And Again It Just Works Sfx
Amid all the big announcements at this twelvemonth's WWDC keynote, there was an undercurrent that was subtle, but of import.
"It just works." Steve Jobs kept maxim this over and over once again on stage. When Jobs does this, it'due south never an accident. Information technology's a message.
And information technology'due south a message that was underscored past another word. "Automatically." Jobs must take said it a couple dozen times during the keynote.
So what is the bulletin?
Though Apple stumbled out of the gate with MobileMe, and information technology never really took off (due to a steep $99 almanac toll point), Apple is now going all-in with their deject strategy. But they're not doing information technology past only tacking on cloud storage to their existing arsenal of products. They're attempting to redefine what the "deject" is.
At i point during the keynote, Jobs noted that some people recollect of the cloud as a hard disk in the sky where yous put files in and then accept them out. He even took a modest shot at red-hot Dropbox. But as Apple tree sees it, the deject is something much more than. "The truth is on the cloud," is how Jobs put it.
John Gruber correctly called that iCloud is essentially the new iTunes. That is, it moves the digital hub from the desktop computer to the cloud. But Apple is aiming beyond even that.
With iCloud, Apple is transforming the deject from an about tangible place that you visit to find your stuff, to a identify that merely exists in the background. It's never seen. You never interact with it, your apps do — and you lot never realize it. It's magic.
Compare this to Google, the company perhaps virtually associated with the cloud. Google's approach has been to brand the cloud more attainable to existing PC users. They're doing this by extending familiar concepts. Google Docs is Microsoft Office, but in the cloud. Your primary point of interaction is a file organisation, simply in the deject. Gmail is Outlook, merely in the cloud. Etc.
Meanwhile, some other company now largely associated with the cloud, Amazon, has essentially turned it into one giant server/hard drive that anyone tin use for a fee. Merely it takes developers to build something on top of it to requite users a production to use. Some are peachy. Only many again but extend the idea of the cloud as a remote hard bulldoze.
While the fundamentals are the same, Apple tree's approach to the concept of the cloud is the contrary of their competitors. Apple'due south belief is conspicuously that users will not and should not care how the cloud actually works. When Jobs gave a cursory glimpse of their new North Carolina datacenter that is the centerpiece of iCloud, he but noted that information technology was full of "stuff" — "expensive stuff," he quipped.
The diagrams Jobs showed on stage as to how iCloud works were every bit simplified every bit possible. Had it not been announced at a developers conference, I'chiliad not sure Apple would accept even done those. Instead, the focus would have been even more on the demos. You're working on a document in Pages on your iPad, you lot move over to Pages on your Mac, and there information technology is. It even remembers where you were last editing. Y'all download a vocal to your iPhone, yous pick up your iPad, in that location it is.
Information technology all merely works.
And that speaks to the larger game here. Apple has been going out of their way to avoid using the discussion "syncing" with regard to iCloud. That implies that files exist in one place and need to be moved. But once more, even that'due south too technical for the story Apple is weaving. With iPad/iPhone and now Os 10 Panthera leo, you don't relieve documents anymore. They save automatically — but an easier manner to think most it is that they simply 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 cycle. Only you lot don't demand to know any of that. They just exist. Who cares where every bit long as they're right there on all your devices when yous demand them?
Files are something Microsoft worries most. Files in the cloud are something Google and Amazon worry almost. Apple'due south iCloud is virtually opening an application and the thing y'all desire to access being there.
That also speaks to a key difference between Apple and their competitors. With MobileMe, Apple put a fairly heavy emphasis on the web component. They spent months working on and reworking beautiful spider web apps for the service. During the iCloud keynote, at that place was no mention of a web component. For what it's worth, we've heard that the MobileMe apps on me.com will be altered to work with iCloud apps, but that may be a ways off. And that will certainly not be the primary accent. The principal emphasis will on the cantankerous-device native apps with iCloud magic.
That's the opposite of Google's approach — at least their Chrome/Chrome OS arroyo. That product is merely about the web. That's where everything exists, and syncing also happens automatically thanks to that. In a weird twist, in that regard, Chrome Bone is perhaps the closest affair to Apple'southward iCloud vision. When you kicking up a Chromebook and enter your password, everything appears. Again, like magic.
With Chrome OS, everything is always there because everything only exists in the cloud. But Google has been bending over backwards to tack on a file management system to Chrome Bone. That weakens their cloud argument, in my view. Just again, their aim is to ease the transition of current PC users to the cloud.
Only Google's position is especially odd because they have Android as well. Yes, cloud syncing is a large component of that Bone and has been for a while. But it's the Google approach. Information technology's files, and uploading, and syncing. Some of it is automatic, some is not. It requires some idea. Information technology sort of just works — every bit long as you know what you're doing.
And the truth is that this is the point where we may really start to come across some truly key differences between Google and Apple subsequently the by few years going head-to-head with feature matching. Apple is going after consumers who have admittedly no idea what the deject is, and don't intendance. Apple is saying they shouldn't care. It all just works.
Google seems to exist aiming more for users who understand current calculating paradigms and desire to transition that knowledge to the futurity of calculating, the cloud. Ability users, if you will. Many of the people reading this mail service are in this camp. Merely at that place are many more who are not.
Apple has rethought and rewritten their apps — including their desktop apps — from the ground upwards to be woven with iCloud fabric that a user won't see. Google wants the users to be able to see that textile if they choose to, and in many means, encourages it equally sort of a safety net in the transition to the cloud.
It is two unlike approaches to the aforementioned matter, the cloud. And Apple doesn't believe that Google tin match them even if they wanted to because they don't have complete control of their ecosystem in the aforementioned way that Apple does. "They can never make this then it simply works," Jobs stated at one point.
In Apple'south cadre vision, there are three types of products that must seamlessly piece of 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, beyond the web, which once again runs into the Chrome Bone bifurcation problem.
With that in mind, it may finish upward beingness Apple that helps transition users to the deject, instead of Google despite their accent 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 Mon. Apple is at present more conspicuously than always betting that will not be spider web software, but native software backed invisibly by the web. Google's position is incomparably less clear. With the beingness of Chrome Os and Android, they're currently betting on both. That dichotomy screams anything merely "it just works."
[image: flickr/sip khoon]
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/08/apple-icloud-google-cloud/
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