Ummm, the raised eyebrows and smiles may be one of those laughing at you vs laughing with you things.
kinda like your username?
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Apple to Offer Free Tier of iCloud Without Music Streaming? 'Aggressive' Pricing for Mac OS X Lion?
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kinda like your username?
I like the fact there is a possibility there will be a "free" offering. Waiting to see what this is going to be!
Probably right. But, is @me.com any more professional than @iCloud.com? Both would send your resume to the trash bin.
Notice: I work at TI, UK.
Email address domain is not a big deal. You are, if you have a good resume.
I wonder if this Icloud service will also offer a Sirius type service. For $xx dollars per month you could listen to any music on your 3G or WiFi enabled device. No need to upload the music and you never have to buy it, and before you say you would run over your bandwith cap maybe Apple has worked out an agreement with the cellular companies tossing them a couple of dollars per month per subscriber to allow their users the extra bandwidth.......don't know if it's possible but would be a good idea without the need for a Sirius type enabled receiver.
That's assuming that Amazon doesn't get sued by the music industry and have to either shut it down or have to charge more.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Good idea right up to the "couple of bucks per month" part. Why should AT&T, Verizon, etc offer a special discount for this distribution solely to help make this piece of an iCloud service make Apple money? If you were AT&T, Verizion, etc who have already demonstrated via a very lucrative relationship with Apple on existing Apple products (the iDevices) that you want $25 for just 2GB and $15 for just 250Mb, what is the motivation for you to generously cut into your revenues to make something else that Apple is selling more profitable for Apple?
This is just like this foolish concept that keeps flying around that some kind of cable replacement iTunes subscription is going to be priced well below current cable subscription rates. Conceptually, is that possible? Maybe. But practically, can it happen? No. Why? Because AT&T, Verizon, etc are positioned between Apple's servers and our devices. THEY are the middlemen between this iCloud and us. And they have no incentive to cut their revenue throats to help Apple be more profitable. Nor have they demonstrated any such willingness to do that to date with iPhone & iPad middleman services.
To make your Sirius radio or any of these dreams come true, we need to see strong rumors of Apple making some kind of direct link between the cloud and our devices. Sirius does that with Satts so that their "cloud" content can beam from their servers right to our devices (radio receivers)- no need for the likes of Comcasts, AT&T, Time Warner, Verizon, etc to be in the middle. Apple would need to replicate that type of direct connection AND find a way to do the same for the "on the go" part of the iCloud dream (so that you really could access your iCloud content wherever you are) which would involve some kind of replication of wireless access like 3G/4G everywhere.
In all of this hype, there are NO rumors of how Apple is going to bridge the gap between this cloud and us. It seems probable that we have to make that connection via whatever methods we access Internet content now. Since we know AT&T (for example) charges $25 for just 2GB via 3G, we already can get a feel for having ready access to lots of movies is going to cost a whole lot of money if we want them anywhere we go (movies in my iTunes folder average about 2.5GB per).
Now smaller files like music won't necessarily be killer in terms of eating lots of bandwidth... unless in your own vision of using this iCloud you are heavily accessing content in the iCloud and thus heavily streaming music. If so, it won't take that many songs streamed to get to 2GB. I'd encourage anyone to do the math themselves. My iTunes plus music appears to average about 10Mb per file. How many 10Mb songs could I stream from the iCloud before it eats up all 2GB, so I'd have to pay AT&T again for more access?
Wait. we can just switch to the other guys: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobilebroadband/?page=plans
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You may not have a choice, pal.
There's no way in life that they are going to force people to change from me.com to icloud.com email addresses. They may issue new accounts a iCloud.com address, but they would certainly keep the me.com domain live for all of the old accounts.
Really? I think the @me.com is really cool. I have people comment all the time when I give them my address that it's cool. It's also ridiculously easy to remember.
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Yes. The benefit alluded to here is the potential for cheaper iDevices because they can come bundled with less on-board storage. So instead of the total cost of an iPhone being $2-$3K (when service is included), it might now become $3K-$5K per year (because users who have to stream even more will burn through more 3G data).
New iPhone X at $XXX* (with XXX lower than we've seen)
*requires 2 year subscription to iCloud plus a 2 year 3G/4G subscription with a wireless provider like AT&T or Verizon.
Not too long afterwards, the wireless carriers announce that due to increasingly demanding use of wireless bandwidth, they're having to raise rates on their tiered pricing. One does it and only one other has to do it too. Both make a lot more money from millions of customers mostly locked in anyway.
Thank god! I was getting the impression that iCloud was only going to be music streaming. But if the "free" version is just like Dropbox, then that's fine enough for me! I couldn't care less about streaming songs off the internet when i carry my iPhone around with me.
Also, regardless the price of Lion i'm definitely buying it. Here's hoping for another $29!
Also, regardless the price of Lion i'm definitely buying it. Here's hoping for another $29!
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
You will if you buy into streaming everything from the cloud and pay AT&T $25 for 2GB and stream only 8 (2GB) movies from this iCloud. That's only EIGHT movies streamed from this iCloud in ONE month via AT&T currently published rate (Verizon is no better)... with nothing assumed for iTunes movie rentals OR iCloud costs (we know that won't be the case). Nor are we allowing any other streaming of Apps, maps, youtube, etc.
People are posting about cutting their cable and streaming everything they watch from this iCloud and imagining they are going to somehow save money. Apparently, they assume iCloud is going to cost very little, some kind of iTunes subscription services is coming and will cost very little, and that AT&T & Verizon are going to cut a special deal on iCloud data flow to help Apple be more profitable at AT&T & Verizon's own expense. Are pigs flying? Has Hell frozen over?
Bottom line: the cost of the toll between iCloud and us must be addressed for this to work as many dreamers seem to be dreaming. Or those dreamers must not care much about how much they pay the gatekeepers of the pipes to stream as much as they want to stream. There is unlikely to be some magical compromise that can wash out the toll unless we get a "one more thing" and Apple announces the purchases of someone like Dish network and some of the 3G/4G carriers (or big blocks of international 3G/4G bandwidth so they can become a faux carrier). Apple must cover the link between iCloud and the users or we will be at the mercy of the tollbooths (via names like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, etc). They already show us how much they want to charge for anywhere & everywhere streaming service (tolls). Do the math for your own imagined streaming applications (even iTunes plus songs will add up fast if you plan to stream much music each month) and you'll quickly see the most fundamental problem with the iCloud proposition.
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I try to live within the low end, 200MB AT&Tease cap. "Streaming" (if allowable over 3G) would kill that quickly.
Damn you for taking away my $30 unlimited plan AT&T!
Damn you for taking away my $30 unlimited plan AT&T!
awesome for students! I am reticent to jump into using a paid cloud service due to its seemingly superfluous nature and fear of becoming reliant on a service which I may be unable to afford semester to semester.
Free for students is what keeps me using Amazon Prime!
Free for students is what keeps me using Amazon Prime!
Sort of called it
I predicted and posted this idea over a year ago and it got shot down. Now it's all over the front page.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/890134/
Originally Posted by Cambot
2010: Classic uses flash drive
2011: Apple uses cloud based iTunes and 3g/WiFi to stream your base iTunes anywhere in the world and storage becomes a thing of the past.
May 30, 2010
I doubt I would use this service unless it's packaged with my current MobileMe subscription.
I predicted and posted this idea over a year ago and it got shot down. Now it's all over the front page.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/890134/
Originally Posted by Cambot
2010: Classic uses flash drive
2011: Apple uses cloud based iTunes and 3g/WiFi to stream your base iTunes anywhere in the world and storage becomes a thing of the past.
May 30, 2010
I doubt I would use this service unless it's packaged with my current MobileMe subscription.
Dearest friend,
Your post incites the deepest passions within my being. Bombastic language has been long absent from the murk of MacRumors colloquy.
I applaud your efforts to elevate the commenting standards of this forum.
Oh, college Students! Ya'll are hilarious!
I think its a good thing all of these cloud services are coming to fruition right now. With the mobile carriers not offering unlimited data anymore, you might look at this as a bad thing. However, with more and more people using cloud services from Amazon, Google, and Apple, theres going to be a lot more people complaining about the lack of bandwidth options from the mobile carriers. Most users dont go over the 2GB limit, but they might start to with these services.
Carriers might start offering unlimited again if enough people complain about it. Or at least a 10 GB a month limit.
Carriers might start offering unlimited again if enough people complain about it. Or at least a 10 GB a month limit.