Apple It Just Works Funny Website
Amongst all the big announcements at this year'due south WWDC keynote, there was an undercurrent that was subtle, but of import.
"Information technology merely works." Steve Jobs kept proverb this over and over again on stage. When Jobs does this, it's never an accident. It'due south a bulletin.
And information technology'south a message that was underscored by another give-and-take. "Automatically." Jobs must have said information technology a couple dozen times during the keynote.
So what is the message?
Though Apple tree stumbled out of the gate with MobileMe, and information technology never really took off (due to a steep $99 almanac price betoken), Apple is now going all-in with their cloud strategy. Only they're not doing information technology past simply tacking on cloud storage to their existing arsenal of products. They're attempting to redefine what the "cloud" is.
At 1 bespeak during the keynote, Jobs noted that some people think of the cloud as a hard disk drive in the sky where you put files in and then have them out. He even took a small shot at red-hot Dropbox. Simply as Apple sees it, the cloud is something much more. "The truth is on the deject," is how Jobs put it.
John Gruber correctly called that iCloud is essentially the new iTunes. That is, information technology moves the digital hub from the desktop computer to the cloud. Only Apple is aiming across even that.
With iCloud, Apple is transforming the cloud from an almost tangible place that you visit to find your stuff, to a place that only exists in the background. It's never seen. You never interact with it, your apps do — and you never realize it. It's magic.
Compare this to Google, the company perhaps about associated with the cloud. Google's arroyo has been to make the deject more accessible to existing PC users. They're doing this past extending familiar concepts. Google Docs is Microsoft Office, simply in the cloud. Your master indicate of interaction is a file system, only in the cloud. Gmail is Outlook, but in the cloud. Etc.
Meanwhile, another visitor now largely associated with the deject, Amazon, has substantially turned it into one giant server/hard drive that anyone can use for a fee. Merely it takes developers to build something on tiptop of information technology to give users a product to apply. Some are nifty. But many once more but extend the thought of the cloud every bit a remote hard drive.
While the fundamentals are the same, Apple's approach to the concept of the deject is the opposite of their competitors. Apple tree'southward belief is clearly that users will non and should not intendance how the deject actually works. When Jobs gave a brief glimpse of their new Northward Carolina datacenter that is the centerpiece of iCloud, he only noted that it was full of "stuff" — "expensive stuff," he quipped.
The diagrams Jobs showed on stage as to how iCloud works were as simplified as possible. Had it not been appear at a developers briefing, I'm not sure Apple would accept even done those. Instead, the focus would have been even more on the demos. You lot're working on a document in Pages on your iPad, you movement over to Pages on your Mac, and there information technology is. Information technology even remembers where you were last editing. You lot download a song to your iPhone, yous pick up your iPad, in that location information technology is.
It all just works.
And that speaks to the larger game here. Apple has been going out of their mode to avoid using the word "syncing" with regard to iCloud. That implies that files exist in ane place and need to be moved. Merely again, even that'south too technical for the story Apple is weaving. With iPad/iPhone and now OS Ten Lion, you don't salve documents anymore. They salve automatically — but an easier way to call back about it is that they just exist, as is, in realtime on all your devices.
The truth is that they exist on your machine, then on iCloud — again, the "truth" — in a wheel. Merely you don't demand to know any of that. They just be. Who cares where as long equally they're right there on all your devices when yous need them?
Files are something Microsoft worries about. Files in the deject are something Google and Amazon worry nigh. Apple's iCloud is almost opening an application and the affair you want to access being at that place.
That also speaks to a key difference between Apple and their competitors. With MobileMe, Apple tree put a fairly heavy accent on the web component. They spent months working on and reworking cute web apps for the service. During the iCloud keynote, there was no mention of a spider web component. For what it'south worth, nosotros've heard that the MobileMe apps on me.com will exist altered to work with iCloud apps, but that may exist a ways off. And that will certainly not exist the principal emphasis. The main emphasis will on the cantankerous-device native apps with iCloud magic.
That'south the opposite of Google's approach — at least their Chrome/Chrome Bone approach. That production is only about the web. That's where everything exists, and syncing as well happens automatically thanks to that. In a weird twist, in that regard, Chrome Bone is mayhap the closest thing to Apple'due south iCloud vision. When you lot boot upwardly a Chromebook and enter your password, everything appears. Over again, like magic.
With Chrome OS, everything is always there considering everything but exists in the cloud. But Google has been angle over backwards to tack on a file direction organization to Chrome Os. That weakens their cloud argument, in my view. But again, their aim is to ease the transition of electric current PC users to the cloud.
But Google'due south position is especially odd because they have Android also. Yes, deject syncing is a big component of that Os and has been for a while. Only it'due south the Google arroyo. Information technology'southward files, and uploading, and syncing. Some of it is automated, some is non. It requires some thought. Information technology sort of but works — equally long as you know what yous're doing.
And the truth is that this is the point where we may actually start to encounter some truly fundamental differences between Google and Apple after the by few years going head-to-head with feature matching. Apple tree is going after consumers who have absolutely no idea what the cloud is, and don't care. Apple is saying they shouldn't care. It all just works.
Google seems to exist aiming more for users who empathise current computing paradigms and desire to transition that knowledge to the time to come of computing, the deject. Power users, if you will. Many of the people reading this mail are in this military camp. But at that place are many more who are not.
Apple has rethought and rewritten their apps — including their desktop apps — from the footing up to be woven with iCloud material that a user won't see. Google wants the users to be able to see that textile if they choose to, and in many ways, encourages it every bit sort of a safety internet in the transition to the cloud.
It is two different approaches to the same thing, the cloud. And Apple doesn't believe that Google tin can match them even if they wanted to because they don't accept complete control of their ecosystem in the same way that Apple does. "They can never make this so information technology simply works," Jobs stated at one betoken.
In Apple tree's core vision, there are three types of products that must seamlessly work with one another: phones, tablets, and the recently "demoted" PC. With Android, Google is currently only strong in phones. Tablets aren't taking off for them yet. And there is no PC presence — well, across the spider web, which again runs into the Chrome Bone bifurcation problem.
With that in mind, it may cease upward being Apple that helps transition users to the cloud, instead of Google despite their emphasis on PC norms.
"You know, if the hardware is the brain and the sinew of our products, the software in them is their soul," Jobs said on Monday. Apple tree is now more clearly than e'er betting that will non be web software, but native software backed invisibly by the spider web. Google's position is incomparably less clear. With the existence of Chrome Os and Android, they're currently betting on both. That dichotomy screams annihilation but "information technology just works."
[paradigm: flickr/sip khoon]
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/08/apple-icloud-google-cloud/
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