Apple Introduces iCloud: Contact, Cal, Docs, Photos, and Music Syncing Free of Charge

[freiheit]

Internet speeds are still too slow for cloud storage

Apple has been working for 10 years to get rid of the file-storage system. It started with iOS, and has made its way to the Mac. iCloud entirely removes the concept of file-storage. Apps manage presentation of its own documents. Apps can store documents in iCloud, documents pushed automatically, with automatic updates on all devices when content is changed anywhere.

Doing away file-storage system from the Mac scares me. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of leaving personal information and incomplete data to iCloud from my future Mac system. I wanted to directly access to them from my Mac's HDD (and syncing with iPad or iPhone if I need it) instead of some wireless data-in-the-sky system. Potentially, any hacker can get into iCloud and steal your data.

Not just that, but even the fastest internet connection is horrendously slow compared to a SATA connected hard drive. I've used a so-called gigabit NAS device. At best I could push around 25MB/s on it. My internet connection is far slower as 10Mbps (around 1.2MB/s) downstream and a whopping 1Mbps (128KB/s) upstream. There's no way I want to do even a fraction of my work at those speeds when my SATA drive cruises along at over 60MB/s both reading and writing.

 

[strausd]

iCloud is not MobileMe, and MobileMe is not iCloud. You get what you paid for, "at the time of purchase." That is - Mail, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk, and Find My iPhone. iCloud does not include those services AT THIS TIME. And when released, it will only be an alternative to MobileMe until MobileMe expires. MobileMe users are not required to switch to iCloud!! Therefor, I am not paying for a service that is otherwise free.

If you want to get all technical about it, you're right, they aren't the same thing. Someone could make the argument that they are not the same because they are spelled differently too. But lets be real, iCloud the update to MobileMe.

MobileMe will not be free. MobileMe gives you 20GB of storage to use in whatever way you want, whether it be 10GB for Mail and 10GB for iDisk, or 3GB for Mail and 17GB for iDisk. With what we know about iCloud right now, that is not an option, thus you are paying for something that has more benefits (in terms of cloud storage at the moment). The 5GB just refers to mail, contacts, and calendars, nothing about normal file storage like iDisk.

Considering they did not mention iDisk at all, I believe there is a good chance they will get rid of the service. Sure, I could be wrong, and I am just making a guess, so who knows. But for those of you who use iDisk all the time, you may want to start looking into some alternatives. And if you are looking at Dropbox, you should take a look at this article to get more space for free.

As of right now, we just have to wait and see what happens.

 

[trixiesirisheye]

Uggh.

I just love the integration with iWork documents. The importing was really a pain.

Can't stand iWork. I drank the Apple Kool-Aid a long time ago, but Excel is a FAR better spreadsheet program than Numbers. I don't need pretty, I need uberfunctional.

 

[JohnMacnMiami]

My Just Reward for loyalty!

So, I have been a faithful Apple fan, MobileMe from the start, new OS every time.
Now, I have just been told my MobileMe is gone next June?
So, the thousands of people, subscriptions, companies etc that have my email @mac.com or @me.com will need to be notified.
Even when ATT bought BellSouth, the BellSouth people got to keep their emails.
Well, at least I have a year!
They screwed me last time when my G5 cannot run Snow LEopard, so cannot get Calendar Synch.
Now, my iPhone 3G cannot get anything, because it does not qualify?
So, I need to buy a new phone and new computer every year to use Apple?
Nope, don't think so.
Too bad Apple, you finally pushed me too far.
I will take my 5 MAC systems in this house, and the ones I was buying for the company, and just use Gmail, Picasa, the old iTunes and move on down the road.
Sad when they offer more to a Win7 machine to one of the Faithful!

 

[SandynJosh]

Sorry, but a great big YAWN from me. Apple had a head start on the mobile device market, but is now only neck and neck with the competition.

You're yawning now, so you must have slept through the presentation.

Apple presented one thing, which was composed of three parts. So if you look at any one part you have to hold the other two in mind so you can see the synergism. Lion and iOS5 and the iCloud blasts the Apple user experience way past the competitor's mobile devices.

What Apple has done is improve the Mac and iDevices OS so they sync together totally seamlessly, thus improving the ecosystem multifold over anything any other mobile device OS can do. Now, with Apple you can have desktop and laptop computers of Mac or Microsoft OS, along with any Apple iDevice sync together automatically and effortlessly, instantly and for FREE.

The only kicker is that you must be using Apple branded iPhone, or iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS5. Now when some one is thinking about whether to buy a non-Apple phone or tablet, they are weighing whether to be INSIDE the social network invented by Apple or OUTSIDE the social network.

This social network includes messaging and game play for starters but will go bonkers with networking opportunities once the developers add the new Lion and iOS5 APIs to their existing or new apps.

In addition, people who buy a non-Apple mobile device will be left back in the old PC paradigm that leaves files, songs, data, whatever, on each device to be synced or backed up catch-as-catch-can.

Perhaps any one of the three parts of what was presented today could be a yawner in itself, it is the synergy of all three parts that makes today's message a wake-up call to the competition that their salad days are numbered.

Lion + iOS5 + iCloud = Doom and gloom for Apple's competitors.

 

[mr. who?]

So question...

What happens to data usage on your cellular network from pushing all of this data to and from icloud? Seems the carriers will benefit from this tremendously. at&t was rumored to reinstate unlimited data plans (unless they have already), but I can't see them doing that now. And verizon still offers unlimited data? I can see that ending.

 

[coachingguy]

I am not at all pleased with the little I've heard about Lion and iCloud today. Jobs wants to do away with the file system. This is a work computer. File systems are the equivalent of a filing cabinet. If I need to burn a disk of graphics files for a client, it's all in the clients' file, I burn the disk, I'm good. I don't want to have to look all over my computer for every last one of a client's files. I'm not working on an iPad or iPhone, I'm on a Mac Pro, fer dang sake!! This is no fluffy iPad, this is the big Bertha of working computers.

I have seen the cloud servers go down or get hacked way too many times (especially where Apple is concerned) to trust my info to be kept there! I use DropBox, I use Evernote, but I don't keep anything important on them, and I make sure that my FILES are being backed up to my two external hard drives and my offsite backup, BackBlaze. If one of them gets hosed, I'm still okay. If the cloud server goes down, that's okay. I can still get work done because I'm not counting on a server. Look at what happened recently to Amazon's EC2 servers, to Sony's servers, and heck, the DOD's servers!!! Even Intuit's servers went down recently. Too bad for the people doing their bookkeeping on Intuit's servers.

Did Jobs mention anything about the redundancy of the servers? Um, Cupertino is in earthquake county. BIG earthquake country. No, I much prefer keeping the info resident on my device, backed up to my backup devices, and not trust ANYTHING to the cloud, especially with Apple's penchant for ignoring problems and giving out as little info as possible. It's like saying, "There's been a little accident (no, it was a really big accident), only a few people were hurt (no, thousands of people were hurt), and it shouldn't impact you at all (except all my iCal, address book, and email data is now in the ether). You don't need to know anything more than that." Because that's what Apple would do.

I don't bundle my TV, cable, and phone for the very same reasons. I use different providers. If my TV goes out, I can probably still go online or make a call. If my internet goes down, I can still watch TV or make a call. And so on.

When my MobileMe subscription expires, buh-bye Apple servers for syncing my MBP, MP, and iPhone. Heck, I might as well replace my iPhone with an Android.

Will I be able to back up to Big Bertha and my other backups??

After 28 years of using Apple products, I'm about to defect.

Really? Paranoid much? I bet you've got money in like 5 different banks across multiple states if not continents... See Ya!

 

[Abstract]

None of them sync automatically to all your mobile and other devices.
YOU have to sync them.

With regards to auto-syncing documents, there's Drop Box, which automatically syncs between all my devices. Plus, it's also free, and has been so since it existed. You can get Drop Box for your Mac, iPad, iPhone, or Android device.

Can someone explain to me how this is different from DropBox? The only difference is that music that syncs to my iPhone will be usable in the iTunes software. Not particularly useful to me, since I'm never away from my laptop for long enough that I'm actually bored of 22 GB of music.


Feel free to disagree with me if you want, but I don't see how iCloud is going to change anything. From my vague understanding of it, I don't even feel compelled to start using it.

I don't care about syncing my music, since I have around 50 GB of it on my laptop, and even more photos than that. And does anybody actually look at their photos all the time on their iPhone and iPad? How about people who look at their latest 1000 photos? I'd probably shut that feature off, since my latest 1000 photos probably isn't my best.

 

[gimmesomemo]

I find it hilarious, and at the same time, completely predictable that pre wwdc everyone was jumping on the "if it's only purchased music then its a waste of time" bandwagon, and now that they released a completely reasonable, and basically unbeatable solution for having you entire -non itunes purchased- music library on icloud, while at the same time giving us a completely free service for having all our devices effortlessly in-sync via icloud, that everyone still is finding a million different things to bitch about…

 

[thirteen1031]

Answers

To answer a few repeating questions:

(1) How do you turn it off? Easy. Don't turn it "On." The Cloud is voluntary folks. You opt to use it. It doesn't automatically start to sync all your stuff whether you want it to or not. It's not going to steal your photos and stream them to your computer and iPad without your permission. You have to say you want it on each and every option. You want it for the calendar, for the music, for the photos, etc.

So if you have nude photos of you fooling around with some other girl, and you don't want them going automatically to your wife's phone, make sure you don't turn the photo stream on (or that you've turned it off if it was on) and whoa-howdy-hey, no embarrassing photos end up in the photo area of your wife's phone.

(2) Encrypted? Yes, indeed. Everything that goes up and comes down from the Cloud will be encrypted. If you still don't trust it, then, again, don't use it.

(3) 5GB do you have to pay? Nope. That comes free along with the rest of the service. That 5GB doesn't include any storage you use for photos, music, calendars or documents.

(4) All sorts of documents?--from what the Keynote said, anything in iWork at least. I don't know about anything else.

All this service does is automatically send whatever you want sent (photos, music, documents) to all your devices. What you create on one will be sent to all...if you want it on all. Which means...

(5) Up to 10 Devices: you buy a song and you can put it on ten devices, no extra charge.

Different from other such services? *shrug* As the Cloud won't be up and running (outside of the music part) till Fall, there is no one here who can say that it will be better, faster, nicer or any service that is similar. You'll have to wait and see if it's different enough from what you've got to switch. But there ARE two things sure to be different: (A) It will be one thing--one place--that will do all these different things (photos, mail, calendar, document and music sync) rather than a dozen different services. That might be worth it in itself, rather than keeping up seven different accounts with seven different services.

(B) No ads.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

You are the one who has absolutely no idea what the hell you are talking about.

Yes, these services like dropbox have physical files and folder structures on their servers. You obviously have a very, very basic understanding of how computers, operating systems and filesystems work in general.

Please don't yell at someone else when you come off as a complete DoDoBird yourself. What is happening is that users such as YOU will eventually be in a world where the filesystem is easier to to access such as through iCloud and storage initiated via Applications. However, no one reinvented the wheel your files will still be stored as files, in directories and on servers: makes no difference whether that filesystem is HSF, NTSF, EXT, ReiserFS, ext3 or whatever.

We are going back to the idea of the 90's except this time its coming true. Power users such as developers, designers, engineers etc. will have workstations (me) and regular users will have dumb terminals (grandma).
This is one of Larry Ellison's dreams coming true. (Get in touch with history)

You can even go back to the 80's and 70's and see the same concept played out in terms of terminals accessing mainframes over LAN and WAN. We are coming full circle.

Of course these is an underlying file system just like there is with iOS.

The laughable part of your post is that the professionals you mention use the "appification" of the file system already.

Programmers? Nope. They deal with SVN.
Engineers? Nope. They deal with programs like Buzzsaw.

 

[Herdfan]

If you have a family and one main Apple id, Mobile me id et al. who says I want them automatically having access to what photos I take? If there is no option to make it a manual process and not just an off and on switch that's a MAJOR blunder.

If they do not allow for multiple iCloud accounts under one Apple id the service is worthless for multiple iDevice households.

Nor do I want the 100's of pictures of the cat my daughter takes show up on MY phone or iPad. I would like to see 2 things:

1) On/Off switch for each function, like we have now. Under my current MobileMe account I have bookmarks and notes turned off. If this continues but adds music and docs, fine. Just let me shut them off individually.

2) A manual option because while I might want some of my wife's music, I don't want it all. Need to be able to delete songs from an iDevice. Otherwise, I will turn music off.

 

[SandynJosh]

To answer a few repeating questions:

(1) How do you turn it off? Easy. Don't turn it "On." The Cloud is voluntary folks. You opt to use it. It doesn't automatically start to sync all your stuff whether you want it to or not. It's not going to steal your photos and stream them to your computer and iPad without your permission. You have to say you want it on each and every option. You want it for the calendar, for the music, for the photos, etc.

Just to clarify: the new iOS and Lion will ship with the iCloud share feature turned on. It is easy to shut it off.

So if you have nude photos of you fooling around with some other girl, and you don't want them going automatically to your wife's phone, make sure you don't turn the photo stream on (or that you've turned it off if it was on) and whoa-howdy-hey, no embarrassing photos end up in the photo area of your wife's phone.

Actually the iCloud syncing of photos will only share the photos it finds in the iPhoto library. If you have photos in client files or other locations they will not be shared.

(2) Encrypted? Yes, indeed. Everything that goes up and comes down from the Cloud will be encrypted. If you still don't trust it, then, again, don't use it.

(3) 5GB do you have to pay? Nope. That comes free along with the rest of the service. That 5GB doesn't include any storage you use for photos, music, calendars or documents.

the 5GB also does not include software storage purchased from the Mac or iOS app stores as well as iBooks.

(4) All sorts of documents?--from what the Keynote said, anything in iWork at least. I don't know about anything else.

It will include any document for which the document creator adds the function. Since the developers got their toolkits today, that may take a while for some. Microsoft, for example, can elect to make their documents work with this or not and make that possible on their own schedule.

All this service does is automatically send whatever you want sent (photos, music, documents) to all your devices. What you create on one will be sent to all...if you want it on all. Which means...

(5) Up to 10 Devices: you buy a song and you can put it on ten devices, no extra charge.

the same will apply to software, books, and movies bought through the Mac or iOS stores.

Different from other such services? *shrug* As the Cloud won't be up and running (outside of the music part) till Fall, there is no one here who can say that it will be better, faster, nicer or any service that is similar. You'll have to wait and see if it's different enough from what you've got to switch. But there ARE two things sure to be different: (A) It will be one thing--one place--that will do all these different things (photos, mail, calendar, document and music sync) rather than a dozen different services. That might be worth it in itself, rather than keeping up seven different accounts with seven different services.

(B) No ads.

It will be a boon to the average non-technical user who doesn't want to know "how" his idevices and computers all are instantly synced. He/she doesn't need to download applications and set them up and consciously add files to be be shared... it just works!

Also, one more thing... the iCloud is not meant to replace the time machine. As Jobs said, "it is not a hard disk in the sky."

 

[Abstract]

To answer a few repeating questions:

(4) All sorts of documents?--from what the Keynote said, anything in iWork at least. I don't know about anything else.

All this service does is automatically send whatever you want sent (photos, music, documents) to all your devices. What you create on one will be sent to all...if you want it on all. Which means...

From what I can tell, with iCloud and Lion, only apps with iCloud functionality written into the software itself can sync with iCloud. It's not like Drop Box, where EVERYTHING contained within selected folders will sync between devices, even if that folder contains documents, photos, music, etc. It doesn't require that the files be of a certain type, and it doesn't require iCloud compatibility to be written into any software that wishes to use it.

Sure, software designers now have the ability to integrate with iCloud, but I really wish it would just sync a folder.


But like I said several posts ago, I don't understand enough about it. I don't see why this is better than Drop Box for my uses.

 

[boing]

A topic I didn't see anyone talk about

I have been reading through this thread (which is mostly people going nuts about a service that is not going away until June 2012), and one thing I have not seen anyone talking about is if iCloud has a Web Interface or not. By what I am reading Apple is doing away with the Web Interface of MobileMe, and instead providing application sync. Does anyone know about this?? Does iCloud have a web interface for Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and files?? Seems like Apple only wants their sync to be compatible with their software stack. If their is no web interface, then will iCloud support IMAP/POP, CalDav, and CardDAV to allow sync using open standards?? That is some of the questions I have not seen answered yet when comparing to MobileMe, and the ones I am more interested in seeing be answered.

 

[thatsmyfish]

Just to clarify: the new iOS and Lion will ship with the iCloud share feature turned on. It is easy to shut it off.

So if I have a Mac Mini with 20 gigs of music and 500 gigs of video (in iTunes but stored on an external) and a 32 gig iphone.

I currently have it set up so that playlists containing 5 gigs of music and 5 gigs worth of video sync to my iphone.

When iOS 5 comes out, I'll be able to wirelessly sync instead of using the USB exclusively with the newest iTunes on the Mini and iOS 5 on the iphone.

If I enable iCloud on the Mini, do I choose which music/videos gets sent to the cloud? If I buy a new song on the Mini, will it be synced to the iphone only if it's in one of those selected playlists?

I understand the concept of the iCloud but I'm curious how it will handle situations like this where there is more content than room in the cloud or on the secondary device.

 

[JimMacFan]

Will any song I ever purchased via iTunes automatically be available via iCloud? I've lost some songs over the years on different computers.

 

[Eric S.]

(1) How do you turn it off? Easy. Don't turn it "On." The Cloud is voluntary folks. You opt to use it. It doesn't automatically start to sync all your stuff whether you want it to or not. It's not going to steal your photos and stream them to your computer and iPad without your permission. You have to say you want it on each and every option. You want it for the calendar, for the music, for the photos, etc.

I don't believe that will be true for very long. Sure, it will start out that way because it's a pretty big transition in the way a lot of users do things, but Apple is well known now for getting you hooked on their ecosystem slowly and changing the rules for their benefit. For example, I can easily see that the iTunes interface will be pared down and its sync function wholly transferred to iCloud, because 1) why have the sync function in two different places, and 2) Apple will want to encourage (coerce) as many users as possible into signing up for iCloud. So I expect that before long if you want to continue using the latest iTunes version you will be required to sync through iCloud. Once you're at that point they've got you.

The only kicker is that you must be using Apple branded iPhone, or iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS5. Now when some one is thinking about whether to buy a non-Apple phone or tablet, they are weighing whether to be INSIDE the social network invented by Apple or OUTSIDE the social network.

ExACTly. And I have to say that after a quarter century of investment in Apple computer products, if iCloud becomes tightly integrated with the OS I'll put down the kool aid and jump off this bus.

 

[Zaqfalcon]

What about...?

Microsoft Office Documents?

Aperture photos?

Photos imported to an iPad from a camera?

 

[dawnrazor]

Does this mean that the service formally known as mobile me and before that as .mac and that now is iCloud no longer has a yearly subscription... because my Wife's and my yearly subscription for mobile me just renewed last week, but presumably if it was to renew next week it would be free???????

 

[iRobby]

If you want to get all technical about it, you're right, they aren't the same thing. Someone could make the argument that they are not the same because they are spelled differently too. But lets be real, iCloud the update to MobileMe.

MobileMe will not be free. MobileMe gives you 20GB of storage to use in whatever way you want, whether it be 10GB for Mail and 10GB for iDisk, or 3GB for Mail and 17GB for iDisk. With what we know about iCloud right now, that is not an option, thus you are paying for something that has more benefits (in terms of cloud storage at the moment). The 5GB just refers to mail, contacts, and calendars, nothing about normal file storage like iDisk.

Considering they did not mention iDisk at all, I believe there is a good chance they will get rid of the service. Sure, I could be wrong, and I am just making a guess, so who knows. But for those of you who use iDisk all the time, you may want to start looking into some alternatives. And if you are looking at Dropbox, you should take a look at this article to get more space for free.

As of right now, we just have to wait and see what happens.

if you watch the keynote Steve said MobileMe will be non-existent and the features of Mobile Me the Calendar Mail and Contacts were introduced as the first part of iCloud.

"iCloud simply works. Now you may ask why should I believe them? They are the ones that brought MobileMe. It wasn't our finest hour. Let me just say that but we learned a lot. Now the 3 core applications were Calendar, Contacts and Mail. 3 things we obviously want to keep up to date we've thrown them away rebuilt them from the ground up... Mobile me with these apps cost 99.00 as of today they are free and MobileMe will cease to exist bringing these apps into iCloud" - Steve Jobs 2011 WWDC Keynote

 

[marksman]

Maybe I'm just too old. I still can't figure out why anybody thinks that "doing away with the file system" and sandboxing data is even remotely a good idea.

When I'm on the computer, I work on projects. A typical project has three or four word processing documents, two or three spreadsheets, some files of lab instrument output, dozens of images, and a thread of email messages. It all needs to be kept together, not spread around randomly in different sandboxes.

I just can't picture a workflow that could possibly accomplish anything in this brave new wurld.

I don't think "doing away with the file system" and "sandboxing" mean what you think they mean.

They certainly have no relevancy to your "workflow".

 

[tuhoops]

So, I have been a faithful Apple fan, MobileMe from the start, new OS every time.
Now, I have just been told my MobileMe is gone next June?
So, the thousands of people, subscriptions, companies etc that have my email @mac.com or @me.com will need to be notified.
Even when ATT bought BellSouth, the BellSouth people got to keep their emails.
Well, at least I have a year!
They screwed me last time when my G5 cannot run Snow LEopard, so cannot get Calendar Synch.
Now, my iPhone 3G cannot get anything, because it does not qualify?
So, I need to buy a new phone and new computer every year to use Apple?
Nope, don't think so.
Too bad Apple, you finally pushed me too far.
I will take my 5 MAC systems in this house, and the ones I was buying for the company, and just use Gmail, Picasa, the old iTunes and move on down the road.
Sad when they offer more to a Win7 machine to one of the Faithful!

MobileMe is going away, your @me.com address is not. It will be a part of the new iCloud.

 

[BayouTiger]

Dsl speed

I don't see how this is going to live on a typical ADSL home. My dsl, while fairly quick at download at 6mb is brutally slow at <50k upload, and download dies when uploading. I have to sync all my Dropbox files at the office for it to be useful. It seems that many have overlooked the upload limitations of most home services.

 

[dawnrazor]

I don't think anything is happening to your email addresses, they will remain regardless if you are bob@mac.com or bob@me.com - they won't change even if they introduce a new bob@icloud.com say, the previous addrresses will still work, it will be entirely up to you whether you want to change to the @icloud.com part. Simple

So, I have been a faithful Apple fan, MobileMe from the start, new OS every time.
Now, I have just been told my MobileMe is gone next June?
So, the thousands of people, subscriptions, companies etc that have my email @mac.com or @me.com will need to be notified.
Even when ATT bought BellSouth, the BellSouth people got to keep their emails.
Well, at least I have a year!
They screwed me last time when my G5 cannot run Snow LEopard, so cannot get Calendar Synch.
Now, my iPhone 3G cannot get anything, because it does not qualify?
So, I need to buy a new phone and new computer every year to use Apple?
Nope, don't think so.
Too bad Apple, you finally pushed me too far.
I will take my 5 MAC systems in this house, and the ones I was buying for the company, and just use Gmail, Picasa, the old iTunes and move on down the road.
Sad when they offer more to a Win7 machine to one of the Faithful!