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Is the 'Cloud' the new Hard Drive?

C

Codeseven

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 31, 2008
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I want to get an iPad Pro so I was contemplating how big of a hard drive I need. My current iPad Air 1 has only a 16Gb hard drive, which is pretty much full. I admittedly don't know much about Cloud storage and usage, pretty much just that it's there and has a seemingly endless amount of possible storage space.

So, other than to perhaps hold all the Os and all the apps I use, why worry about the capacity (and greatly added expense) of your hard drive nowadays if everything else, photos, docs, videos ect., can be stored away and accessed via the 'Cloud'? Why doesn't every device have a minimal hard drive and maximum Cloud storage available?
 
Yeah, you must live in a relatively urban area. We're fighting a losing battle against total cloud usage - eventually we'll be out of the technical market when things will no longer be designed to work offline. Already can't stream videos/movies. Lots of lost revenue - I'd love to give my $ to some of these services lol.
Here's crossing fingers that SpaceX can actually implement their new low orbit satellite networks.
 
Codeseven said:
I want to get an iPad Pro so I was contemplating how big of a hard drive I need. My current iPad Air 1 has only a 16Gb hard drive, which is pretty much full. I admittedly don't know much about Cloud storage and usage, pretty much just that it's there and has a seemingly endless amount of possible storage space.

So, other than to perhaps hold all the Os and all the apps I use, why worry about the capacity (and greatly added expense) of your hard drive nowadays if everything else, photos, docs, videos ect., can be stored away and accessed via the 'Cloud'? Why doesn't every device have a minimal hard drive and maximum Cloud storage available?
Click to expand...

"Chromebooks" are already built on that idea. A large capacity Chromebook has 64GB of storage, but most have only 16GB.

That's a browser-based device, it's a little bit tougher to do with an app-based device like an iPad. But depending on your usage it's totally doable. I've lived with a 16GB iPad Air for two years now. Even my pc by the end had nothing of note stored locally on it, its 128GB ssd was mostly empty. I store everything in the cloud. When I upgrade a machine, or if one ever dies, I lose nothing.
 
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RobinInOR said:
...eventually we'll be out of the technical market when things will no longer be designed to work offline.
Click to expand...
The technology is available to create a nice online/offline solution. The current problem is that there are not enough companies keeping up. I think the tech is coming back around. For a while there, everything was done locally. Then everything was done remotely through a client ( browser ). Now we are coming back around to a combination of the two. Software/data is downloaded, then ran locally ( on a client/browser ) and uploaded automatically when a connection is available. This doesn't work for all solutions, but it will for most.

Here's crossing fingers that SpaceX can actually implement their new low orbit satellite networks.
Click to expand...
I agree. Cannot wait until my cellphone, laptop, console, watch, car, house, dog, refrigerator, ect. no longer connects to a hard line/wifi/tower, but to high speed sat network directly.
 
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Thanks guys.

Like I said, I really don't know that much about using the Cloud. About all I do currently is use Google Photos to back up my pictures.

I was thinking, and could be wrong but, it seemed like many wanted large over 500Gb capacity hard drives in their devices, then huge multi-terabyte external hard drives for storage, but now just a 256Gb hard drive in a device seems big. Is that because of Cloud storage?
 
M. Gustave said:
"Chromebooks" are already built on that idea. A large capacity Chromebook has 64GB of storage, but most have only 16GB.

That's a browser-based device, it's a little bit tougher to do with an app-based device like an iPad. But depending on your usage it's totally doable. I've lived with a 16GB iPad Air for two years now. Even my pc by the end had nothing of note stored locally on it, its 128GB ssd was mostly empty. I store everything in the cloud. When I upgrade a machine, or if one ever dies, I lose nothing.
Click to expand...

16GB iPad Air??
you must be making a very light use of your iPad

no wonder why you were claiming that iPad is 100% capable to do real work....
 
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Kostas3000 said:
16GB iPad Air??
you must be making a very light use of your iPad

no wonder why you were claiming that iPad is 100% capable to do real work....
Click to expand...
It's very doable if you use the cloud a lot. I was fine with a 16GB phone for a long time until I moved to a rural area where my home ISP has low caps and there is little to no public wifi as well as a max of 3G speeds on the cell network. Once I moved there I went ahead and bought a 256 GB iPhone so I can store everything locally, and likely would have gone higher if it was possible.
 
^ This. I live where internet speeds are around 1-5 mbps down and 1-2 mbps up on a good day with it usually being about .5 mbps. No joke. Rural internet especially in the evening is terrible. You might hit 10mbps down at 3 AM or something but that's about it. Not to mention many have caps in the 20-30 GB range.

This combined with someone like me that has multiple TB of photos, video, music, software, etc and it just isn't possible for many.

Those in an urban area with fast internet and that just use their phones for photos, sure. Those of us that shoot in RAW and have huge 4K files or even 1080 ProRes files it just won't ever happen. Not till there's such a thing as 10GBe internet speeds anyway.

More power to you if you can, but I like to have my files in my hands.

On the upside, where I work we have 200/20 down/up speeds via cable internet and a 20/20 fiber line dedicated for large file uploads. We also have 2 maxed out 24TB RAID enclosures with our media and another couple of 12TB RAID boxes that are in need of expansion. Try putting all that on the cloud via 20mbps upload, which is what we are doing for our archived files. It'll literally take years haha.
 
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And I was thrilled yesterday to upgrade our satellite to 150G/month cap and 12mbps up! (Even though with trees we only get 50% signal so only 7mbps up...)
 
Even with the cloud, 16GB and even 32GB storage on an Apple ipad or iphone is too small in my opinion. Apps and the iOS are taking up more and more room. At this point 64GB should be the bottom, 128 the midrange and 256 the high end for storage.
 
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I enjoy using cloud storage in order to seamlessly have access to files across all my devices, but I wouldn't want to depend on it as my main storage solution. I like knowing that I have my files, rather than depending on an internet connection to access them from a server somewhere. Wifi fails and you're helpless. Also, I'm not unreasonably paranoid about security and privacy, but I think that a person's cloud account is more likely to be hacked than their local storage being accessed remotely.

In related news, I think it's pretty cool that Netflix now allows you to download content onto your device to watch offline. I don't even subscribe to any music streaming services. All my music is stored on my phone and PC.
 
Kostas3000 said:
16GB iPad Air??
you must be making a very light use of your iPad

no wonder why you were claiming that iPad is 100% capable to do real work....
Click to expand...

Ms Word
Ms Excel
Ulysses
Ancestry
eBay
iCloud Photos
Snapseed
VSCO
Things

Those are the main apps I use daily. You're the first person I've ever heard claiming that the storage capacity of a device is now the determiner of doing Real Work™. So everyone who buys a 128GB iPad is doing "very heavy use"?

Comments like yours are utterly ridiculous and betray a solid lack of understanding.
 
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I always prefer large local storage because of one thing: when internet is down, all you have at hand is what all you can use. Nothing more.
Cloud is good for seaminglessly sync and save your files across multiple platforms. But cloud is not your data vault. I have heard a lot of people storing all of their personal files into cloud storage ONLY and ignore local storage, thinking there is no need to buy hard disk anymore, until one day their storage providers announce the termination of their services.
BTW, my 128GB iPhone 6s Plus is almost full. 50% is stored with music, while other 50% for everything else.
 
Shirasaki said:
I always prefer large local storage because of one thing: when internet is down, all you have at hand is what all you can use. Nothing more.
Click to expand...

When is the internet "down"?? You mean when you lose cellular coverage, like in a subway tunnel... which is like .1% of your life if you live in an urban environment.

I realize some people live in rural areas, but they are a tiny fraction of the population today.
 
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M. Gustave said:
When is the internet "down"?? You mean when you lose cellular coverage, like in a subway tunnel... which is like .1% of your life if you live in an urban environment.

I realize some people live in rural areas, but they are a tiny fraction of the population today.
Click to expand...
Well, what I mention is not such temporary lost of internet. Instead, that is a wide area internet blackout. There are articles imagining this situation. Here is one.
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www...t-out-48-hours-without-internet?client=safari

Never tell me this will never happen. But once it happens, how this world would be?
 
M. Gustave said:
When is the internet "down"?? You mean when you lose cellular coverage, like in a subway tunnel... which is like .1% of your life if you live in an urban environment.

I realize some people live in rural areas, but they are a tiny fraction of the population today.
Click to expand...

Losing cellular coverage only matters with regards to my phone. Like many (probably most) people, my tablet and laptop are wifi only, and wifi routers and modems fail from time to time.
 
The 'cloud' is many things -
- Work offline and upload, other people download and edit. Local storage can be a factor.
- Portal log-in/screen log in and work online, aka chromebooks. Minimal local storage requirements.
- File access. Dropbox style. Again, local storage can be high as you store a copy on your drive and also in the cloud.
- File storage. Large photo libraries are a good example. The local devce acts as an uploader, minimal storage needed.
- Streaming. Google music, upload 50,000 songs and re-stream. Again, you can upload the local files, lowering local storage requirements.

Apps and content are done locally and I upload everything else for use across the board, generally work on the Mac for presentation on the iPad. This may change soon as I plan on picking up a Surface Book so certain things may have to change in terms of having all my eggs in the Apple basket.

That is one thing about the cloud, you still have to like the devices you are accessing the data with, for me the 2016 Apple line-up has been shocking.
 
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M. Gustave said:
If you want, or have to, live like it's 1995, you're in luck: Apple still makes Macs.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I wasn't sure. Me and my hick pals have been too busy making all the food that you urbane sophisticates eat. We sure are glad we have smartypants like you to tell us how backward we are!

Would you be available this weekend to help me fix my tractor and slop my pigs?
 
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When the first iPad came out, I choose to get a WiFi only device because I thought "WiFi was everywhere" and I thought storage was more important. I soon discovered that, for me, connectivity was an issue. All my future iPads (starting with the iPad 2) were cellular enabled (with the exception of the 12.9" Pro).

I'm a pretty heavy cloud user, but local storage is still important. Streaming services are a god-send, but large storage means more apps and off-line storage. i live and play in a fairly urban environment, but there are still times when connectivity is an issue. Cellular still has issues in some types of buildings and Wifi may be iffy (just because there IS wifi doesn't mean it's any good - Starbucks has WiFi but I usually end up using the cellular connection because the Starbucks speeds are terrible).

For me, Cellular is a must - I don't think I would get near as much convenience without it being (nearly) constantly connected!
 
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Good info here. I'll add this...

The cloud is essentially trusting someone else- a stranger- to be the caretaker of your data. It is beyond your direct reach, accessed through someone else's pipes. This shifts control of your data to others who could at any time, cease to be, or decide to charge more for access, etc. It's turning something you own and can use for nearly free into something you can only use via some form of ongoing rental cost.

Look at something as simple as iTunes video purchases. You buy a movie but leave it in that cloud. At any time the Studio may decide to yank the movie. If they do, you lose it. And this happens. Something you seemed to own... that you conceptually owned... just vanishes from your movie collection because you trust others to be caretaker of your digital stuff. Compare that to ripping a movie or downloading it and storing it on your own hardware. Yanked out of the store without notice? No problem, you still have your own copy.

Between you and your cloud storage tends to be some of the greediest toll masters in business. Whether you access via wired or wireless, that's someone else to pay for data transfers that could be stored locally on your own hardware and accessed through your own pipe. You won't toll/tier yourself. You won't set or change caps on yourself. You won't throttle yourself. All this stuff that happens when you allow middlemen between you and something you want evaporates when you are your own middleman.

That's not saying the cloud is useless or a ripoff. It's more to the concept of why shift something you can control in all ways out to allowing strangers to have various kinds of controls? Local storage is dirt cheap. Buy some and you don't have an ongoing stream of rental fees to access the very same data.

As others have offered, the cloud offers easy, efficient ways to sync data across devices. If you have no other form of offsite backup, it can be a tremendous advantage for that purpose. Where I personally draw the line is at the giving away control of something so easily controlled, renting instead of not renting, etc.

It's like a grand seduction is underway. Let's get the people to buy into letting us be caretakers for their data. They'll pay us to store their stuff and our key strategic partners who control the pipes (data flow) can get richer too. It's monetizing storage & access- 2 traditionally free (or near free) benefits of owning computer hardware, and it's doing so on an ongoing basis (a steady stream of revenue). What's in it for us consumers? IMO, some tangible benefits but at a fairly steep (and potentially volatile/variable) cost.

Suppose that solar power for homes had come before electric utility stations and power lines. Solar homes generated their own power. Some big brains looking for more money looks at that situation and wants to try to monetize a tangible benefit of free energy. So they roll out a tag like "Energy Cloud," spin some marketing benefits for trusting others to supply home power instead of using established hardware and work hard to convince the masses that centralizing power creation & storage away from homeowner control is "the future." Before long, people are paying to rent something they used to get for nearly nothing and those who control the new system can evolve pricing and thus profitability forever as the dependency is nurtured.

Ridiculous? It happens all the time. When was the last time you purchased water? Walk over to your sink and you can have all the water you want for free. A game being played now over and over is trying to monetize the free. How can we get people to pay for something they are accustomed to getting for nothing or near nothing?
 
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M. Gustave said:
As you note, that "article" is a work of the imagination, it's fiction.
Click to expand...
But many times, what was written in fiction becomes real matters.
Plus, the crisis of wide area internet down is not something only reachable in science fiction. There are real threats capable of even temporarily disable the entire internet.
 
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