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Apple's iCloud will automatically store, sync data for free
- tvon 15y agoA less than ideal setup for non-iTunes music, but IMO that was to be expected.
- stashdot 15y agoNot really - TFA leaves out iTunes Match - which appears to be an incredible service.
- tvon 15y agoI may be underestimating it's worth, but my first impression was that iTunes Match would be met (by users in general) with a feeling of paying for your non-iTunes music twice.
- corin_ 15y agoFor anyone who has illegal music, it's paying once not twice and it's hardly expensive (cheaper than music subscription services). For anyone who has non-iTunes music legally, given the cost of music, chances are that for most people the yearly fee will be very low compared to the rest of their collection, it's basically ~2-3 albums worth. At leat for anyone who has enough music to be worth using this for (if you own 5 CDs, just sync them once, why bother), $25 will be a small piece of what they've paid for the music.
- ctdonath 15y agoI'd been planning to re-rip my entire CD collection to lossless. I'd say hassle-free upgrade to 256kbps AAC for $25 is a suitable alternative by far.
- stashdot 15y agoItunes Match service seems mind blowing. "Even 20,000 songs" will cost only $24.99 per year it seems.
- rauljara 15y agoWhile I do think it's a good deal if you like the iTunes ecosystem, keep in mind you are paying $25 for music you already have, and you are also more fully committing yourself to iTunes. I expect Apple is losing some money on the service, but they have clearly made the calculation that locking more users in is worth it.
- seanalltogether 15y agoWhat I don't get is why it isn't just a generic music streaming service? If I have to pay $24.99 to access music I've already purchased elsewhere, this is actually encouraging me to go illegally download music to upload to the new service instead. I'm willing to pay once for music, not twice.
- brown9-2 15y agoI think their assumption is that it is for music that was paid for in the past.
- jfager 15y ago1. That's what the comment you're responding to is complaining about (if I paid for it in the past, why would I hand over $25 bucks to pay for it again?). 2. Apple doesn't live in a vacuum and isn't stupid, they know they're effectively offering amnesty to pirates. Their bet is that they win by bringing people into their ecosystem, that $25 and a shot at future purchases is a better deal than the nothing they're currently getting from pirates.
- tptacek 15y agoI have roughly 700 albums that I ripped off little plastic disks in the '90s, all encoded at 192, all riddled with bit errors after being copied through 6-9 different IDE/SATA drives. This announcement seems great. I will get way more than $25/yr value out of having reliable access to all this music again. I am not hung up on "how often" I've paid for this music. I bought the CDs; if I wanted to, I could have archived them as carefully as Rob from High Fidelity. I have better things to do with my life. The $25 convenience fee here is buying me a lot of convenience. If I didn't want the convenience, I wouldn't have to pay for it. I could just rerip. Let me work out my hourly rate and see what kind of return I'm getting for nevermind I'm just going to pay Apple.
- starnix17 15y agoCoolest news for developers, there are APIs for this for use with third party apps.
- ben1040 15y agoThis actually may solve some problems I had been trying to wrap my head around in an app I'm designing. The existing method of introducing documents into apps (using iTunes) really sucks, I wonder what the iCloud API will look like.
- spitfire 15y agoThere was for mobileme too. Transmit would sync your settings across computers using mobileme. This seems to me like a very large relaunch of mobileme. Awesome, yes, but still just a relaunch.
- ugh 15y agoBut you had to convince your users to sign up for something that costs $100 per year. Now it’s free and comes by default with any device running iOS. That’s a rather significant change. (Oh, and that functionality is now open to iOS developers which are a much bigger deal than Mac developers.)
- mortenjorck 15y agoThis is massive news for any developers that were considering adding a sync feature to their apps. Even just local sync is a headache to implement from scratch, to say nothing of cloud sync – and what Apple just announced is a complete, unified solution from system-level APIs to servers, all ready-made and awaiting some Cocoa calls. (And not to gloat, but I pretty much called this a week ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603921 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603921 )
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- MatthewB 15y agoShouldn't dropbox be a little nervous?
- tobylane 15y agoOnly when the windows client comes. I hope it's portable, with SSL.
- bergie 15y agoUnlikely, much of Apple's current strategy seems to be in lock-in.
- xh4n 15y agoIt seems developers can use APIs in both Mac and Pc. I see no reason why there will not be a third party client for iClouds in Windows.
- bergie 15y agoI'll believe it when I see it. Just like there aren't any 3rd-party FaceTime clients, and I guess there won't be any iMessage clients either. Currently all major players are competing on who manages to build the most closed ecosystem. I hope this is a phase that will pass.
- timdorr 15y agoThey showed a Windows computer with pictures from iCloud during the keynote.
- tptacek 15y agoMeh? Large scale storage on Internet servers has been around since the '90s. Dropbox is important because of the user experience, which iCloud doesn't really address. You think the Windows client for iCloud is going to be as seamless as Dropbox? I bet the difference is so big my mom can articulate it. Rdio, on the other hand, just got smote.
- mrvc 15y agoThis is great, but can cell networks handle the load? They're already struggling from a significant lack of investment and this could well be a straw that breaks the camels back.
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- st3fan 15y agoBlame the telcos and their bad infrastructure.
- headShrinker 15y agoHopefully, the necessity for a more bandwidth will breakdown conventional current concepts and models from the big telecom, opening the way for innovation from smaller faster moving companies, We need some new competition, and some deregulation in the US. The current model it too expensive and US companies are getting wiped in comparison with companies from other countries.
- city41 15y agoThe article says back ups will only occur over wifi. I assume that will be the bulk of the bandwidth icloud needs.
- maercsrats 15y agoSyncing with things can happen over 3g. Being transparent can be nice but not with unlimited plans gone from carriers. I'm wondering if there will be an option to say not to sync over 3g unless you are on wifi.
- spullara 15y agoYes, you can turn syncing off on 3g.
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- powrtoch 15y agoI'm curious to see how well the iTunes Match feature works. Naturally it will have to use audio fingerprinting rather than just trusting user-supplied metadata. The catch is that this technology is probably based on Lala (who Apple bought out), and Lala's software was extremely dodgy. I had records where <50% of songs were correctly identified, the others "matched" to seemingly random tracks from completely unrelated genres. If Apple has not earnestly dug into and improved on this software, users will be completely mystified and the whole thing will be a big embarrassment for Apple.
- spitfire 15y agoProbably uses something like robust hashing (Technically impossible) along with matching metadata tags to match songs/artists.
- jamesaguilar 15y agoI wonder what you think you mean by "technically impossible" since decently good audio matching software already exists (e.g. Shazam).
- spitfire 15y agoI mean it is formally impossible to generate a robust hash that cannot be attacked. In english, You'll get false positives. Shazam and the like are simply good enough, rather than correct. I know the music industry were interested in robust hashes in order to identify songs on file sharing networks. It turns out to be technically impossible. The file sharers would trivially obfuscate or generate false positives which ended up as a legal liability to them.
- gfodor 15y agoYes, the metadata problem is a big issue too. Apple mentioned that the ones they can't match will get uploaded. This probably means the same thing as it did with lala -- those "unmatched" tracks are going to end up orphaned from the rest of the album since they don't have the same metadata.
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- dsplittgerber 15y agoA little arbitrage idea: How about going on an illegal downloading-binge and getting every album one possibly could ever like from the past, I don't know, 30 years? Then when you've got your several thousand albums, you go legalize it all for $29.95. Sounds like value?
- extension 15y agoIf you didn't own it before running it through iTunes match then you don't own it afterwards either.
- dsplittgerber 15y agoWe don't know yet, but one probably will never "own" your iTunes Cloud data the same way you own your music now, I concede that. Still, you'll have access to all your pirated music as long as you keep paying 30 bucks a year. It's actually a brillant move. Similar to being exempted from punishment if you turn yourself in as an owner of illegal guns/tax fraud or what have you.
- extension 15y agoI don't see why or how the legal terms of Match would absolve you of any crimes you may have committed to acquire the original song.
- glhaynes 15y agoThey said the iTunes Match songs get downloaded as DRM-free AAC 256K files, so you will "own" it in the same way you currently "own" music purchases from the iTunes Store.
- msbarnett 15y agoPerhaps, but if you committed copyright infringement when you originally obtained the music, none of this is going to turn back the clock and undo that original infringement
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- pilif 15y agoIt's a real shame that there's still no real podcast support. Granted, now the devices can sync via WiFi, but what if I'm away from my main machine and I just want to download all new episodes of the podcasts I'm subscribed to? Something like this CAN'T be that hard to do - at least it shouldn't be.
- berberich 15y agoI recommend Instacast[1] - best $2 I've spent in the last year. [1]: http://vemedio.com/products/instacast http://vemedio.com/products/instacast
- danh 15y agoPocket Casts is also very good. http://www.shiftyjelly.com.au/products/pocket-casts http://www.shiftyjelly.com.au/products/pocket-casts
- JayWilmont 15y agoI would assume this to be part of the "No PC Needed" feature. (If not, this is a big oversight - one of the only real issues I have with my iPad)
- craigmccaskill 15y agoA concern I always have over services like this, is that they tend to back up at the most inopportune times. Holding a VC and your call suddenly drops? Playing an FPS or RTS game and things start to become unresponsive? Uploading your latest project files, wondering why it's going so slowly while a is client clamouring for it yesterday? Chances are one of your many automatic backup services just kicked in. With devices like the iPad and iPhone being 'always on' and connected to the wifi in the background, I can see this becoming a problem. When these sorts of services were confined to a desktop or laptop, you could always shut them down with a simple right click on a task bar/menu icon. Now you have multiple devices that could potentially be bogging down your network, how do you easily diagnose where the network drain is coming from?
- 46Bit 15y agoSame annoyances with computers in general. You're urgently downloading a huge uncompressed PSD a client sent you ... and all of a sudden something you can't find the name of without buying a third-party app suddenly start hogging the network.
- wtallis 15y agoBy using a halfway decent router with properly configured QoS. It isn't hard. Between running lsof locally and rflow on DD-WRT, it's easy to isolate the ports used for your various backup services. Once you have that, it's trivial to put those services at the bottom of the queue for outbound bandwidth.
- jlees 15y agoWhat if a visitor on your network is using a new service with different ports from your standard? What if you're looking at a sync service that runs within the web browser or otherwise uses shared ports? Or perhaps you're (shock, horror) a mainstream user who has no idea what any of the words in your comment mean, starting with "router"? Sure, a power user can prioritise traffic and deal with this, but I think the original point is valid for the average user. Perhaps the onus should be on backup software writers (and anything that syncs in large enough chunks) to ensure their traffic is smooth and not bursty, in effect enforcing their own QoS.
- hnsmurf 15y agoMeh. I still can't go PC-less on my iPad. I have plenty of music that didn't come from updates and isn't for sale on iTunes, and I don't see anything about OS updates OTA. Exchange and Gmail already do most of the rest for me.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoInteresting service. I really like the cloud APIs. I know that this was available in past versions of MobileMe, but so few used MobileMe so it wasn't a big thing for developers. If people are opted into iCloud you can pretty much assume that your users have an account and plan to store on Apple's dime instead of yours. It almost seems too good to be true. I wouldn't be surprised if some developers abuse this by storing massive amounts of data in iCloud and Apple sets up some limits. As for the music stuff, my consumer perspective is that if "anywhere" doesn't include a web browser, you're not really offering it any where. I don't expect you to build a separate client for competing platforms, but a web player I do. Google and Amazon are already doing this. I don't always use Macs and iPads so I need a way to access my music when I'm away from those.
- gfodor 15y agoDon't forget Apple has the app store approval process and can also remove abusers from the app store. This ecosystem they've set up is what makes it possible for them to offer a service like this while not having to build (too many) countermeasures for abuse.
- zoul 15y ago“Music features are available only in the U.S.” Sigh.
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- extension 15y agoI was hoping they would have something to say about privacy/security, but they didn't so I guess there isn't any. That's too bad because I don't think I can live with all my photos being instantly sent to Apple. Probably some other document types too.
- ary 15y agoEncryption was mentioned a few times, and there will no doubt be more technical specifications coming to light as it gets closer to launch. Perhaps you're correct and there isn't sufficient security in place. In that case opt out.
- yalogin 15y agoInteresting. What kind of questions were you expecting to be answered? I thought this is not a sharing service in the sense that you do not get a link to it, which means your stuff is not made public even if you want it to. So as long as the transit is encrypted (which it is) it should be fine. Also Apple is not selling you ads based on your photos, so no issues about reading or analyzing your data to get information either.
- extension 15y agoI'm concerned with Apple's access to my data and was hoping they would offer a way to do encrypted storage with self-managed keys. They have, in the past, played up their privacy edge over Google, so it wasn't out of the question. But it was still wishful thinking because it's incredibly difficult to do while maintaining the "just works" quality that is so crucial to them. I hope their opt-out is granular enough that I can still use the parts of iCloud that don't make me uncomfortable.
- yojimbo311 15y agoThe only opt-out option visible in the keynote was a master switch to turn iCloud services on or off (it being on by default of course). I doubt they'd make it more granular than that as it would complicate things quite a bit while only meeting the needs of a few and isn't really in line with their interests. It's better than no option and is obvious and accessible enough contrary to some other way more sensitive features released from other companies. Personally, I find that Apple has been very consistent with how they treat customer data at a corporate level and I trust their incentive to protect it and/or hide it from public view by default WAY more than I trust Googles, Amazons, and especially FaceBooks. If I'm honest with myself their vested interests in iAd do raise the hairs on the back of my neck a little bit, but it would be a significant departure (and would create more backlash than anything I can imagine them doing in the near term) from everything I've seen of their treatment of personal data to date.
- bennesvig 15y agoBut I don't care about owning music. I only want access to it. Rdio still seems like the better option for music, despite this being a step in the right direction.
- ender7 15y agoIn general the service seems really neat, but I have to admit I find their storage and pricing system a bit confusing. How is the average consumer going to react? I can't imagine explaining this to my parents... --- So...it stores all my files? Yes. Well, sort of. If your apps use the iCloud API. What? Nevermind. Yes. It stores your files, and sync them across all your computers. What does it cost? It's free. Awesome. And I can access them any time? Yep. Except photos. Those are only stored for 30 days. But the copies stick around on your devices. But only your PCs - your phones only keep the last 1000 photos. Oh. But what if I want to look at older photos on my-- Put it in an album. Then it's always available. Oh...kay. I guess that makes sense. What about music? If you buy it from the iTunes store, then it syncs automatically to all your devices! Sweet! Up to 10 devices. Eh, that's fine, that seems like a lot of devices. What if I don't buy it from the iTunes store? You can sync that too! Great! It costs money though. Wait. I thought you said it was free. Non-iTunes Store music costs a yearly fee to store ($24.99). Although you're not really storing them. See, iTunes will scan your music and try to guess what music you have, and then grant you access to the iTunes Store copies of it. Unless it gets confused and thinks your Bob Dylan is Jimmy Hendricks. But that probably won't happen. Er. But you can "store" an unlimited number of songs! Unlimited? That's a lot! Yeah, you can also store things like mail, documents, and backups on there too! Are those unlimited too? No, those have a max of 5GB. Except for Apps, iBooks, and iTunes music. Those don't count. Oh, and neither do photos. The ones that we store for 30 days. What happens if I use up all 5GB? We're guessing that most people won't. You should see my inbox. We'll probably have a plan where you can pay more money to get more storage. Ah, okay. So... Yes? It's free. Unless I want to upload my non-iTunes store music, in which case it's $24.99/yr. And it has unlimited storage for App backups, iTunes store music, and iBooks, and a 5GB limit for documents, e-mail, and "other stuff", and a 30-day cache of all of the photos I've taken. And it happens automatically in the background, provided whatever App I'm using is correctly hooked into the iCloud service, which may or may not be apparent at the time. Yes. Ohhhhkay. --- My parents have started to use Dropbox ("put stuff you want in the folder") and really like it. I'm not sure they'll understand how this service works, if they understand that it exists at all.
- follower 15y ago> Non-iTunes Store music costs a yearly fee to store My understanding is that it only costs a fee if you want to "upgrade" from your matched ripped tracks--matching means you don't have to upload it "manually".
- inthewoods 15y agoAnybody surprised that there was Twitter integration but no Facebook integration? I know they probably don't want to get in bed with Facebook, but it's strange to me to have one and not the other.
- panacea 15y agoAfter the Ping debacle I'm not surprised. As I understand it, Ping was launched dead in the water because Apple and Facebook couldn't work together at the last minute.
- spullara 15y agoThe most amazing thing about this is that Facebook has now alienated both Apple and Google. Only Adobe is left from the big 4 as Schmidt described it. Flash Facebook Fone?
- xbryanx 15y agoI'm just not that excited about pointing all my devices at a big metal cloud on the wall. Wonder if I can paint it.
- lotusleaf1987 15y agoIf it doesn't stream, what's the point? Why do I care that I can redownload a song? You can already do that. As to iTunes match, so this is basically just a backup service? I was expecting a streaming service for my iTunes and non-iTunes music... this is disappointing.
- upthedale 15y agoThe music matching service does sound genuinely interesting, though I am unsure about how it works as a yearly subscription. Surely once you've matched your songs, that's it (until next time). Would the pay per use model not make more sense? But as for TFA, the non-music sync features of iCloud seem underwhelming. At the risk of playing the "other-phones-already-do-it" card, Windows (both Phone and PC) already does this with the Live services and Skydrive. Contacts, Calendar, Office documents and Photos can all be synced automatically. In addition, you get 25GB of space - no silly 30 day limits as with photos in iCloud. What's the current state of play for Android?
- redler 15y agoIt seems like the music part of this offering amounts to Apple cutting a deal with the music labels that, in part, allows billions of bad old BladeEnc rips downloaded from Napster to be "laundered" into legitimate AAC tracks. Apple pays the music labels a hundred million or two, so the labels have retroactively turned the old downloaders into paying customers, of a sort. And for these laundering services, each of them reimburses Apple to the tune of $25 per year (storage and sync notwithstanding).
- dr_ 15y agoI love my iPhone but I'm sticking to dropbox. Ill probably limit icloud to music I've purchased via iTunes
- joe24pack 15y agoerr ... no thanks. I'll keep my data local ... and private.
- funkdobiest 15y agoSo if I have music that I wrote and have the copyrights to and give a copy of it to a friend and they then use the iCloud service. How would Apple then handle the licensing, as it seems they have some sort of deal with the big record labels to give them a cut of this 24.99, what about independent musicians?
- nlawalker 15y ago"iCloud" seems to be an obvious name to those that have been paying attention to the current state of technology, but if you think about it for a second, it's actually pretty genius. Taking the name "iCloud", as opposed to "iSync" or something else that more clearly and directly describes the service, is a masterstroke. Why? Because up until now, "cloud" has been a vague term whose value is extremely difficult to explain to consumers (trying to explain that gmail or Skydrive or Facebook are all kinda-sorta "cloud" in a few different ways will just get you "oh, so it's just the internet!"). By tying it to a clearly-defined product or service that has real value for regular people, Apple now owns the term "cloud" as used in general discourse. It's like how in the 2002-2003 timeframe, every non-Apple MP3 player was "a different-looking iPod", but this is in reverse. Every mention of "cloud" or "cloud computing" will evoke "oh yeah, you can get your phone pictures on your PC without hooking it up!". They've given a buzzword-bingo term a real definition that a lot of people can relate to. Contrast with Microsoft's "...to the cloud!", a desperate attempt to get back into the consumer space that shows just how firmly they are trapped by enterprise thinking. It'll make your kids smile! It can edit photos! It will give you movies to watch when you're bored! Even the masses won't fall for something that vague - they need clearly defined products. "To the cloud" reminds me of the first couple years of "the .NET initiative": wind and stars that would do everything from control your house to drive your car and make the world happy again. As someone interested in technology, I despise that Apple has further conflated an already massively overloaded term, but I have to give them recognition for their marketing skills. I can't wait to see how much more difficult it's going to get to explain "cloud computing" to a CIO who has spent the last week enamored that cloud computing means that he can get his music on his iPhone and his Mac.
- fauigerzigerk 15y agoIn my mind the words "genius" and "masterstroke" will continue to mean something different than a big corporation choosing a fashionable and completely obvious moniker for a couple of products.
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- kahawe 15y ago
- 6ren 15y agoSounds like dropbox, but one step closer to the user: instead of interfacing at the directory level, it interfaces at the application level. Also underlines dropbox's tremendous success, to be casually mentioned by Jobs to define the problem/solution.