Don’t think of iCloud as the new MobileMe; think of iCloud as the new iTunes.
Albeit it’s what he calls “fourth-hand information,” here’s what he means (to quote him liberally, again):
With iPhones, iPods, and iPads, the central store for almost all data stored on the devices is iTunes running on your Mac or PC. With iCloud, that should shift to the cloud. iTunes, the desktop app, currently syncs the following things with iOS devices: audio, movies and TV shows, iBooks e-books, App Store apps, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, notes, and any sort of files shared between iOS apps. All of these things would be better served syncing over-the-air via the so-called cloud.
The end result would be an iOS experience that’s more like Android or Windows Phone out of the box—you pull it out, punch in your iTunes ID and you’re doing magical things immediately, without having to sync to a computer running the latest version of iTunes on the latest version of OS X or Windows. And that’d be just part of iCloud.
Taken with the rumours about Time Capsule and iTunes music streaming, the big picture of iCloud is no less than the storage and connection of all your important data (documents, music, whatever) across all of your devices. Access to everything on your Mac through Time Capsule. Streaming your music through iTunes. Your contacts and calendars synced on every device. And more. It could be huge. [Daring Fireball]
Antonia Powers
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 11:52 AMThe main problem I see with all this is that someone else is holding *my* stuff. Its not like a bank holding my money (under a raft of government rules and regulations). Its a business with whom most of us will probably agree to the business’ EULA without even reading it.
If they go broke, lose the servers my stuff is on, get hacked, give away my stuff, sell lists of my stuff to 3rd parties, accidentally delete my stuff, not let me access my stuff… what recourse or options do I have?
Simon Reidy
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:11 PMI share the same concern. My larger concern however is how such a setup will affect jailbreaking. Hopefully there’s a way to still jailbreak and keep those apps on the device, and sync your legitimate stuff to the cloud without it picking up that you’re jailbroken and denying access for “security reasons” or something like that. There’s so much uncertainty surrounding iOS5, but it’s going to be there most interesting announcement in a long time. That’s for sure.
Tom Rogers
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:28 PMWell, let’s hope that its ‘Time Capsule’ based cloud storage, that way we are incharge of the physical equipment + internet connection thats hosting our music.
NateDogg118
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 11:55 AMlol…. going through the city loop would be interesting to watch every bodies music cut out…
William
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:19 PMThis takes apples walled garden and adds razor wire on top of the walls. If its all synced through hte cloud, why do you need to put your own music on your Iphone? If your an apple user, its about to be a lot harder to escape.
Dan
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:28 PMMy main issue would be with the data limits on the iPhone. I doubt anyone would have more then 3gb of data on their plan. Streaming music would eat a lot of that data. Unless the plan is for syncing only and not streaming.
Pat
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:33 PMAnd now watch Telstra and all the other Australian telcos rub their hands in glee. Listen to your cloud music on the train and you’ll burn through that precious 1 gig data allowance in a week.
Sean
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 1:20 PMYour about right Pat. Thankfully I have the 5gb plan and may have to move to the 12gb if all the music runs via streaming.
I just cant see the iPod function solely through streaming/iCloud. With 98%(hahahaha yeah right!!) coverage with Telstra – Theres still that chance you’ll be without coverage. Then what will the iPod Touch users do when not within home or some form of WiFi(maccas)??
I can only assume that the iCloud services will allow you to upload and download your music collection either via your own cd’s or through your iTunes account. And then utilise that to sync those songs to your phone through the cloud.
It really sounds like the only advantage to this cloud thus far is that you dont need to be next to or near you computer to sync your iDevice.
Jason
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 1:23 PMon the contrary, it is my hope that a system like this will force the telco’s to increase their data limits. if the consumer demands it (and they will if they have to stream everything) then eventually it will happen. I really hope this can push it a long a lot quicker.
Chris
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 1:21 PMis Internet fast enough to stream audio and video like that? Will we need to upload everything we have on our HDD first, which would take months…?