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I like this idea. Cellular data bandwidth in the US is still prohibitively priced -- if you're frequently on the go and want to have access to more than a fraction of your music collection or watch more than half an hour of video, this will pay for itself in cellular data plan savings within a few months. You could also use it in places like subways where you can get neither cell reception nor wifi.
 
And for those folks who don't need a Mac, I don't understand why it is not possible to back up an iOS device directly to a time capsule.

I don't see how it is possible at all. iOS doesn't have a Time Machine app like OS X and it works differently than how iCloud backup for iOS. Yes you can backup your iOS to the Time Capsule, but you still need a Mac to do it.
 
For Mexico that is probably pretty shameful (but I don't know the details). But it's not always the hotel's fault.


So, yeah, your hotel may be incompetent or just unwilling to spend the money. (In Mexico I would guess that is the case.)

Here in mexico if you live in certain areas, very few, you can get very fast internet. In most places a couple of mbits (like we have and we are lucky to get that) is the norm. In areas of toluca, like areas of mexico city, you can get totalplay with 100mbits. It's a vast minotity. To be fair though most do not have internet here. Where we live small ciber's are everywhere and they all have very slow internet with antique computers. About 5 pesos (maybe 40 cents us) for a half hour of internet.

Hotel's, not hotel. It's not uncommon, even in (DF) Mexico city. I've been in hotel's where they say they have free internet and then I have to ask to be moved to where there is actually a signal and even then it's no good. Cement buildings contribute I'm sure.

In mexico things are very business oriented, not comsumer oriented. Tourist areas and areas with a high foreign population are the exception, but not the rule for most mexican's living in mexican areas.

The state we live in, Mexico state, is the most populated and larger than mexico city (the only one). The government admits to several hundred thousand in this state without electricity, they lowball big time. While these things happen I will refuse to call our country a developing country as people like to refer to us as (I know you were talking about another country).

So here it's several things. We live in Toluca, the capital of the largest state (population) and for example telmex reception is horible. Both for calls and data, not reliable at all. Very low speeds when you can get good reception. That's just how it is, lack of competition and corruption allow this to happen.

If you do not have service you still pay, your only option is to cut service. Telmex makes a lot of money without even providing service in certain cases.

CFE, electricity, government owned. The electicity goes out for one person or just a few then it's not worth fixing. They will flat out tell you that it doesn't affect enough people so it might be a couple of weeks before they get to it.

I'm just using telcel and cfe as examples to show the mindset.

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mom's '11 iMac's WD drive failed then failed again after replacement and now seems to be failing again after the second replacement, this time out of warranty.

I had the same thing happen with a 1tb western digital. The new one failed and the replacement failed.
 
This already exists. With iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match I don't have to hook up anything to watch my iTunes content and never have to worry about carrying around a hard drive or running out of space.

iTunes match has a problem, a very big problem, in countries where you do not have unlimited downloads/ uploads. Local storage resolves this.
I would immediately buy a time capsule/Apple TV with a built in iTunes server for local storage that did not require booting up a Mac to satisfy DRM requirements. It would save bucket loads of power which in this country costs a bomb.
 
When will apple get smart and offer iCloud backup for all macs as well?

I'm really waiting for this too. I recently sent a feedback form to Apple detailing this request. I think It would padticularly benefit folks who buy deep into the Apple ecosystem, such as myself, who gets 95% of their apps from the Mac App Store, so that wouldnt count against my iCloud storage space.
 
How much do you want to bet that Apple will disable/block the Seagate Media app from being used

Given that there is a sandisk that does almost the exact thing in basically the same way that Apple actually sells in their stores, I doubt they will balk at this. As long as it doesn't use private API etc they likely don't care about folks using something like this anymore than they do folks using a stylus if they like

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When will apple get smart and offer iCloud backup for all macs as well?

Computers can have hundreds of GB of data on them, Apple would have to create much bigger server farms to support computers backing up to iCloud. Not to mention the time it would take to do a restore given the slow ass speeds of current ISPs. Perhaps when Fiber becomes the normal it might be viable.
 
Cloud is anything accessed over the Internet. If you access this while you are away from home, it is in the cloud at that moment.

Actually the ideal data in a "cloud" is that your data is accessible anywhere and anytime on any platform that may be available to you.
 
Actually the ideal data in a "cloud" is that your data is accessible anywhere and anytime on any platform that may be available to you.

And thus if something is accessible over the Internet it is accessible anywhere and anytime (you have an Internet connection). Access from any platform is an ideal that people tend to work towards but often it might not progress beyond access via a web browser.
 
And a connection speed of only 1-3mbps (very realistic in many hotels across the western and eastern world, from someone [me] who spends 4/7 nights a week in hotels for work), where streaming reliably isn't possible or the iPad caches are too insignificant to maintain the stream well enough

Even in the USA-- I stayed in a regular Marriott recently. They had free low-speed wifi (for email, web browsing) and charged for high-speed access suitable for movie streaming.

And then, there's in-flight usage.
 
Computers can have hundreds of GB of data on them, Apple would have to create much bigger server farms to support computers backing up to iCloud. Not to mention the time it would take to do a restore given the slow ass speeds of current ISPs. Perhaps when Fiber becomes the normal it might be viable.

Yes I know this. What about Carbonite or Crash Plan or... this is easily doable.
 
Imagine that your hotel room comes with free WiFi... welcome to 2015.

I used segate's first version of this quite a bit. Some parts of Eastern Europe have very slow internet. India. Nepal and Mynamar and much or South East Asia were also terribly slow.
It also came in handy on busses and trains.

Welcome to the world outside of the U.S./U.K.
 
Seagate/WD, no thank you, HGST drives are so much better.
Sadly there are not many reliable drive manufacturers left, the former brands bought almost everyone out.
Yes, I am aware that HGST is part of them now as well, at least AFAIK.

Well, I've been using WD drives for over 15 years without any issues (hope I don't jinx myself now). I use two 2TB WD portable hard drives (my passport) as backup for my media files. Each one is a duplicate of the other just in case one fails. I'm considering getting some wifi storage so I can stream my videos to my two smart TVs, instead my current method of using USB flash drives. I'm hoping WD comes out with something new at CES 2015 this week.
 
In another thread an Android migrant asked if there was an option to attach any USB drive to the phone, like he could on his old platform. Interesting that there was far less enthusiasm for this type of capability when asked in that context.

I'd love to have this type of capability paired with a file system. Imagine having a large movie collection readily available on your iOS device via flash drive.
 
You do realize this is an Apple-centric site, right?

And i am still interested in apple stuff, not only because it's 0.4mm thinner than last generation ? Or did apple brainwashing of thinner = better runs deeper than i thought ?
 
And for those folks who don't need a Mac, I don't understand why it is not possible to back up an iOS device directly to a time capsule.

This is what I'd like, I don't use a computer at home anymore just my iPad and phone and I'd like to be able to back up my photos and videos to more than just Apples iCloud, an iOS time capsule would be perfect.
 
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