ICloud: The Mother of All Halos | Hacker News Reader

ICloud: The Mother of All Halos

allthingsd.com

15 pointsjsherry29 comments

It would seem that this guy has never actually used more than one Android device.

Cause Android has done this from the very beginning, syncing data and apps through your Google account. Which is free.

Indeed it has been awesome. When I turned on the Samsung galaxy 10.1 I got at I/O this year, it already knew my wpa key. That was just the latest in a series of small touches that have gone completely unnoticed by those living deep within the apple ecosystem.

As an iOS user, I understand that Android's always been cloud-centric, but I'm curious (and a bit skeptical) if this has really entailed everything that Apple just unveiled:

Does Android automatically sync photos (both with the cloud and the PC)?

Does stock Android do a full backup (including application data) to the cloud? When I synced my iPhone 4 to iTunes for the first time, I instantly got voice notes, text files and PDF's I've had since my first iPhone. I've always wondered if an Android user picking up a new phone could expect the equivalent.

Is the Google Docs experience (ie Google's answer to the "document syncing" problem) better on Android than it is on iOS devices? I've wanted to use Google Docs exclusively for years, but editing is practically unusable on an iPhone. I'm shocked at how slow they've moved to make documents mobile.

Photos : Multiple solutions exist to do n-way photo and video sync although it is highly debatable how useful anything other than Mobile to Cloud and Cloud to Mobile is which Android does out of box.

Picasa photos and videos automatically appear in gallery and there is no limit to the number of photos.

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/backup.html - Backup can include anything including app data and it doesn't have to go to Google's cloud - the backup client component is designed to be customizable to send your backup data wherever you please. Best part of all!

Google Docs - Again multiple solutions exist. Documents to Go full edition offers seamless Google Docs support with decent editing functions. There exist Word/Excel add-ins that save to Google Docs from desktop.

Quote - " Who wants to go back to emailing documents to yourself, or firing up Dropbox to move media from one device to another, when iCloud will–if it works properly–obviate the need for both by enabling change-on-one-device, update-to-all computing that’s ostensibly effortless and invisible?"

" Add to that a price point of free and a software-driven ecosystem like the one Apple’s developed and, well, that’s an offer not easily refused. Not easily duplicated, either–particularly for more fragmented platforms like Android"

Hmm. Never used Android before or just paying it back Mr. Writer? Apple patted him in the back and John is just doing his best in response. WSJ is Apple's guerilla marketing arm.

It just seems to me that companies like SugarSync (and maybe Dropbox - I don't use it) have been doing this for years. I'm confident that Apple will improve some of the media streaming experience, but their real genius is in marketing these products b/c this has existed for some time.

iCloud is not (just) a hard disk in the cloud (as Steve Jobs said during the keynote). More defining is the API that makes it seamless for applications (and consequently users) to sync data to the cloud.

In that sense, it's not just another Dropbox. In a year, the average iOS app will automatically sync data across devices using iCloud, while there is no simple knob you can switch to store it in Dropbox instead.

I will have to see the full implementation of iCloud to understand the difference. Again, can't speak for Dropbox even though they're the market leader. But SugarSync has this syncing functionality already and has had it for at least 2 years.

You can sync to the cloud and access files from the cloud OR you can actually choose files/folders to sync across hardware. For example, if I say that I want to sync my music folder across my Macbook Air and my Thinkpad, any time I make an update on one machine, it flows through to the other machine's hard drive. Similar with documents. If I choose to sync a Word document across machines and I edit it and save on one machine, in seconds it updates on the other machine should I open it there. It's all seamless - happens in the background without me having to push it from machine to machine.

Re: the API point, SugarSync has had one since 2010: http://www.sugarsync.com/developer. Haven't developed with it at all nor have I used an app that uses it, so can't speak for its flexibility.

P.s. I swear I'm not a SugarSync employee - just a very satisfied user since 2008 ;-)

You can sync to the cloud and access files from the cloud OR you can actually choose files/folders to sync across hardware.

There is a huge usability difference between putting a file in some folder, and having it synced, and automatically syncing all relevant data in an application.

This is easy to underestimate for us technical people, but it is very difficult to explain my mother that she has to put files in, say, Dropbox on her iPod Touch to be able to access it on her iPad. Do something on the iPod Touch, have it available nearly instantly on the iPad in the same application, she understands.

Good point indeed. The functionality is already there, but Apple will surely simplify things and cause widespread adoption.

Dropbox has an API to allow external programs to use the service. There are no differences or very minor differences between iCloud and Dropbox functionality-wise.

The fact that Apple is behind iCloud and they're now going to integrate all of _their_ applications and the OS with it is going to make the difference. Apple certainly didn't invent anything revolutionary here, however it's revolutionary that the maker of a widely used desktop OS is doing it.

As Steve Jobs talked about during the keynote, the idea is to mostly remove the paradigm of files and folders from people's minds. I imagine the iCloud APIs will allow you to hook into iCloud as easily as you would local storage. Which means developer wouldn't need to learn much more to enable it. Plus, it will be single sign-on and you know that every one of your users has it. (no need to explain what Dropbox or cloud storage is)

And of course, for users, it'd be much easier because you don't have to learn what Dropbox is, what syncing is, etc. You open an app you know well and your documents are there. Period. No worries about what device you're actually using, or what file you want to sync or not.

The keyword really is "seamless", for users mostly but for developers too.

How would you know your users have it? Isn't it opt-in?

My understanding is that it's tied to your Apple ID and the whole thing is free (up to certain limits). So if a user has your app, they have an Apple ID and they have some iCloud storage.

However, it is likely that, as a user, you have to allow an app to use it or not.

What I meant, basically, is that you can prompt the user to authorize iCloud, but the user will not have to be taught what it is or to create an account for it. They should have it.

> In a year, the average iOS app will automatically sync data across devices using iCloud, while there is no simple knob you can switch to store it in Dropbox instead.

Which is, frankly, scary: imho, you should be able to easily switch your "sync provider" seamlessly. (For healthy competition, for privacy rights)

I fully agree, but it easy to fall for comfort, and lose flexibility.

It's pretty much the same with iTunes: I can ditch OS X and switch back to Linux. However, I will not be able to play music and movies directly from my media player to the Apple TV2 without much effort. Also, synchronizing music from Banshee or Rhythmbox to my phone is not possible (until libgpod supports iPhone 4).

iTunes/iCloud (/Google Apps/Facebook) will be the next Microsoft Office. You will be locked into a platform because your data lives there. It's clever.

It's not that others haven't done it before. It's that Apple hasn't done it until now.

That is the big thing. Not the technology in itself.

It's true; iCloud has the potential to be a massive lock-in mechanism, ensuring that people will continue to buy Apple devices for years on end because buying anything else will mean manually moving your data out of iCloud - which probably won't be easy for the average user.

To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your data. Copying from a iOS device is problematic, but that is true today.

That would work for some stuff, but I'm not sure what would happen to the data stored by third-party apps. iTunes has a section to retrieve documents that some apps create, as long as the apps themselves are built to take advantage of that.

However, if an app doesn't provide either that or some kind of export, I'm not sure if you'd get easy access to that data. And actually that might create an incentive for some apps not to add the functionality. It makes sense for Office-type apps to provide a PDF, or Office-compatible format, but I could imagine very specific apps that can lock you in since you don't get to (easily) reverse-engineer and convert their data because you don't get as easy of an access as you get on a desktop.

> To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your data.

Which is exactly what a lot of users will be unable to do. They'll rather avoid the hassle by buying a new Apple device yet again.

I'm not pointing my finger at Apple per se. If they provide a reasonably user-friendly way of moving your data then it's hard to blame them. But the fact is that most people will want to avoid the hassle, which means the iCloud becomes a lock-in mechanism.

What data, specifically? The only thing that comes to mind is music, but that lock-in already exists with iTunes.

Photos, documents, contacts, email, music - just about everything that "normal" users have on their computers.

Why would my email and contacts be locked into iCloud? Don't the majority of users already have an email address (With Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail, in that order) that is already "cloud enabled". Why incentive is there to switch to a .me email address, which has less reach?

> Why would my email and contacts be locked into iCloud?

Don't ask me, ask Apple - they're the ones who're doing it :) Contacts was one of the things that Apple mentioned would be stored in iCloud at their talk a couple of ago. I'm not sure about email.

One of the reasons your contacts would be stored in iCloud is so that they can work with Apple's (proprietary) new chat/message system; iMessages.

Does anybody else think that the EU is going to jump on Apple eventually the same way they jumped on Microsoft and browsers and make Apple provide a way for users to select which storage provider they want to use?

They might try-but why would Apple let them? They can just take their ball and go home. I couldn't find any hard numbers but a few articles I found were claiming that European sales make up less than 11% of total Apple sales.

That makes sense in a world where losing billions of dollars of revenue is preferable to adding an API.

The EU has a population of over 500 million. Apple's presence in Europe involves much more than selling computers and gadgets.

If they actually were to retreat because of some squabble with the EU Commission, they'd also be abandoning dozens of telecom operators with whom they have iPhone deals, tens of thousands of developers who make things for the iOS and Mac platform, and millions of consumers who buy digital content from iTunes... Leaving all that on the table in this extremely competitive market would be nothing short of madness.

Or legistlate to allow it so that 3rd party hardware/software products can connect to the Cloud?

I certainly hope so.

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