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New Time Capsules Rather Than Apple's Servers to Act as Hub for iCloud Data Syncing?
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MS ability to sell OS and software is brilliant. Of even greater amusement is their ability to turn mindless drones into mindless drones.
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I'd say that if Apple have got this right they could indeed develop a new income stream for themselves. I bought a NAS last year but if this all converges as I hope, I'll be ditching it for Apple's offering. The NAS is fine for those with hours to kill setting up and maintaining the hardware, but I just want something I can just leave to it while I do something less boring instead.
If they price this right and aim it at the right market, the seamless backup, streaming etc could give them a new edge.
I'd say that if Apple have got this right they could indeed develop a new income stream for themselves. I bought a NAS last year but if this all converges as I hope, I'll be ditching it for Apple's offering. The NAS is fine for those with hours to kill setting up and maintaining the hardware, but I just want something I can just leave to it while I do something less boring instead.
If they price this right and aim it at the right market, the seamless backup, streaming etc could give them a new edge.
If you need a TC for this I am going to be pissed! I run a home RAID system using AFP/NetAtalk to serve my TC functions on my home network.
No way people will pay £240 for time capsule to be able to do this. They will have to cut the price drastically. I wonder how they will get round this barrier to adoption without annoying people who have an existing time capsule
Cheap, easy, secure and cross platform will make it a success. Potentially difficult to achieve, but anything less will be a struggle to get the masses to adopt. With Apple arriving late to the cloud game I suspect they will bring something innovative, why play second string?
New TC to serve up my content?????
Not sure what Steve's upload speed is like over at the castle, but mine ain't fit for hosting/serving content to the wireless world.
Am i reading this right? I download a song from iTunes whilst sitting at my MBP in the living room. Then I jet out the door and wanna listen to it on my iPhone and I'm gonna wait while my TimeCapsule spins up and serves up and my phone starts pulling it in?
Remind me what those 500,000 sq ft of data center goodies are doing?
Not sure what Steve's upload speed is like over at the castle, but mine ain't fit for hosting/serving content to the wireless world.
Am i reading this right? I download a song from iTunes whilst sitting at my MBP in the living room. Then I jet out the door and wanna listen to it on my iPhone and I'm gonna wait while my TimeCapsule spins up and serves up and my phone starts pulling it in?
Remind me what those 500,000 sq ft of data center goodies are doing?
I think this setup involving a TC to make things faster/smoother on the LOCAL NETWORK ONLY is genius.
If I want to play some music or movies via iCloud that I have stored in my home folder, I could stream them right off my own network so its faster and doesn't eat up my bandwidth cap.
But everything still needs to be really in the cloud too. What if I am a traveling sales person and my router at home shuts off for some reason, the HD fails, or another problem arises. I still need access to my files.
Plus, I bet Apple's servers will have much better upload speeds than my connection, so accessing "iCloud" on the go is going to be terrible unless I am getting the files off of Apple's servers.
And what if someone breaks into my house and steals my TC or there's a fire and it's destroyed. I have just lost all my files. That means I would need another backup solution. For me, the whole point of a cloud solution is so that I don't need to worry about losing my files again, which again the TC-only setup would fail at.
Now if iCloud is smart enough to figure out when I am at home and thus use my local storage (TC) or if I am outside and therefore use Apple's own servers, and it can do so seamlessly, now that's an improvement over DropBox and any other Cloud service.
At that point, Synching is not going to be an issue at home at all, since local speeds are super fast. And by the time I hit the road, I am sure that TC would have uploaded all the files in the background by then to the real iCloud.
So if this whole TC thing is that if you have a new one, it will make iCloud EVEN BETTER, then it's GENIUS.
If this whole TC thing IS the iCloud and you must have it on to share your files at all times, then its an EPIC FAIL.
If I want to play some music or movies via iCloud that I have stored in my home folder, I could stream them right off my own network so its faster and doesn't eat up my bandwidth cap.
But everything still needs to be really in the cloud too. What if I am a traveling sales person and my router at home shuts off for some reason, the HD fails, or another problem arises. I still need access to my files.
Plus, I bet Apple's servers will have much better upload speeds than my connection, so accessing "iCloud" on the go is going to be terrible unless I am getting the files off of Apple's servers.
And what if someone breaks into my house and steals my TC or there's a fire and it's destroyed. I have just lost all my files. That means I would need another backup solution. For me, the whole point of a cloud solution is so that I don't need to worry about losing my files again, which again the TC-only setup would fail at.
Now if iCloud is smart enough to figure out when I am at home and thus use my local storage (TC) or if I am outside and therefore use Apple's own servers, and it can do so seamlessly, now that's an improvement over DropBox and any other Cloud service.
At that point, Synching is not going to be an issue at home at all, since local speeds are super fast. And by the time I hit the road, I am sure that TC would have uploaded all the files in the background by then to the real iCloud.
So if this whole TC thing is that if you have a new one, it will make iCloud EVEN BETTER, then it's GENIUS.
If this whole TC thing IS the iCloud and you must have it on to share your files at all times, then its an EPIC FAIL.
This sounds good. TC won't be mandatory but would make it easier for slower connections I think. I hope they update TC with native IPv6, 6to4 is nice but would be even nicer to plan for the future and accommodate people with IPv6 ISP's.
And this way you have 2 copy's of your data adding redundancy.
And this way you have 2 copy's of your data adding redundancy.
That video was really ineresting. It's strange to see Steve promising that Apple is a great company that has yet to prove itself.
For those whining about upload speed, you're not getting it.
The Time Capsule stays put, connected to your home network. Backing up/syncing to it from Mac/iOS is fast. When that's done, you're free to go. Time Capsule will then upload to iCloud on its own time.
You don't have to sit there and wait for the painfully slow connection from TC up to iCloud.
But with FiOS I have 25 Mbps up anyway, so it shouldn't take too long.
The Time Capsule stays put, connected to your home network. Backing up/syncing to it from Mac/iOS is fast. When that's done, you're free to go. Time Capsule will then upload to iCloud on its own time.
You don't have to sit there and wait for the painfully slow connection from TC up to iCloud.
But with FiOS I have 25 Mbps up anyway, so it shouldn't take too long.
Hmm doubt that, they struck a deal with the music labels for a reason. If you purchase something from iTunes they can verify that and transfer it from iCloud's master copy.
If this rumor is true, I don't believe this service is meant for streaming video or syncing video. I believe iTunes iCloud sync is meant to do that, at least for video bought from iTunes. This Time Capsule sync I believe is meant mostly for photos and documents.
AL wouldnt be the best for reception. I think black like the AppleTV would be a good guess.
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I agree that mirroring local backup on iCloud could work well. Presumably your iPhone etc would only connect locally when on your home wifi network. This would be usable for those who just wanted the iCloud storage but for those of us with backup needs etc, the TC route would be an optional upgrade.
I agree too that making the ATV act in a similar way would work well. The price difference between ATV and an external hard drive or an integrated TC isn't so much.
I agree that mirroring local backup on iCloud could work well. Presumably your iPhone etc would only connect locally when on your home wifi network. This would be usable for those who just wanted the iCloud storage but for those of us with backup needs etc, the TC route would be an optional upgrade.
I agree too that making the ATV act in a similar way would work well. The price difference between ATV and an external hard drive or an integrated TC isn't so much.
...
Before cooking up these crackpot theories, has anyone stopped and thought about the fact that maybe Time Capsule is being discontinued as it has been proven to fail easily and with the use of Apple's servers and iCloud, a Time Capsule backup/sync home setup won't be necessary. Apple is into making better and more seamless experiences, not complicating things by forcing their customers to buy and setup a Time Capsule just to get a proper syncing/caching/backingup solution...
Before cooking up these crackpot theories, has anyone stopped and thought about the fact that maybe Time Capsule is being discontinued as it has been proven to fail easily and with the use of Apple's servers and iCloud, a Time Capsule backup/sync home setup won't be necessary. Apple is into making better and more seamless experiences, not complicating things by forcing their customers to buy and setup a Time Capsule just to get a proper syncing/caching/backingup solution...
Awesome
Pay us for new Time Capsule, Lion and iCloud to store and sync your data to your devices. No bandwidth, storage or availability management for Apple. In the grand Apple tradition this will sell and fans will be rekindled when Apple announces now they have even more moolah in the bank!
Pay us for new Time Capsule, Lion and iCloud to store and sync your data to your devices. No bandwidth, storage or availability management for Apple. In the grand Apple tradition this will sell and fans will be rekindled when Apple announces now they have even more moolah in the bank!
Just speculation, but imagine a combination of the two approaches.
You pay $??/year for the iCloud service and it provides a number of features:
All sounds nice, but you are always going to be reliant an internet connection (and a fast one at that) for the best performance. Its fine for smaller files, documents and the like, but for larger files, media... then it some form of caching would be nice.
The AppleTV already has 8Gb of storage - that could certainly be used to cache movies and music so that there is always something on hand to listen to. Same for iOS devices, and I believe Apple recently filed a patent for something along these lines - partial syncing of the starts of songs so that network latency does not impair streaming.
Imagine something similar for files - a low cost $199 Airport Express and Time Capsule replacement, running iOS with a large hard drive installed. It will mirror all of the files you have on your iCloud - documents, music, video - and make them available on your local network to your devices. A large local cache like this makes reduces the dependency on your network connection, so you can still work and stream media without worrying about your internet connection. Files are then synced to the remote iCloud in the background.
Thats where I suspect Apple is going with this.
Obviously they are going to need to incentivize it for existing Time Capsule or NAS users - while I doubt all models of Time Capsule will be upgradable, a few things to make this an attractive upgrade:
You pay $??/year for the iCloud service and it provides a number of features:
- Storage of local files to the cloud
- Storage and streaming of music/video from the cloud to your Mac's and iOS devices
- API's for app developers to take advantage of cloud syncing
- Over the air syncing of iOS devices
- Over the air updates for iOS devices and apps
All sounds nice, but you are always going to be reliant an internet connection (and a fast one at that) for the best performance. Its fine for smaller files, documents and the like, but for larger files, media... then it some form of caching would be nice.
The AppleTV already has 8Gb of storage - that could certainly be used to cache movies and music so that there is always something on hand to listen to. Same for iOS devices, and I believe Apple recently filed a patent for something along these lines - partial syncing of the starts of songs so that network latency does not impair streaming.
Imagine something similar for files - a low cost $199 Airport Express and Time Capsule replacement, running iOS with a large hard drive installed. It will mirror all of the files you have on your iCloud - documents, music, video - and make them available on your local network to your devices. A large local cache like this makes reduces the dependency on your network connection, so you can still work and stream media without worrying about your internet connection. Files are then synced to the remote iCloud in the background.
Thats where I suspect Apple is going with this.
Obviously they are going to need to incentivize it for existing Time Capsule or NAS users - while I doubt all models of Time Capsule will be upgradable, a few things to make this an attractive upgrade:
- Low price point. Just look at the AppleTV's $99 price tag, you could take that as a base, remove the video hardware and add networking stuff and a big harddrive and keep things under $200.
- Free or discounted iCloud service with purchase.
Outstanding!
THIS makes sense. So far all this 'cloud' computing chatter has been a bunch of nonsense that I have no interest in. This concept is the first 'cloud' computing idea that sounds actually practical and useful. I sure hope this is an accurate rumor - if so, Apple will once again lead the way in making new technology actually accessible and worthwhile to the mass market.
THIS makes sense. So far all this 'cloud' computing chatter has been a bunch of nonsense that I have no interest in. This concept is the first 'cloud' computing idea that sounds actually practical and useful. I sure hope this is an accurate rumor - if so, Apple will once again lead the way in making new technology actually accessible and worthwhile to the mass market.
Never going to happen. The primary purposes is to be a wireless router, and it would kill the signal.
It could go black like the Apple TV though.
Technically could Apples server be used to make the streaming process from a local TC speedier?
I always thought if I did cloud storage it would be on my own terms through a custom built server. I bought a Time Capsule a few years ago as I thought it would do something similar to what this article is proposing but it sucked when I tried it out and ended up selling the TC 6 months ago. Seems like a good decision now! I've also been trying iDisk lately. It sucks compared to Dropbox.
I always thought if I did cloud storage it would be on my own terms through a custom built server. I bought a Time Capsule a few years ago as I thought it would do something similar to what this article is proposing but it sucked when I tried it out and ended up selling the TC 6 months ago. Seems like a good decision now! I've also been trying iDisk lately. It sucks compared to Dropbox.
Well you just answered it yourself. It will be just part of the whole thing (given this rumour is true).
Well - most of their other wifi devices are aluminum as well.. probably with a plastic insert on it like the Bluetooth Keyboard/iPod Touch/iPhone 1