iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows
cringely.com
cringely.com
iCloud's real purpose is to sell more Apple hardware, not kill Windows. Hurting Windows sales would simply be a side effect.
It's a smart move to put iPads and iPhones on equal footing as the Mac in that regard. If your docs, pictures, apps, and music are all on iCloud, your computers become disposable digital devices. Want a new one? Buy it, all your files are already there waiting for you.
The disposable digital device is a huge idea. Google, Apple, Amazon, and HP all benefit hugely from disposable devices because they all profit hugely from the mass distribution and churn of them. Mobile has a faster consumer turnover than PC's.
For example, my parents have had the same desktop computer running Windows XP since um, 2004 or so I think. Before that they bought a computer in 1995. Most people get a new phone every 1-2 years.
So, upgrade once every 5-10 years or every 2? Which do you think makes Apple more money?
If all your files magically move between devices, and the devices keep getting cheaper, people will naturally upgrade faster. This hurts the Windows monopoly for sure, but the point is not to kill Windows. The point is to increase their own lock-in and device sell rates.
Selling more devices increases profits. That's the point.
It is a win-win for Aplle and the consumer, which is a great place for a company to be.
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2813-do-you-want-to-sell-suga...
Not so sure about that.
This is what I think motivates Steve Jobs: His insane passion for consumer computer electronics. Juicy and illuminating supporting fact: Jobs's first job was at the HP factory in Palo Alto at age 12. <http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-steven-job...;
"I remember my first day, expressing my complete enthusiasm and bliss at being at Hewlett-Packard for the summer to my supervisor, a guy named Chris, telling him that my favorite thing in the whole world was electronics. I asked him what his favorite thing to do was and he looked at me and said, "To fuck!" [Laughs] I learned a lot that summer."
Every day he works, he energizes that little kid inside him. Not a bad life.
At WWDC. I won't say anything specific, but I'm beginning to think that Apple's business model is/has been to take all the awesome stuff that people developed in research labs since the 60's, and they're implementing it when/where it makes sense.
Basically, Apple has been in the business of arbitrage of R&D awesomeness. (As opposed to the most common use of R&D as a corporate epeen.) Considering there's decades of unimplemented (or badly implemented) good ideas, this seems like a sustainable model.
If this is true, then that is also google's model, except they're doing it with server-side algorithms as opposed to UI implementations/hardware form factors.
You don't think google invented MapReduce, their translation algos, their vision algos, their concurrency models and so on? They get them out of research papers from years gone by. Then they implement them at real-world scale, and iterate them until they're suitably awesome, just like apple does with the ideas they resurrect from academia.
This is analogous to how every perceived leap forward in programming paradigms always seems to end up dating back to 1956.
It is rarely good for a startup to be on the absolute bleeding edge of an industry, but if you can catch the tipping point[0] (and execute well), you have pretty much guaranteed success.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316346624/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
There are a lot of examples of Apple's moneymindedness like margins on hardawre, upgrades cost, 30% of app cost etc. but the the most egregious is the 30% tithe on all in-app purchases and subscription content. The fact that they rejected Readability's app for the iPhone and iPad AFTER taking their FOSS code to implement the readability feature is Safari is one of the biggest examples of how Apple is squeezing the last bit of money. http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/
How altruistic is that?
You can find other references to that raise by using a search engine.
You mean you have no control over a factory that you're the primary(or only) customer of?
>How about HP, Cisco, Intel, Acer, Asus, Dell, Nokia, etc?
I was replying to your GP post that stated that Apple and Jobs weren't after profit margins only. So you mean Apple is as mindlessly profit driven(if not more) as all those other companies you just listed? Thanks for proving my point. http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/06/02/foxconn-pay-rai...
Oh, and sorry downvoters for insulting your religion with facts. I should have known better, I will toe in line so that I don't get banned due to bad karma. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-19/tech/apple.religion_1_app...
> So you mean Apple is as mindlessly profit driven(if not
> more) as all those other companies you just listed?
"In a survey published in 2010 by Oxfam Hong Kong, Foxconn ranked sixth for corporate social responsibility out of the 42 companies that then made up the Hang Seng index."
Being able to view photos taken with an iPhone or iPad streamed through Apple TV is a nice added feature for those not set up to do it through a desktop or laptop.
In an environment designed for easy transmission and sharing of data lock-in just doesn't seem to apply. It's nothing like having data tied up in a proprietary format that only expensive software can read. The only lock-in I see is things being addictively simple.
Do you expect that any non-Apple device will be able to use iCloud? Vendor Lock-in is what's important here, and it's definitely been made stronger by this move. Once all your data is in the cloud, do you want to go through all the effort of moving it to a different cloud (if you even can!) or do you want to cough up a few extra $100 to buy from Apple and make things easy.
Given that Apple is supporting Windows for Photo Stream and iTunes Match at least, I would say the answer is closer to yes than you are intimating here.
While they are in control of your data, you will be faced with a question every time you upgrade your hardware. Do you want to interact with your own documents and music using a clunky interface, or do you want to use an interface that makes you feel more in control and happier?
The above question is a little contrived, but I believe that it is fairly close to the truth, Apple has always been a company based on making you feel good.
Apple support Windows because there would be an uproar if Windows users bought iPods and iPhones and couldn't use them. They do the bare minimum they have to however.
So only apps remain, and you don't really expect Mac OS X or iOS apps to work on Windows.
As for the "three years" projection, I'm not sure what the article is saying. Our (mobile) data will be in the cloud within three years? Probably. That Apple will kill Microsoft in three years? Absolutely not. No way. Don't underestimate the power of inertia. Even if Apple manages to entirely kill Microsoft's consumer market share (unlikely) they can survive off enterprise customers just fine. I mean, what do you use on a Mac to compose documents? Word. Are there any others? (I don't have a Mac, so feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.)
I don't think PCs are going anywhere. People will always need to get serious work done, and larger systems will always be better at that than smaller systems of the same era, if only for the sheer amount of numbers they can crunch. Mobiles are great products with a tremendous amount of utility, but they're complements, not substitutes.
I think Apple laid out its position very clearly yesterday. The PC isn't going away it's just being demoted. It isn't t he center of your digital universe anymore. But that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Here's the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Dlq4B56CI
Yeah, but in the long run, he may be right. Has peak Windows occurred? It's not quite clear, but it may have, with the total PC business going at -1% yoy. And when Windows/Office sales start showing big year over year declines, Microsoft will be hurting very badly, if they haven't developed some other revenue source.
The sales rate has reduced due to many reasons unrelated to Apple, saturation is high, repalcement rate is low because they are fast enough for many years etc. etc.
Measuring installed base makes more sense than pure sales. So the PC business going at -1% yoy is not really a good metric. MS is still making money hand over fist, look at their financials.
No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice.
Given how seamless the iWork experience is becoming between iDevices (which will be including Macs), how much cheaper iWork is, and how much better the iWork user experience is (they don't have 20 years of feature-cruft littering the interface), there is absolutely no reason for a home Mac user to use Office and few reasons (usually an iron-fisted corporate IT group) for a corporate Mac user to use it.
Anything that requires style or aesthetics gets drafted in Google Docs and then imported into Pages or Keynote for finishing touches, both of which are lightyears ahead of Word or Powerpoint in that regard (at least for 2007/Win 2008/OSX MS Office releases).
And by the way, being "encrypted" on the cloud doesn't usually mean what most people seem to think it means. Example: http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/security/2295006...
And if you need to do something remotely complex, neither works. Pages is decent for the very baseline word processing; OpenOffice is good for very little of anything.
The overwhelming majority of people use Office because what you call "cruft" is what other people call "important".
I have no doubt at all that there is a small minority of people who absolutely cannot do without some feature of Word that no competitor offers. But that’s a minority, not a majority.
The reason why I’m using Word, why my parents use Word, why my friends use Word (despite not needing any feature it has over Pages or OpenOffice) is that everyone else is using it. Importing and exporting from Pages or OpenOffice to Word is just no fun at all but necessary if you live in a world where everyone uses Word. I don’t want to run that particular type of gauntlet.
(I so enjoy all the times when I don’t depend on anyone else and can create a presentation with Keynote. It’s a dream. But an impractical dream if you are working together with people who use PowerPoint.)
You might have a set of feature needs that Pages covers. I know that pretty much everyone in my company (that is, management and project people--engineers could get by with whatever, that's not a big deal) couldn't use Pages, and their needs are not extreme or out-there.
It's an incidence of the Pareto Principle, and dates back to 1906.
The gist is that even though most people only use 20% of the features, everyone's 20% is a different set of features. So by creating a 'lite' version of your software, you actually end up alienating a lot of your users.
This is not to discount that as a valid issue. Taking time to learn new software is time taken away from the real business of the company.
I think Apple could help itself by having a rather large "I used to use Word, how do I do XXX in Pages?" help section inside of Pages (and Numbers and Keynote, though Keynote probably needs it less).
Pages doesn't have all of the functions and if you can't live without a particular function, it is obviously not a good replacement. However, for the vast majority of users, it has all the functionality that they will ever need and then some, without worrying about getting lost in menus of functionality that they will never care about.
What I can't imagine is a world where we are developing those web-based office suites on the same post-PC devices that they are deployed to.
Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it? Or autocad, or solidworks or arcGIS, or any number of other industrial applications.
For the PC to disappear, somebody is going to need to define a whole new category of much more powerful post-PC devices. I can envisage a superpowered tablet with a bluetooth keyboard that wirelessly links to any nearby display, but that doesn't sound very post-PC to me. And it doesn't answer the question of how to develop UIs for tasks of irreducible complexity without violating iOS's mandatory UX simplicity.
No one needs to supplant the workstation form-factor. What we're in the process of is realizing that there are tons of other opportunities in mobile form factors. Try to think of all the workplace activities that involve taking down data on pieces of paper and taking them over to a computer where they get entered. Try to think of all the times when people read off information from a specialized instrument and enter it into a computer. All of these are opportunities for mobile computing.
Lots of people do seem to think that workstations will be supplanted though. So much hype about the "death of the PC," the "post-PC era," although I accept that "post" doesnt necessarily imply a world where that thing is totally gone.
I'm an Ubuntu user and never used Ubuntu One.
> I don't see any indication that I'll be developing any
> software on a mobile device any time soon
The music thing is nice too, but it's either a paid solution or an incomplete one. Apple once released a stat that only 10% of the music on iPods comes from iTunes (most of the rest is either pirated or ripped CDs).
I'm not saying any of this is bad; time machine is a lot easier to use for a non-techie than rsync is, just saying that taking an existing technology, putting a lowercase i in front of it, and selling it as a game-changer has been Apple's modus operandi for quite some time now.
Time Machine is a lot more than branded rsync. It's usable branded rsync. And the usability is what makes it a "game-changer" in the consumer market where rsync and its algorithmic innovation isn't.
In many ways, it's the same thing that canonical is doing with ubuntu, except they have sweet sweet luxury hardware money backing them up compared to canonical's comparatively meagre support contract money, or whatever else it is that they do for cash.
Oh and let us not forget: isn't it a key part of the point of OSS is that it's OK, nay even encouraged for people to "steal" the ideas? I thought the concept of stealing an idea, especially a software idea, was supposed to be meaningless? Should the Australian National University have patented rsync back in '96?
Honestly, if I developed rsync, the fact that Apple was using it to power Time Machine would be quite an acknowledgement to me.
Being able to tell people about your achievements is a lot better than having everyone pre-aware of them anyway IMO.
(Also it should be pointed out that time machine doesn't actually use rsync at all, or anything like it. It uses a totally different and much simpler system, seemingly built on their own FSEvents API and a load of hardlinks.)
2011-06-12 -> 2011-06-13
For small amounts of files I agree with you that the hard linked directories would make a trivial difference. Keep in mind that by default Time Machine backs up /usr, /Applications and /System along with your user data which is quite a lot of files in the end.
That's all just creating the new backup's directory tree. The new data copying itself is fast because Time Machine uses the FSEvents API (which is like inotify but more suitable for backing up) so that it knows exactly what it has to back up beforehand (no scanning). If your computer crashes or you switch disks or otherwise screw up your FSEvents DB then it does have to scan the whole disk looking for changes and that can take hours.
So technically it is fast because it uses FSEvents and also because it can hard link directories. If either of those things are missing then the process would be significantly slower.
You are correct, for all definitions of "decentralized" that are "rigidly centralized, almost appearing decentralized because centralization is so far outside your control"
That's why I like the Apple vision - it leaves my data with me. It doesn't lock it up in a cloud somewhere.
In short: nothing to see here, please move along.
Facebook has recognised that it isn't the data per-se that is so valuable, but the connections and relationships that are between that data and others.. ie the way that your data is able to interact with other people's data. The way to lock people in is when a person's data alone is insufficient for them.
A music collection is just a set of licenses for songs. If people have only licensed the songs on a particular service or device they might find it painful to leave but if that pain is less than the cost of maintaining the service then they will leave. But a music community built around song collections would be impossible to leave, unless everyone did at once, or the person was willing to leave the community itself (much harder to replace than songs).
Facebook & co are really the prize here - whichever OS company can integrate the most deeply with existing social networks is going to come out on top. If either one of them can let go of the dream of having their own social network, they'll be able to move faster and get the edge.
I suspect that Google are more attached to that dream than Apple. However, they're arguably more capable of pulling it off.
Doesn't my android phone already do this?
I'm not sure what else the author wants Android and Chrome to sync. Application data? That's up to the authors of the application, just the same as it is with iCloud.
App Foo on my Mac has some data, that it can encrypt into the iCloud, and App Foo on my iPhone get access that data. iCloud is just a storage, but I hope Apps can actually encrypt the data before they load it into the cloud. Now that would be something I would look forward too. Cloud computing is fine, but I want it to be the App developers choice to encrypt the hell out of my data so that iCloud has no idea what I actually own.
Google has cloud storage for all sorts of stuff, but they have access to it.
iCloud Storage APIs enable your apps to store documents and key value data in iCloud. iCloud will wirelessly push documents to a user's device automatically and update the documents when changed on any device — automatically.
iCloud allows an app developer to treat the cloud as a natural extension of the iOS device. In-cloud storage is almost as easy to use as saving data locally, and you get push synchronization for free.
This is similar to Dropbox, but baked right into the system APIs. I don't think there is anything like this in Android. You of course can hack something using Google Storage API or Amazon S3, but they are very different beasts from iCloud: while iCloud associate the storage with a user, Google and Amazon associate it with an app. That difference has a huge implication. iCloud makes it trivially easy to synchronize data for one app across devices of the same user. To achieve the same thing with Google and Amazon's offerings, you would have to provide your own code to identify user, isolate data of different users in the cloud, and bring in your own synchronization/push magic. On the other hand, if you want to mine across data of all users - answering questions like the most-bookmarked pages - then you might feel iCloud's extra layer of abstraction getting into your way.
Once this catches on, any mistake won't be a crippling one or a business-critical error, just a little frustrating. Gradually promote the other cloud offerings afterward, even if they have been there the whole time. Tied in with Lion's auto-versioning options, this just means everything naturally goes to the cloud, and no one will ever think of it again.
As stated, this isn't to kill Windows, this is to kill the pain of buying more devices. This is the first step to build that confidence and show it off in something people will have fun with.
Now, it's just calendars and contacts, but as documents, "App state", etc. moves into iCloud, people will feel necessary to update to the latest device more often to be able to use iCloud in its fullest.
Every year you do not upgrade your device, you will miss out on more and more improvements, until your device becomes unsupported (the iPhone 3G was obsoleted well within 2.5 years).
iCloud and comparable offerings will make digital life easier for many people. But it will also be a lot harder to get out of the vendor grip. People will dislike these companies as much as they disliked Microsoft, but will be equally tied to their products.
If the phone no longer meets her needs at that time, she can sell it to help fund a new one (or perhaps you will have yet another leftover from another upgrade of yours). Even an old iPhone can still be used as an iPod, to play games on, and for some WiFi net activities. Old Apple phones have better resale value than any others I've seen.
It sounds like you're complaining about problems that are more hypothetical than real. If you really think that many users are being placed in a bad position, think of it as an opportunity to rescue them with some kind of great app / service that you create. Also, Steve said something yesterday about some open iCloud APIs.
Every new thing is supposed to be a 'killer' of something else. Whether that be "iPod killer", "iPhone killer", "Windows killer", or, $Deity forbid: "linux killer".
This is not to say that things don't change, just that the sensationalist nature of reporting is unhelpful.
I suggest a new benchmark: the techno-journalism killer. Each time some techno-journalist describes something as a killer they lose a point. If they are right within 1 year, they get 10 points. Within 2 years, 6 points. Within 3 years, 3 points, and within 4 years 1 point.
If the journalist accumulates enough negative points (-10 ??), they themselves get 'killed' (ie deprecated, made obsolescent, removed from the news streams and RSS feeds etc).
After all, if they're wrong that much, they don't deserve our attention.
The network server now just lives on a server outside your organization/home what ever. The network speed now becomes the biggest limitation, and there are valid concerns with security as well.
Hmm? Google already does most of this stuff on Android, though there are a few small features like sync of app data that are currently missing
Windows 8 not due until 2013
To the best of my knowledge, no date has been set for Windows 8
Jobs is going to sacrifice the Macintosh in order to kill Windows
No he's not - the Mac (particularly laptops) will continue to grow, as it has been over the past year. This is because, as always, there will be a percentage of the market that still needs a desktop-style computer for getting real work done. That percentage isn't going anywhere soon, though they may also buy an iPad / tablet style device.
You can call it post-PC all you want, but the reality is people still need desktops for getting some tasks done and that is likely to be true at least for a few more years.
iCloud is a defensive play. It's to prevent Facebook and Google from getting at Apple users' data. At the same time it's boosting Twitter's star. Apple's MO is to be in control of its own destiny, so I wouldn't be surprised if Dave Winer was right and Apple already has some investment in Twitter, considering how tightly integrated it is with iOS 5.
1. You can still do whatever you want with your files as they still live on your local machine. 2. You can sync with Windows machines (photos were mentioned as an example in the keynote) 3. You can turn off iCloud
I recently bought an Android phone, and I've found that Apple really hates co-operating with anything which isn't another Apple product. I could get a new iPhone, but I don't want to tie myself so I forever after have to buy mini macs, macbooks, iphones and ipads if I want to be able to get at my existing data.
Google is much better in this respect, I can get to my google data equally well from all phones and all OSes.
What about iCloud (which you can turn off if you want) that upsets you so?
Will I be able to write apps for Android which can access data stored in the iCloud? I will be very, very surprised if we can. Similar to how it is very difficult, verging on impossible, to sync my Android phone with iTunes.
Apple clearly do not want their systems to integrate nicely with others, except where they feel they really have to. The iTunes / Blackberry problems from a few years ago proved to me that Apple will do anything it takes to stop interoperability, except where they want it.
Windows is an OS. iOS is an OS. Mac OSX is an OS. The iCloud service is designed to allow you to shuffle from one to the other seamlessly but not to replace those machines altogether. Kinda like using dropbox.
Now, is the OS becoming less important in comparison to the services available? Absolutely. Not for everyone but for the average user it certainly is. Will iCloud suceed? Surely it will, but only for those who wish to be tied into Apple products (unless I am mistaken and you will be able to share iCloud uploads with Android or WP devices).
The mobile transition is a fallacy in my opinion. There is no transition; it is more a compliment to real computing solutions. Do you think large business are going to sacrifice control of their data to a "cloud" rather than their own datacenters and be held hostage to a recurring fee? Or how would you like your employees to be doing spreadsheets and documents on a tablet's virtual keyboard?
While I do believe many consumer needs can be met by mobile tech, the PC will continue to exist for a lot longer than three years simply because of the utility of conventional design. No matter how hard you try, three years from now Windows will still be alive and ingrained into the government and business world for at least three more years after that.
Yes. They already pay the recurring fee to their IT department.
Big companies use tons of outside services already. There is no substantive difference between that and moving more of their software and data to a standardized third-party datacenter (which is what the cloud is).
Step 2: Integrate API (with access to your data) and a MacCloud Store
Now, it doesn't matter if you purchase software using your iPhone/iPad, Mac or the cloud; Apple will get 30% of all purchases anyway. Brilliant !
We are entering the age of ubiquitous computing. Computers everywhere. Not just for every person or every pocket. But multiple computers for every person for every function that can be augmented.
Apple gets it. Google gets it. Microsoft merely looks like it understands because it is desperately copying everyone else. But really Microsoft is lost. So utterly lost now that we're no longer in the age of desktop computing.
If they had continued the kin-like ubiquity with the Windows 7 phone, and merged that ubiquity with Windows 7 itself, I think it would be a much stronger competitor than it is now; perhaps even pushing Apple and Google on the defensive.
Who knows why Microsoft bought Danger. "Phones are looking hot, better buy something." Then proceed to screw it up royally by rewriting everything from scratch on top of Windows CE wasting the entire investment.
Yeah, I don't think Kin is a good example of how Microsoft gets it.
Eh, this is already happening. You can use an Android phone entirely without needing to use a desktop machine. You install apps over the air, no desktop needed. You register the phone over the air, no desktop needed. Your contacts and stuff are synced over the air, no desktop required.
I don't agree with this: Google certainly makes it really easy to get data out of Google Docs, GMail, etc. Isn't it reasonable to also expect Apple to provide local backup facilities?
Interesting that devices are only provided by Microsoft and Apple. Somehow I don't see that as a very diffuse cloud. (And certainly not one that will kill Microsoft devices.)
Or is Google planning long term by buying up dark fiber to make sure its Doc and Apps are accessible when its competitors are not?
More like for the last 3 decades (the IBM PC came out in 1981).
Add to that, Windows Live's offerings such as Mesh, Hotmail (with Windows Live Mail client), SkyDrive and Office home and student edition are actually really good despite them not getting as much press coverage.
People only talk about stuff when they are directly marketed at, are hyped or are unhappy. If they are happy, it rarely gets a mention. There might just be a lot of happy Windows users ambling past the Apple Store without even looking (or understanding).
For development I'll take Ubuntu over messing around with macports, any day.
I only really use OSX for iTunes, as I don't want all the bloat that comes with it on my Windows installation.
Except for rarely booting my Windows 7 laptop, life is simpler using my Mac just with OS X and relying on Linux servers.
Having used both Windows and Mac OS X, it is funny the little things you miss from one or the other. For example, on Mac OS X, I really missed Foobar2000 (I simply detest iTunes) and Exact Audio Copy. On Windows, I lament that there doesn't seem to be any equivalent to Filemaker's Bento.
In the end, I feel that we need to stop acting like for Windows or Mac OS X to succeed, someone has to fail. There are enough users in this world for both of them (as well as Linux and BSD).
Regarding Bento, Visual Studio Lightswitch might just cut it when it goes RTM: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/lightswitch
As for consumer trends leading corporate trends, I guess that means that in five years we'll all be employed as {whatever}ville click-slaves on Facebook.
Anyway, a more technically accurate answer would've been "cider," but I am loathe to promote such an unsatisfactory compromise ;)
The only games on mac are the hyper popular games, like world of warcraft or The Sims. I should know, I have a macbook pro, I tried but had to finally windows.