:

Does Android automatically sync photos (both with the cloud and the PC)?

Does stock Android do a full backup (including application data) to the cloud?
When I synced my iPhone 4 to iTunes for the first time, I instantly got voice
notes, text files and PDF's I've had since my first iPhone. I've always
wondered if an Android user picking up a new phone could expect the
equivalent.

Is the Google Docs experience (ie Google's answer to the "document syncing"
problem) better on Android than it is on iOS devices? I've wanted to use
Google Docs exclusively for years, but editing is practically unusable on an
iPhone. I'm shocked at how slow they've moved to make documents mobile.

~~~
blinkingled
Photos : Multiple solutions exist to do n-way photo and video sync although it
is highly debatable how useful anything other than Mobile to Cloud and Cloud
to Mobile is which Android does out of box.

Picasa photos and videos automatically appear in gallery and there is no limit
to the number of photos.

<http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/backup.html> \- Backup can
include anything including app data and it doesn't have to go to Google's
cloud - the backup client component is designed to be customizable to send
your backup data wherever you please. Best part of all!

Google Docs - Again multiple solutions exist. Documents to Go full edition
offers seamless Google Docs support with decent editing functions. There exist
Word/Excel add-ins that save to Google Docs from desktop.

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blinkingled
Quote - " 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.

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jsherry
It 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.

~~~
danieldk
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.

~~~
jsherry
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 ;-)

~~~
danieldk
_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.

~~~
jsherry
Good point indeed. The functionality is already there, but Apple will surely
simplify things and cause widespread adoption.

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ThomPete
It'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.

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cph1
It'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.

~~~
peterb
To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your
data. Copying from a iOS device is problematic, but that is true today.

~~~
Timothee
That would work for some stuff, but I'm not sure what would happen to the data
stored by third-party apps. iTunes has a section to retrieve documents that
some apps create, as long as the apps themselves are built to take advantage
of that.

However, if an app doesn't provide either that or some kind of export, I'm not
sure if you'd get easy access to that data. And actually that might create an
incentive for some apps not to add the functionality. It makes sense for
Office-type apps to provide a PDF, or Office-compatible format, but I could
imagine very specific apps that can lock you in since you don't get to
(easily) reverse-engineer and convert their data because you don't get as easy
of an access as you get on a desktop.

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adaml_623
Does anybody else think that the EU is going to jump on Apple eventually the
same way they jumped on Microsoft and browsers and make Apple provide a way
for users to select which storage provider they want to use?

~~~
a2tech
They might try-but why would Apple let them? They can just take their ball and
go home. I couldn't find any hard numbers but a few articles I found were
claiming that European sales make up less than 11% of total Apple sales.

~~~
pavlov
That makes sense in a world where losing billions of dollars of revenue is
preferable to adding an API.

The EU has a population of over 500 million. Apple's presence in Europe
involves much more than selling computers and gadgets.

If they actually were to retreat because of some squabble with the EU
Commission, they'd also be abandoning dozens of telecom operators with whom
they have iPhone deals, tens of thousands of developers who make things for
the iOS and Mac platform, and millions of consumers who buy digital content
from iTunes... Leaving all that on the table in this extremely competitive
market would be nothing short of madness.

