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Comment by mootymoots | Hacker News Reader

Any type of wireless syncing is good for me, whether that's with the cloud, or with a Mac/PC on my wireless network.

USB syncing is sooo 20th Century

It'd better be an N Wifi if I'm going to sync 16GB of music to a new device, and even that's going to take quite a while. Of course, USB 2.0 isn't really up to the task either - but at least it's faster by a significant factor.

sure, the initial sync, like an initial time machine backup, would take an age to sync wirelessly...

I'm thinking post that though, walking into my network and syncing latest updates, even without my prompting

Agreed, I can't think of any good reason not to allow sync over wifi (or over 3g for that matter, if I'm on a flatrate plan).

Because the 3G infrastructure is overloaded as it is without multi-gig downloads?

Downloading the initial sync over 3g isn't something I'd do if I could avoid it, but incremental syncs would be just fine. Even adding an album or two wouldn't take -that- long, and if the network can't handle a few downloads now and then it's just plain broken. Besides, everyone over here in Sweden is selling mobile broadband like there's no tomorrow, so their networks should be up to it.

Ah how I wish the US had Sweden's net/mobile infrastructure.

Carriers here like to complain that people are downloading too much rather than just upgrading the infrastructure to deal with it. I shudder to think what would happen if people started downloading over the air on a serious scale, it's already pretty bad with normal web surfing.

That is a problem (certainly in London anyway)... I say initial sync over wired, continuous over wireless.

I had some thoughts on it recently: http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2010/04/imagine-a-wireless-sync-w...

For example, when you buy an AppleTV, iTunes on the same network will detect that there is a new AppleTV that hasn't been synced. Then you synchronize a 5-digit code between them and off it goes syncing over the network.

I would love to see iPhones and iPads show up in the same way and not require a sync immediately. This would be right on track with the life-without-wires they were pushing with the MacBook Air.

Apple TV is a good point...Don't know why all other Apple devices don't follow the same process.

I suspect it comes back to Job's strategy for the Mac back in 2001 (I think it was 2001, not sure). He talked about how computers had gone through several generations, and that we were moving into an era where the PC/Mac was the "digital hub" that kept all your devices in sync and playing nicely with each other. Google would probably argue that that's the responsibility of their servers.

With the iPhone and iPad doing as well as they are, I imagine conversations are being had at Apple about what the future of the Mac really is. Even if it has much of a future at all.

I guess it'll turn out to be iTunes.com, your Mac will stop being the hub, and it'll move to the cloud.

Apple are building a new data centre which apparently will be built for the cloud, my guess it's going to be the backbone of iTunes.com and their other online services. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/apple-cloud/

If you have a jailbroken iphone/itouch and a Mac try this out: http://www.getwifisync.com/

I installed it a couple of days ago and it works like a charm. I also setup 'Activator' so I can launch the wifisync app by pressing the lock button for about a second and it will automatically sync to my Mac.

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