So with all this talk about the Apple iCloud launch today, it all sounds pretty spiffy. Especially if you know that it’s powered by Apple’s iDataCenter – which sounds like pretty powerful stuff.
Pay for everything. Access everything. Store nothing!
Yay
- No long upload times of your data to a cloud. (Currently up to 5mb is standard in North American homes that opt for the ‘highest’ available upload speed)
- Everything will harmoniously sync in iDataCenter heaven, thus nailing the ‘one-stop shop’ saying, to the wall.
- Tech Support – it looks like cloudburst backup has been planned for and heavily invested in.
- Vast music selection confirmed.
Nay
- Still seems piecemeal. If you can’t own it, you are buying a piece of something. You are buying a song or a movie or a book. And yet you are NOT buying a song a movie, or a book. You are in fact purchasing and accessing virtual licensing that you can access from anywhere, any computer, simply by logging into your iCloud account, hosted in heaven aka iDataCenter.
- Subscription-based to an extent. Yes, you can subscribe to iCloud. But how many subscriptions can you or will you need to have inside of iCloud?
- How many new things will you have to learn ‘all of a sudden’ in order to navigate through this new heaven?
This is the Sun. But will it rain….
Not about physical things. This is a new era. About virtual access. Licensed access.
Will this lower-cost alternative to hardware storage music/photo/misc. media backups, and the larger, more diverse selection of music – keep the media pirates at bay?
Will hackers be excited at the grand new challenge of and be encouraged bombard this sexy new cloudcluster?
Will the transition of data from MobileMe subscribers be a smooth transition? or will it be messy, like when mac.com became me.com (mmhmm. you know what I mean…) ….everyone’s data got a bit screwy… ‘Just oooone last messy transition and then everything will be just perrrrfect! iCloud – TRUST!’
Will it do anything to society’s psyche of owning or possessing things and collections of things? This is not comic books or stamps living in neat plastic acid-free sleeves. This is not barbie or comic hero collectibles box-fresh with air from 1950 enclosed on a shelf in your dusty basement.
This is meta. Apple is meta. This you and you are soon to be meta.
