Apple to unveil iCloud Monday, June 6
engadget.com
engadget.com
The logical answer is that it's not a consumer service, but a developer-focused service. iCloud will no doubt be the platform for the Lala-derived service unveiled in September, but the platform is the big deal here: Think Amazon Web Services, but built specifically for integrating with iOS and MacOS, complete with a new Core Data Cloud API that makes adding sync to any app barely more challenging than writing for Core Data in the first place. And the basic tier (more than enough unless you're a top-100 app) is included in the $99/year membership.
That would be a game-changer.
My guess would be that this is an integrated component for iOS/OS X (more then just iTunes) which seems to be the main focus of this show's releases.
Also sorry for being a fanboy, glad to know Steve will be giving the Keynote.
They want to make sure that everyone knows that this event will be about software and nothing else.
Wether they do it to set expectations or not, this is the first time they give a list of what they will announce.
EDIT: spelling.
Their invitations have become less cryptic and outright explicit (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apple-hints-at-ipa...), probably precisely because disappointment about a lack of flashy announcements was fast becoming a big deal after Apple events.
There will always be stupid speculation – also before next Monday – and there will always be people complaining – also after next Monday – Apple just doesn’t want that to turn into the main thing.
That press release is in context not much more explicit than above invitation to the iPad event. It’s just a different tool.
I would not go to the extent of blatantly calling out an iPhone 4S to be announced but the following should add up to something:
1) Apple recommending journalists to personally come for the event 2) Already announcing what was widely believed by many to be the highlight of the show. Point to note is Apple had never before this announced the name. So to do it in a non grandeur way via a PR article is so not Apple.
Something is cooking. Can't really smell what it is though.
Glad to hear Steve will be presenting. It would have been kinda fun if they set the expectation that he wouldn't be there and made us sit through an hour of Phil Schiller, just for Steve to run out on the end to have a one more thing moment.
(Ticker tape and lasers are optional.)
That, and they've probably struck a lucrative deal.
One of the theories about why MS dumped so much money in to the XBox over the years was that it was really a trojan horse that was trying to be the hub of your media centre. The problem with the XBox is that it stays switched off when you're watching broadcast TV, which is still what most people do in their living rooms.
Whoever can get in between you and "broadcast" (or VOD) TV content and control that experience has just taken control of a multi billion dollar market.
Soon enough when you switch on your TV you'll be presented with a customised line up of viewing across different channels/sources, lists of what your friends and favorite celebs(/brands/whatever) are watching, suggestions of new shows you might like, enhanced experiences around live content (polls on news topics on CNN, click to buy the track that's playing on Glee, etc), and, most importantly, targeted commercials.
I'm utterly convinced it's inevitable.
All I want is Android style widgets (ie, Google Voice SMS app or RSS feed reader) overlay or with TV inset (like your cable/dish box showing menu + current stream).
Agreed, this would be incredibly disruptive.
I'm confident that notifications are going to be a part of it, but when they plan on dedicating the whole keynote to software releases, one wonders how they can sell it.
iCloud, iOS 5 - maybe some great stuff for developers such as Apple-hosted databases. Personally, I am crossing my fingers for an iBooks overhaul, but that's probably too optimistic.
Buy a book on the App Store and you're confined to ONLY iOS devices.
The book selection is also very meagre[3] (at least in this country), but more important, some of the available free books are typeset from hell. It's just a copy-paste of Project Gutenberg and similar endeavours, which are not formatted for iBooks at all. This does not inspire me to buy any iBooks, and it leaves me to wonder how the (free) book user experience can be so bad, when Apple make such an effort of vetting apps from trivial ailments.
Another, perhaps minor, thing is that I can't highlight across pages, which drives me absolutely bonkers.
If I were an author (or worked for one) and wanted to release a book on iOS, would I distribute it via iBooks or create a native app for it like Al Gore did? I honestly don't know, and I have a feeling that my hesitation has more to do with the shortcomings of iBooks than the allure of making a standalone app.
[1]: https://kindle.amazon.com/profile/Craig-Mod/52461
[2]: I'm sure it would be in Steve Jobs's best interest to make us forget Ping as soon as possible. Better to replace something vapid with something slightly high-brow.
[3]: It doesn't even have A Song of Ice and Fire!
Apple wants everyone talking about the same thing on show day, and leaking the small stuff is the way to do it.
I can imagine a lot of creative/useful 'Lock Screen Apps' being released if Apple would just release an API to access it.
Like what pg said about giving an inch to a hacker and they'll take you a mile.
I said, "Smart money ...", which implies speculation. The other person responded "Sources?". If I had sources it wouldn't be "smart money" (or I guess you could argue that it would be "really smart money"). Since my statement was purely speculative, I referenced a speculative source -- directly back to the echo chamber -- myself.
1) The only music available via the cloud are songs you've purchased. You have to sign in to get access to the music and only songs purchased with the account are available. Possible, but I doubt anyone would really use it if this was the case. 2) You are able to upload any music that you haven't purchased and add it to your cloud account. I think this is most likely but doesn't really differentiate it from current competitors. 3) Any music that you have in your itunes is instantly available online. I highly doubt this will be the case.
Anyone else have any thoughts on how it would work? Would you use it if you can't get pirated music on the cloud?
I'd make great use of it if I could upload my own files, and probably not otherwise.
Also I'd just like to toss in it wouldn't shock me if this were "US Only" at least initially.
[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/26/some-icloud-music-servic...
If that's not the scenario, than what is? You can only stream songs newly purchased over iTunes and only iTunes?
I think wmf might be onto it. It could be a subscription thing. But as someone highly rated noted above, this whole iCloud thing might just be the developer's platform at this point in time (it is WWDC, after all), and the music stuff comes later in the fall with the iPod cycle.
This is how I see it too. Customers with smaller collections (i.e. the majority) will have higher margins, and effectively subsidise those with larger (and therefore with larger royalty payouts) collections.
Works similarly to the way ISP's do: users who use say, 20GB of a 60GB cap are more profitable than a user who uses 145GB of a 150GB. Bandwidth costs are small, but on a large scale, it works.
1) only works with music purchased from iTunes. Not much use
2) works with all music. how does Apple verify that you actually own the music (and if they've got a licensing deal with the record labels they'll need to keep them happy)
The way to solve both problems is to offer a subscription service like Microsoft's Zune Pass. Pay a monthly fee and stream any music you like.
Amazon, archive and etree are very marginal groups, but I can't imagine they'd lock out everyone's old CD purchases.
The key: Lala’s song-identification-and-upload technologies (also discontinued as of today) allowed users to mirror their local music -- including an iTunes library -- onto cloud-based Lala accounts. -- http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-musi...
The previous tentative (.Mac, and its reincarnation in MobileMe) was "not conclusive" (slow, lacking features and not worth anywhere near the asking price), and Apple has now been providing a terrible "cloud" service for 9 years (since the rebranding of iTools to .Mac).
I don't know what others think of it, but as far as I'm concerned this may make or break the next phone I go with (between iOS, WebOS and Android)
Dropbox and Flickr are both pretty good...
Dropbox and Flickr? Those aren't good examples of cloud services to me because I think the biggest benefit of the cloud is that you can stop using a service but still have access to your data.
I'm working on that :) - http://openphoto.me
The Dropbox app creates a local copy of your data that will sync with your data in the cloud. The result of this is that you always have a local copy of your data. If you stop using Dropbox all the data remains where it is on your computer.
What I'm saying though, is that the cloud storage (not local) can be decoupled from the service. Such that if I decide I don't want to use Dropbox anymore, I still have a access copy of my files in the cloud - just not via the Dropbox software.
Imagine if Dropbox sync'ed your local files with your personal Amazon S3 bucket. That's what I'm hinting at.
As an example, if you asked an outsider to the tech world which brand makes the EVO, Nexus S, Veer, or iPhone, the only one they'd likely get right is the iPhone. This is a bit of a loaded example because the iPhone is super popular, but then ask a random consumer who makes the follow made up products, the MOVE, Slider, Jump, iThing and they know that the i prefix means Apple and likely wouldn't have a clue who makes the other things.
So anyway, it's a tad annoying, but it is also a dead simple, one-letter way of identifying the source manufacturer. It's quicker and shorter to write "iCloud" than it is "Amazon Cloud Drive" or "Google Music" and identify the source with most consumers. In this way, it's subtly brilliant.
(it's usually uploaded a few hours after the presentation)
They send out links to Apple Keynote videos when they are available.
I did find apples event site though: http://www.apple.com/apple-events/
iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/apple-keynotes/id27583466...
Feed link: http://www.apple.com/podcasts/apple_keynotes/apple_keynotes....
The BBC doesn't mention Apple specifically, but does have an article asking: Is cloud computing ready for primetime?
iCloud might be a step away from that.
We don't know yet what the cloud service is, but Apple has been building out some impressive amounts of data center resources, so it's likely to be an interesting service, whatever it is.
If it were that, would not it have been wise to mention the word music somewhere in that. Just saying that what you state does not seem to fit in as the motive here.
Thus, I'm guessing all the "big surprises" have to do with iOS 5. Also, given that WWDC is a dev conference, I expect that some of the coolest announcements will be dev related and won't be talked about much in the press.