"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 a

"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.