

Cutting that cord - threepointone
http://daringfireball.net/2011/04/cutting_that_cord

======
generalk
There's no sane reason that an iOS couldn't do cloud syncing as reasonably as
Android does. To Gruber's points:

    
    
      > getting your stuff onto your new iPad
    

Apple will never do it, but Android devices commonly solve this by using an SD
card that can be transferred to and from devices. My Nexus One has this hidden
behind the battery, so practically speaking I'm not going to be without it. My
photos, videos, and music are on there, or Flickr/Amazon/Dropbox. (Or my home
computer, which doesn't factor here.)

    
    
      > updating iOS
    

My Nexus One updates over the air automatically out of the box, and I have an
app called ROM Manager that downloads/installs third-party Android
distributions also OTA. Apple's made the conscious decision to ship iOS
updates as full downloads rather than deltas, which makes this an issue of
distributing nearly-1GB packages. I can update to a new build of my Android
distribution in under ten minutes.

    
    
      > backing up and restoring your iPad
    

Gruber mentions that stock Android doesn't do out of the box backup and
restore, which is wrong. I just today did a factory restore of my phone and,
after I set up my Google account, my phone settings were restored, along with
all the apps I'd downloaded from the Market. This was done automatically
without having to initiate a restore.

Gruber mentions that photos, videos, and music aren't updated, but those are
stored (as mentioned) on a device-independent SD card when they're not stored
in the cloud in the first place.

Android isn't perfect, but it does have this sewn up. As far as my Nexus One
is concerned I don't own a full PC, and it couldn't care less. When I had an
iPhone, I remember iOS releases as events where everyone in the office ran
back to their laptops to see if they could connect to the download server, and
then left their phones tethered for the next hour or two.

~~~
r00fus
> Android devices commonly solve this by using an SD card that can be
> transferred to and from devices. My Nexus One has this hidden behind the
> battery, so practically speaking I'm not going to be without it.

How is this any different than plugging in a USB cord to sync? What are you
shuttling the SD card between anyway (a PC I assume)? Physical media is not a
good answer to "cutting the cord".

~~~
generalk

      > How is this any different than plugging in a USB cord to sync?
    

It's device independent. You can wipe the device or switch to a new one
without waiting for a full sync of your potentially large media library.

"Cutting the cord" doesn't mean pretending you don't have other devices, it
means eliminating reliance on them. Presumably if you don't have a PC or
another device you don't have any digital media to transfer to your phone in
the first place.

I mean, you can store your media on the net and stream it down at will. Or you
can store it on an SD card (or whatever) and put that in whatever device
you're using today. Having to sync devices to a central master PC is the
issue.

~~~
r00fus
> It's device independent. You can wipe the device or switch to a new one
> without waiting for a full sync of your potentially large media library.

I think you're confusing device agnostic with device independent. If you still
require a device to sync the content with, it's not "independent".

~~~
generalk
I don't understand what your argument is. Let's restate:

iOS requires that you connect your device to your PC in order to activate
service, update the OS, and to manage media on the device. This is onerous and
unnecessary.

Android doesn't require this. One of the ways, _but not the only way_ , in
which this is implemented is in the use of removable SD cards, which can be
loaded with media independently of the device the media is consumed on. It is
not required that you do any of this to operate the phone.

 _You never have to connect your Android device to a PC if you choose not to._

If you choose to load your media onto your device via Dropbox or via streaming
from Amazon's cloud service (or, apparently, Google's upcoming service), you
don't even have to muck with loading an SD card. You may feel free to listen
to Pandora and upload your photos to Flickr without ever touching a PC.

~~~
cube13
So you're saying that physical media is better than a USB cable? Like the
poster above, I do not see the practical difference here. In one case, you're
transferring an SD card from one device to the other. In the other, you're
taking a cable and pluging in the device into a PC and letting it sync.
Realistically, the USB method is just slower.

Plus, unless you're switching phones every month, the full-on sync only
happens occasionally.

If you want to backup your device, you still need a separate entity(either a
cloud service or a PC) anyway. You need to copy the SD card's contents to
something else, and that requires a PC for storage. Restoring from a cloud
storage service still requires time and bandwidth, so again, practically,
that's basically the same as plugging in a device.

~~~
generalk

      > So you're saying that physical media is better than a USB cable?
    

I'm saying that no reliance on a PC is better than reliance on a PC.

    
    
      > If you want to backup your device, you still need a separate entity(either a cloud service or a PC) anyway.
    

When did this become about doing backups? Gruber's article is title "Cutting
That Cord" and is about cloud-based syncing and iOS devices, and my original
comment was outlining how (most?) Android devices don't rely on a home-base
PC, and are architected such that you don't require full backups of your
stuff. Big files (media) lives on your SD card, apps and settings live on
Google's servers and are downloaded as needed.

If you get a new iPad, you have to plug it into your computer to set it up and
sync everything, which is where "backup and restore" comes into play. With a
new Android device, you take your old SD card and insert it into the new
device and let Google sync your apps and settings. Done.

If you want to do backups of your stuff for archival or safety, that's fine,
and that (of course) requires somewhere else to put your stuff. But that's not
what I'm discussing.

------
dansingerman
Yes, I can see why for transferring your media library, and backing up your
device, you might prefer to do this over a wired connection to a PC.

But it still seems a bit crazy that I need to connect to a PC to activate the
device in the first place.

Connecting to a PC should be optional for if and when I want to backup, or
transfer media, over a wired connection.

~~~
alanfalcon
If you're purchasing from an Apple retail store then they'll activate the
device for you on a computer there in the store. That's still connecting to a
PC, but at least it doesn't actually require owning a PC. I've heard that
they'll do updates for you in store too, though you'd be running without
backups in that case (and hopefully you don't live far from an Apple Store).

~~~
ugh
They will even ask you whether you want to immediately activate the device,
you don't have to ask them. (They asked me and the three people in front of me
when I picked up my iPad 2. By the way, no one wanted to activate the device
immediately, no one bought Applecare and I think everyone except for me bought
a cover.)

That tells me that Apple seems to have recognized the ridicoulosness of the
whole activation procedure but has not yet been able to change anything about
it.

------
martythemaniak
He goes on and on about about backup and restore and bandwidth. Unless they've
changed something an iOS upgrade is just an OS image - upgrading from 3.1.1 to
3.1.2 is a 350mb download, which is really stupid. Going from 2.2 to 2.3 on
the Nexus one was ~40mb download (doable OTA), while 2.2.1 to 2.2.2 was
something like 700kb.

~~~
adamesque
He's talking about the full-phone backup that occurs before the update is
applied.

The size of the OS upgrade image has nothing to do with the amount of
bandwidth required to send an entire phone backup, media and all, to the
cloud.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The full-phone backup shouldn't be much data, either, if done properly. After
all, you don't need to back up anything that was downloaded from iTunes --
which includes the operating system, all applications, most users media files.
No more than a checksum is needed for those. A directory checksum would work
-- you don't even need a file checksums.

~~~
ugh
Doing that is not easy and Apple is not very good at it. I'm not surprised
that they are not there yet.

------
Padraig
On this "Apple should buy / copy Dropbox" thing...

Dropbox is wonderful. I love it. But Apple is slowly moving away from exposing
the filesystem to the user, so if they do anything, I don't think it'll look
or work like Dropbox. For example, Dropbox's solution to syncing conflicting
versions is to let you browse revisions on the website. I don't see Apple
doing it that way.

I would foresee an SDK level feature with each app responsible for integrating
and syncing its own data. This is possible now, if the app maker is willing to
host a server but the overheads of running a server long term discourage it.

Who really thinks Apple is going to build it and give it away though? Sure,
there'll be efficiencies in terms of code reuse and scale if Apple provide it,
but it'll cost the developer somehow (and there'll probably be another storm
in a teacup when they announce it. but that's another day's work.)

------
joebadmo
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin have a compelling take about the respective
strengths/core competencies of Google and Apple in this episode of their
podcast, Hypercritical: <http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/10>

------
codex
Nobody has mentioned the effect of cloud syncing on battery life. Apple's
devices have strong media creation features, and the data they create (photos,
videos, and audio recordings) can be quite large. Syncing this data
immediately to the cloud requires juice to power the processor and the
network, even while using Wi-Fi. Even existing cloud sync of push-based email,
which is relatively little data, has an appreciable effect on battery life. I
wouldn't be surprised if cloud-sync increased the power cost of photo and
video creation by 10x over 3G. USB sync is faster, but more importantly,
requires much less power. In fact, for some devices there can be a net gain of
charge through USB power. I suspect Apple is pushing off cloud sync until it
can deal with this issue without compromising its high standards of battery
life. Cloud sync. is quite useful for email, but for other things, most non-
geeks would probably prefer better battery life at this point. Apple is
excellent at making these kinds of hard choices.

Carriers may also be prohibiting Apple from adopting cloud-sync over 3G and
EDGE out of fear it will crash their networks. Android, while outselling
Apple, doesn't nearly have the same effect on data rates, because a lot of
Android phones are sold as "free/discounted feature phones"--users aren't
using them as smartphones, they're just the neatest phone they could get for
cheap at the store.

------
michh
He forgets to note that you don't actually need to pay $99 if you just want to
sync your contacts and calendar and have push email. Google lets you do that
for free, even on iOS.

It takes a little more effort to set up than on Android (you have to point
your iPhone to Google's Exchange service) but it works just as great.

MobileMe isn't the only solution out there for iOS-device owners that want to
wirelessly sync their contacts and calenders to the cloud and with other
devices. In fact, by spending $99 less[1], you gain the option of syncing with
Android/Windows devices as well. If you have an iPad and an Android phone,
this is great.

[1] I know MobileMe gets you more than just calendar/contacts/mail, but these
seem to be the main issues in the blog post

~~~
lallysingh
As a mobileme user for 5+ years now, no you don't really get much more than
calendar/contacts/mail. The rest are only useful if you really, really want to
live in the iLife sandbox.

That reminds me, I've gotta start scanning my mac.com email archive for people
who aren't using my gmail address yet...

------
MatthewPhillips
Doesn't satisfy the question. The only good point he has is about backing up
large media catalogs. I'm not sure why this 1 kink in the wheels should mean
no software OTA or no activation OTA or no app syncing OTA.

Surely backing your iPad up to your computer doesn't mean your data is backed
up. It means the problem has moved from your tablet not being backed up, to
your computer not being backed up. What do I sync my MacBook up to? Maybe the
answer there is to stop thinking about one device as being the central hub,
and distribute the backup amongst all of them.

I think the problem is more about habit. Android users didn't have a habit of
plugging their phones up to their computers (if they are new smartphone users,
which most are). Apple's problem is replacing the habit of doing things way X
and instead do them way Y. They could just pull the rug out from under their
customers and force them to accept way Y (they've done it in the past), but
the habits are not just in how you back up your data. It's in how you _spend
your money_ , something Apple absolutely wants to protect. If a customer is
comfortable spending their money in way X, Apple must make sure the transition
to way Y doesn't end in closed wallets.

~~~
ugh
It's unlikely that both yout iOS device and your PC will fail at the same
time. Backing up an iOS device to a PC is as good as any other backup.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
No, a good backup best practice is to incorporate an off site point into your
redundancy plan.

~~~
brownleej
"Off site" just means in physically different locations, so that some kind of
local calamity wouldn't take out both, right? It seems like having it backed
up on the PC satisfies that requirement to some extent, since the iPad and the
PC are likely to be in different locations a lot of the time. It's not as good
as a proper off-site backup, but it's better than nothing.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Sure it's better than nothing but it's not a good backup plan. The reasoning
was that Apple is holding back OTA updates because this one niche thing isn't
covered perfectly (although Carbonite and others do a good job of hands-off
online backup). I'm saying that if you're protecting something which isn't
very good in the first place, and holding back a lot of good features because
of it, that's a bad reason to do so.

~~~
ugh
It's much better than no backup. An offsite backup offers only little
additional security. (Not that it's not worth it. But the difference between
no backup and backup is vast, the difference between backup and offsite backup
is small. It's like the difference between a $50 dinner and a $100 dinner —
noticable but rather irrelevant compared to a combo meal from McDonald's.)

------
swombat
Worth pointing out that I made this very point in my article a few days after
the iPad was launched:

[http://danieltenner.com/posts/0015-ipad-an-apple-for-
mom.htm...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0015-ipad-an-apple-for-mom.html)

 _The only question, in my my mind, is, what will these people do when their
cheap old Dell finally clonks out? Right now, to use an iPad and iPhone
effectively, it seems you still need some kind of base station. So when the
old Dell gives up the ghost, will people buy another one? Pony up for an
expensive Mac? Or simply decide that the iPad is good enough and they don’t
want another laptop?_

Looks like people are now arriving at the same conclusion - I guess because
the number of people who are happy to have an iPad and no device to plug it
into has multiplied.

------
obeattie
It's worth noting that Nokia have had self-updating operating systems (ie.
over-the-air) for years now. Admittedly, I wouldn't expect it to get much of a
note in this article, but it's definitely not something that nobody has pulled
off yet.

~~~
brianpan
My Motorola phone did OTA updates 10 years ago. As gruber pointed out, that is
likely to be the first to go from iTunes.

What he doesn't mention are the reasons Apple doesn't need to cut the cord- it
helps their ecosystem. I need to install iTunes (and maybe Quicktime, maybe I
check out the iTunes Store, maybe I'm doing it on my Mac). I'm sure the future
is headed towards iOS devices that don't need a PC, but the alternative right
now is not as painful for Apple as it is for consumers. And truth be told,
plugging in a USB cable once in a while is not _that_ painful for me either.

------
pxlpshr
I'm waiting for Apple to unload some of their cash reserves for Dropbox. Could
they build it themselves? Maybe but I'm not very optimistic based on iDisk.

However, I haven't had many issues with .Me syncing my mail/calendars/address
book.

~~~
webwright
I'm not sure Apple would buy DropBox unless it was defensive (i.e. they wanted
to keep it out of a competitors hands). Isn't DropBox a front-end for Amazon
s3? While DropBox does much of the magic, it's unclear to me how feasible it
would be to shift to another storage solution. Presumably Apple wouldn't want
to be in bed with Amazon, would they?

~~~
antidaily
I would think that they would want something built into Time Machine. Maybe
Dropbox could be a switch in the preferences but it's seems like something
they would build themselves.

~~~
webwright
No question that they want it-- I'd agree that they are likely to build it
themselves. Apple historically doesn't buy too many businesses (beyond the
occasional talent grab).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple)

------
18pfsmt
I'd like them to use Time Capsule to accomplish the offering of
backup/calendar/contacts/etc to people that don't want to pay them a yearly
fee.

~~~
protomyth
I wish they would sell an iDock that allowed USB drives to be hooked to it for
local backup / sync. Syncing to a Time Capsule would be great too.

I guess my "dream" dock would have USB for mass storage / keyboard and an hdmi
port for playing synced stuff on the tv controlled from the device.

~~~
18pfsmt
I hear what you are saying, but I'm talking about a headless system, accessed
via the browser, that could handle most of these syncing and upgrade tasks
over my LAN.

The idea is to move "the cloud" to my LAN. I have an always on, 12mbps/ 2mbps
connection, which is plenty; and, I connect to it daily anyway. I already do
this with an off-the-shelf NAS (4TB Raid), but it is too difficult to
configure securely for most people (lots of SSH/ ip tables/ port forwarding).

Bonus points for a full RoR stack that would allow me to buy and install gems
with minimal configuration.

------
Tycho
I don't know, everyone's talking about cloud this, cloud that, bunch of free
services that are nevertheless costly to provide, meanwhile Apple are the
mofos who _sell_ the devices that people use to get _onto_ the cloud - at
massive profit. I think their cloud strategy is pretty sound.

------
eande
"The only reliable way to succeed at anything is to actually do it,
repeatedly, with concentrated effort."

and I would add the important part to learn from each iteration step.

