iCloud

Feelgood

I saw iCloud in action today and I have to say its pretty impressive. Note if you are registered as an Apple developer you can try it out.

The highlight for me is photo stream, basically you take a photo on your iphone and it syncs it to all you other apple devices. I am a bit weary though of photo stream sync over 3G as I imagine it could eat through your data allowance pretty quick.

It also syncs any apps, books or music bought on itunes across all your devices, but even better it backs up your IOS to the cloud!. Looks like its going to be another good year for Apple!.

http://www.apple.com/icloud/

Mr. Presentable

So the data is not on your devices? Or it is on all of them?

Saruman

Looks like it syncs up. It would not be possible to have all the data on an ipod or ipad only online when it is prohibitively expensive to get online especially when roaming.

Feelgood

Mr. Presentable wrote: »

So the data is not on your devices? Or it is on all of them?

It depends on the data!. If you buy an app, book or song from itunes it will download locally to each device.
EDIT: Your purchase history stays in the cloud, so all your Apps store purchases will download to each of your devices automagically.

If you use photo stream the last 1000 photos can be streamed from the cloud. If connected to Wifi you have te option to download them locally to your device.

Mr. Presentable

So Apple have access to, and control of, all your stuff all the time? What if there's a hash plant in the background of one of your photos? Or you're Gary Glitter.....

Feelgood

Mr. Presentable wrote: »

So Apple have access to, and control of, all your stuff all the time? What if there's a hash plant in the background of one of your photos? Or you're Gary Glitter.....

Well it depends how you look at it, if you use any cloud services at all including Dropbox, Skydrive from Microsoft that also means that they also have access to your stuff all of the time!.

Depends on how much of a conspiracy theorist you are I suppose...

Sad Professor

Steve Jobs will be personally browsing through all your photos and documents and censoring anything he doesn't approve of (nudity, drug use, Microsoft products), in addition to forwarding any legally questionable material to the authorities. It's in the T&Cs. I'm sticking with Google who truly care about my private data.

Mr. Presentable

Don't get me started with Google

But I suppose what I'm getting at is privacy and ownership. Do you relinquish copyright when your "mist" is added to the cloud?

Stainless_Steel

Does anyone know what application layer protocol is used for icloud syncing?

nowayout1

i have a question, i understand icloud how you can download on all your devices, eg iphone, ipad and mbp.

but if you have a iphone mbp and an imac would your imac as well as your mbp get that picture or song or contact on it?

does anyone know when it'll officially launch here or will it be like the tv shows on itunes and ibooks store?

Sad Professor

nowayout1 wrote: »

but if you have a iphone mbp and an imac would your imac as well as your mbp get that picture or song or contact on it?

Yes, all your devices/computers will get it.

does anyone know when it'll officially launch here or will it be like the tv shows on itunes and ibooks store?

iCloud will be available here alongside the release of iOS 5, and syncing of documents, contacts, apps and your personal files will work. However, for iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match we will have to wait until deals are made with European content providers. We don't know when. Next year at the earliest, possibly a lot longer.

silvine

Anyone else think Dropbox is quite good at this?

conor.hogan.2

yes, i will be sticking with dropbox as it works everywhere whereas iCloud will not likely work on Android.

snollup

+1 for dropbox. don't see the point in signing up for yet another cloud platform.

Sad Professor

Some of the advantages of iCloud:

* Free @me email address
* Free 5GB of storage
* Backup and sync your photos using PhotoStream (not counted in the 5GB)
* Sync, backup and restore all your iOS devices via iCloud (no need to connect to your Mac/PC anymore)
* Sync calendars and contacts
* And (eventually) iTunes in the Cloud - syncs iTunes purchases (not counted in 5GB)
* And (eventually) iTunes Match - sync, backup your entire iTunes library with upgrades to the iTunes version for a yearly fee which is FAR less than what it would cost to buy the same amount storage from DropBox

Did I miss anything? I love DropBox and actually think Apple should have bought them, but for an iOS user, the benefits of iCloud are huge. I suspect I will still have use for DropBox for syncing regular documents, but iCloud is going to be invaluable.

conor.hogan.2

That's a very nice list. will people be able to access and use those on am android phone?

edit, ah yes that's very true sure dropbox isn't the best when you start paying for it compared to other offerings and could never compare to apple.


Also if microsoft get the finger out and integrate skydrive into other products it would be an interesting offering.

Sad Professor

You'll probably be able to use the email and any web services, but things like PhotoStream, syncing and backup are obviously integrated into iOS 5.

conor.hogan.2

Wouldn't mind signing up for email and the storage then.

Sad Professor

I'm not sure how the storage will work and whether there will be an iDisk-type feature that can be used on a Mac. The Apple site isn't really clear. If it only syncs between iOS devices then it certainly won't be replacing DropBox for anyone.

snollup

Sad Professor wrote: »

Some of the advantages of iCloud:

* Free @me email address
* Free 5GB of storage
* Backup and sync your photos using PhotoStream (not counted in the 5GB)
* Sync, backup and restore all your iOS devices via iCloud (no need to connect to your Mac/PC anymore)
* Sync calendars and contacts
* And (eventually) iTunes in the Cloud - syncs iTunes purchases (not counted in 5GB)
* And (eventually) iTunes Match - sync, backup your entire iTunes library with upgrades to the iTunes version for a yearly fee which is FAR less than what it would cost to buy the same amount storage from DropBox

Did I miss anything? I love DropBox and actually think Apple should have bought them, but for an iOS user, the benefits of iCloud are huge. I suspect I will still have use for DropBox for syncing regular documents, but iCloud is going to be invaluable.

ISP's are going to love this, my iTunes library is currently about 75gb :eek:

conor.hogan.2

Yes. Imagine using it even lightly over 3g..... Shudders

Yes you don't have to use it etc, and can keep files locally aswel butt still

Sad Professor

snollup wrote: »

ISP's are going to love this, my iTunes library is currently about 75gb :eek:

You won't have to upload your whole library though. Only songs that aren't in the iTunes Store will be uploaded. Everything else will be matched with the iTunes version.

fasty

Luckily, using iCloud doesn't uninstall Dropbox from your Mac

I don't get the comparison anyway, the coolest aspect of iCloud is still the bookmark/contact/calendar syncing across Apple devices, the same as it is now on MobileMe.

conor.hogan.2

Well for me, I dont have an apple device besides a mac so hence my lack of enthusiasm.
As for the comparison, they are the most widely used backup for most consumers and were very widely used by smartphone users.

If this is a storage option that can be accessed on android and other devices, hell yeah I will be uisng both - over 10.8gb is better than 5.8 for sure.

fasty

Yes, I think I saw you say you had an Android phone...

My point was, Dropbox doesn't sync contacts/bookmarks/calendars across all iDevices seamlessly on computers and at all on mobile devices.

conor.hogan.2

smh, it doesnt make icecream either. You could set it up to sync anything, if you wanted. But not seamlessly no…..