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It's true; iCloud has the potential to be a massive lock-in mechanism, ensuring that people will continue to buy Apple devices for years on end because buying a

by cph1 15y ago

It's true; iCloud has the potential to be a massive lock-in mechanism, ensuring that people will continue to buy Apple devices for years on end because buying anything else will mean manually moving your data out of iCloud - which probably won't be easy for the average user.

peterb 15y ago
To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your data. Copying from a iOS device is problematic, but that is true today.
- cph1 15y ago
  > To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your data. Which is exactly what a lot of users will be unable to do. They'll rather avoid the hassle by buying a new Apple device yet again. I'm not pointing my finger at Apple per se. If they provide a reasonably user-friendly way of moving your data then it's hard to blame them. But the fact is that most people will want to avoid the hassle, which means the iCloud becomes a lock-in mechanism.
- Timothee 15y ago
  That would work for some stuff, but I'm not sure what would happen to the data stored by third-party apps. iTunes has a section to retrieve documents that some apps create, as long as the apps themselves are built to take advantage of that. However, if an app doesn't provide either that or some kind of export, I'm not sure if you'd get easy access to that data. And actually that might create an incentive for some apps not to add the functionality. It makes sense for Office-type apps to provide a PDF, or Office-compatible format, but I could imagine very specific apps that can lock you in since you don't get to (easily) reverse-engineer and convert their data because you don't get as easy of an access as you get on a desktop.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
What data, specifically? The only thing that comes to mind is music, but that lock-in already exists with iTunes.
- cph1 15y ago
  Photos, documents, contacts, email, music - just about everything that "normal" users have on their computers.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Why would my email and contacts be locked into iCloud? Don't the majority of users already have an email address (With Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail, in that order) that is already "cloud enabled". Why incentive is there to switch to a .me email address, which has less reach?
    - cph1 15y ago
      > Why would my email and contacts be locked into iCloud? Don't ask me, ask Apple - they're the ones who're doing it :) Contacts was one of the things that Apple mentioned would be stored in iCloud at their talk a couple of ago. I'm not sure about email. One of the reasons your contacts would be stored in iCloud is so that they can work with Apple's (proprietary) new chat/message system; iMessages.

by cph1 15y ago

peterb 15y ago

To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your data. Copying from a iOS device is problematic, but that is true today.

cph1 15y ago
> To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your data. Which is exactly what a lot of users will be unable to do. They'll rather avoid the hassle by buying a new Apple device yet again. I'm not pointing my finger at Apple per se. If they provide a reasonably user-friendly way of moving your data then it's hard to blame them. But the fact is that most people will want to avoid the hassle, which means the iCloud becomes a lock-in mechanism.
Timothee 15y ago
That would work for some stuff, but I'm not sure what would happen to the data stored by third-party apps. iTunes has a section to retrieve documents that some apps create, as long as the apps themselves are built to take advantage of that. However, if an app doesn't provide either that or some kind of export, I'm not sure if you'd get easy access to that data. And actually that might create an incentive for some apps not to add the functionality. It makes sense for Office-type apps to provide a PDF, or Office-compatible format, but I could imagine very specific apps that can lock you in since you don't get to (easily) reverse-engineer and convert their data because you don't get as easy of an access as you get on a desktop.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

What data, specifically? The only thing that comes to mind is music, but that lock-in already exists with iTunes.

cph1 15y ago
Photos, documents, contacts, email, music - just about everything that "normal" users have on their computers.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Why would my email and contacts be locked into iCloud? Don't the majority of users already have an email address (With Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail, in that order) that is already "cloud enabled". Why incentive is there to switch to a .me email address, which has less reach?
  - cph1 15y ago
    > Why would my email and contacts be locked into iCloud? Don't ask me, ask Apple - they're the ones who're doing it :) Contacts was one of the things that Apple mentioned would be stored in iCloud at their talk a couple of ago. I'm not sure about email. One of the reasons your contacts would be stored in iCloud is so that they can work with Apple's (proprietary) new chat/message system; iMessages.