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More Details on Apple's Cloud-based Music Locker
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Buffer times and connection loss could be eliminated as problems very easily:
When you load a playlist, your iPhone begins to download all the songs immediately in the background. Since a song is only a few megabytes, several songs could be downloaded in the span of one song during playback. These songs are then cached in a pre-determined sized local library and kept there until needed to make room for new incoming songs. A smart system could be employed to determine songs that should be prioritized to be kept in cache based on playcount and other listening patterns.
In an iPhone with 32GB of flash, a few GB of music could be cached without taking much room yet storing massive amounts of songs without the risk of interruption from slow or loss of connection.
What I'm looking forward to the most is how this service will work with video. I love Apple's move to a streaming format for tv because downloading and storing movies and tv shows is unsustainable in the long term. Laptops and iOS devices have limited HDD/flash space and it's a complex chore to maintain a video library on an external HDD separate from your iTunes music library. Backing up is also a problem for libraries that can exceed a TB or more.
Buying the rights to a movie or TV episode is preferable. You can then stream that video to any iTunes enabled device including in a mobile device like an iPad which would otherwise not be able to hold much video because of its limited storage capacity.
Finally, one important thing to note is that this cloud locker will free one more of the chains that is preventing iPad from becoming autonomous from a computer. With mobileMe taking care of syncing email, address book, iCal, and bookmarks, and now this music locker taking care of granting you access to your entire iTunes library, you won't need to sync an iPad/iPod/iPhone to a Mac or PC again. Poof! There's your wireless syncing that everybody's been clamouring for.
They'll be able to remove the Flash drive from iPhones and use the extra space for wizardry.
No one is forcing anyone to use cloud computing at all, you can do whatever you want with your mp3's I don't see your logic.
Not sure how I feel about this or if I'd use it til details are released by Apple. For those not interested know this is an option we can continue using our hard drives on desktops as well as IOS Devices like we are now. Personally, I may just use DropBox for access to all my files including music unless this program has major industry revolutionary characteristics.
You'll go nutz in couple decades when our CPU's aren't even in our homes anymore. Start to get used to the idea of "cloud" slowly
then it will cause battery issues. Have you ever seen how much faster battery drains while using 3G continuously ?
And responsiveness issue. yes you can already use an iPhone while downloading / updating apps but it's gonna be slower. CoreAnimation will be choppy. And battery will suffer, too.
Whereas locally stored MP3 playing won't harm your iPhone at all and lets you multi-task like a charm and enjoy what makes the iPhone the iPhone : instant responsiveness.
I see iTunes library sharing over wifi working already very badly, it's most of the time unusable at home for audio. Forget about video... So just also forget about streaming from the internet using 3G. Moreover, about 50% of the time, my iPhone gets only Edge and no 3G (Bouygues Telecom, France).
And maybe the biggest issue : I listen to my music while commuting. And basically, there's barely a voice-enabled network 60% of the time. Nothing 30% of the time and Edge 10%. Nothing else (I commute with the tube in Paris). So any cloud-enabled music is DOA for me. I already have Mobile Me and Dropbox for that. Doesn't work practically for me.
So I don't call this cloud thing a revolution, rather a gmmick at best, and ******** for my actual needs.
But maybe, in some better-covered areas, with lucky people with a 100% 3G signal enabled all the time, that'll work...
Well, that was just my 2 cents !
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So this cloud thing will allow me to listen to my music on multiple devices that have an internet connection.
Well I can already listen to my music on my MacBook, iPad and iPhone so why would I want it?
So this cloud thing will allow me to listen to my music on multiple devices that have an internet connection.
Well I can already listen to my music on my MacBook, iPad and iPhone so why would I want it?
This would be a really cool thing if they allow you to stream to your iPhone and use it with an iPhone compatible head unit in your car. That way I could carry some music on my iPhone for listening in the car and if I got bored with what I had or just wanted something different, I could stream from this cloud-based service.
There are a few head units that allow you to stream Pandora from your iPhone through your car stereo. Why not have your whole library like that?
There are a few head units that allow you to stream Pandora from your iPhone through your car stereo. Why not have your whole library like that?
^This.
I think Apple needs to forget about adding new stuff to MobileMe considering they can't even get the basics done right. I've had a MobileMe account since it was iTools and I've had more issues with the mail service than any other email provider I've had. That includes free webmail for crying out loud!
I think this will be more useful for accessing your music/videos from your macbooks, more than from your iPhones/iPads. So when I travel I won't have to carry my entire collection with me, I'll just take my MBP and access my music from wifi. At least that's how I'd use this service.
BRB guys. Going to go re-read the article so I can find the part where it says Apple is taking away everybody's hard drives.
Maybe you wouldn't. I could see a use for it myself - I have a library of music so big you couldn't fit it all on any existing iPhone, and it's annoying to be out someplace and wanting to listen to a song, but you can't because you had to exclude it from your last sync. It would be preferable then for me to be able to link my iPhone to my music library and just have Apple deliver everything to me on demand... be it from the hard drive at home or from a central location.
Of course, how this is all implemented will play a big role in whether the service is useful to me or not. If I can't listen to the CDs I bought and imported into iTunes for example... that's a dealbreaker as far as I'm concerned.
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I could care less about cloud based streaming.... I'm far more interested in cloud sync'ing.
Also just because Amazon requires users upload files doesn't mean they can't do deduplication across accounts similar to DropBox and others. It's still just a file storage service and I can see no reason they'd need licenses from industry.
Amnak said:
I could care less about cloud based streaming.... I'm far more interested in cloud sync'ing.
Also just because Amazon requires users upload files doesn't mean they can't do deduplication across accounts similar to DropBox and others. It's still just a file storage service and I can see no reason they'd need licenses from industry.
This is why i would love this service, i can't even fit half my music on my phone, let alone video. I would love to be able to sync a few gigs of songs locally, and if I fancy listening to a song left on my laptop (or apple cloud) i could stream it.
I envision the best way of presenting this local and remote info is by listing all the media on the iPhone in the form of album art or text, and greying out/applying a symbol to the music/video that would require streaming. If apple implement this something like this seamlessly, then they've got a winner in my opinion.
I don't even know why am I so excited about this since I always have my iPod classic with me.
Even though it would be awesome if iPhone had an external-cloud based space of 160 GB to substitute my loaded gem. That could seriously break the need for 256 GB SSDs in iPhones for us audiovores...
Now only if all my music would be on iTunes Store too....
Even though it would be awesome if iPhone had an external-cloud based space of 160 GB to substitute my loaded gem. That could seriously break the need for 256 GB SSDs in iPhones for us audiovores...
Now only if all my music would be on iTunes Store too....
If you have all of the music on your iPod purchased through iTunes, this cloud solution may be a dream for you. If you have a significant amount of music that was either burned to iTunes from CD, or is not available for purchase on iTunes, I'm wondering how this system will work out for you. I'm hoping that Apple has kept in mind that there are many people who have mass amounts of music that wasn't purchased through them, and has kept their needs in mind.
As Nishioka mentioned, if Apple's cloud solution doesn't meet your needs, you've still got the iPod Classic to fall back on. It seems that with rumors of the upcoming iPhone 5 being simply a spec bump to the iPhone 4 (and there's nothing wrong with that, it's still a great phone) that 2011 might be a good year for an increase in storage capacity as well. I can't fit half of my music collection on my iPhone, so I'm limited to either picking and choosing the music I want to carry with me, or purchasing a larger capacity device. 32/64/128 GB models would be a dream come true for me, and it seems that flash memory prices for higher capacity drives may be reaching a point where it's feasible for Apple to include them in iOS devices.
But..... If moving music storage to a cloud is going to be the new direction Apple takes, why would increasing memory be a logical step?
I think the idea is, you could log onto your account from anyone's iOS device and now you'd be able to play any of your songs.
Also, opens up the door to automatically syncing multiple iOS devices without having to do anything. Add music to your library and now it's available on all your devices without physical syncing.
It will be interesting to see what Apple's spin is on this. They've invested a ton into this so there has to be a "big thing" that goes with this.
UPDATE: Read some more comments and I have to agree.... this allows people with small storage devices like a 16BG iPad to have access to much larger music libraries and you no longer have to juggle playlists. Smart.
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Well, a 3G connection is more or less the same as wifi, although its quite unstable.
3G in the UK is quite good in my opinion. I'll wait for the networks to come up with unlimited plans as they have been a bitch all these times.
The problem is, without an Application like iTunes and a DRM, Amazon has no way to manage licensed materials. So if they want to do something similar to Apple, they really can't. Yes, what you upload is assumed to be yours, but music you buy from Amazon is not managed at the user level by Amazon. So unless they reconcile your purchase history, they don't know what's what, so it would be open season on the Amazon side and I think that's not what the Labels like.
In this case, the Apple "closed system" has the advantage of knowing what's what and it seems like Apple is doing it right by getting the record companies on board with the concept before launching.
Tell you what Apple. Make a 128GB iPhone and I'll pay *you* for it, rather than paying my service provider for the extra downloads (that I can't even do when I'm on the Underground, or in much of my office building, or abroad on holiday...)
You can already buy 64GB phones Apple. Don't get left behind.
You can already buy 64GB phones Apple. Don't get left behind.