7 ms·

Apple’s Magnum Opus

118 points by showngo 15y ago

podperson 15y ago
I think this article pretty much nails a key part of it. What Apple wants to do is implement a seamless digital world that Just Works. (It remains to be seen whether it does in fact Just Work.) Oddly enough, you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC (and, once again, be redirected to Douglas Englebart et al) ... the kind of thing Apple is demonstrating with iCloud, iOS5, and Lion is essentially the computing paradigm described in a Scientific American article on Xerox PARC in the 80s (I wish I could give the exact issue, but the article described four basic kinds of computers - post-it notes, slates, desktops, and wall screens - all, except the post-its which were a rough prototype with a rudimentary display, sharing a common UI with data stored on the network.) An interesting remark that touches on this topic on The Talk Show was (and I paraphrase) "how come this [the app-centric universe] feels so reasonable and natural and yet has taken so long to come". In fact, there was a huge detour in the opposite direction exemplified by OpenDoc (on the Mac) and OLE (on Windows). How many of us remember copying a table from excel, pasting it into PowerPoint and getting some kind of weird icon? In the 90s the idea was to remove the app and make the document (or perhaps the workflow) the center of attention. This may actually have been a Good Idea but it was (in the case of OpenDoc) badly conceived and not especially well-implemented. Or, perhaps, it was just too far ahead of its time.
- Mazer23 15y ago
  The article you're referring to I think was written by Mark Weiser. It was called "The Computer for the 21st Century" unless you were thinking of a different one. It's quite a vision for 1991: http://www.ubicomp.com/want/papers/ubi-sciam-sep91.pdf http://www.ubicomp.com/want/papers/ubi-sciam-sep91.pdf
  - podperson 15y ago
    Thank you sir, that's the one. I was off by a few years I guess :-)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- stinkytaco 15y ago
  Isn't GNUstep working on an evolution of OpenDOC? I thought I read or heard about it once, but couldn't find much info on it. OpenDoc is something I really want to work.
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    No. GNUStep is an implementation of the OpenStep standard (designed by NeXT and Sun, based on NeXTStep). OpenDoc was designed by Apple in the pre-OS X days.
    - stinkytaco 15y ago
      After more searching I realized I'm thinking about Etoile, a GNUstep based environment that's trying to break down the document model similar to how OpenDoc tried to. It's interesting, but seems a long way from maturity.
      - jacques_chester 15y ago
        Interesting-looking project.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  I think this article pretty much nails a key part of it. What Apple wants to do is implement a seamless digital world that Just Works... Oddly enough, you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC It's also a pragmatic vision of what a seamless Object Oriented world would look like. Steve and the Next gang went and made it work. Now they're in a position to take the computing world out of the early 1990s, just like they took it out of the 70's with Macintosh.
- bane 15y ago
  Oddly enough, you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC Some people criticize Apple for this, but I think I'm actually quite okay with it to an extent if you think of this as just a natural example of science & engineering working hand in hand to make cool stuff. Xerox PARC did the science, Apple is doing the Engineering. It's not really much different than basic R&D in materials science and physics modeling getting turned into a bridge or a skyscraper. Or basic academic research in medicine becoming the next billion dollar drug. A side question is, with these kinds of R&D shops now quite rare (Microsoft Research and....) and seeing how Xerox and AT&T not able to capitalize on their research, what does this mean for the modern version of these places? Is some other company going to just come along and build what Microsoft is researching today? Or is there a chance for one of these companies to actually benefit from these paradigm shifting revolutions in research?
  - podperson 15y ago
    Of course I agree, but felt like I should point out that this was another example of Apple picking up a ball Xerox "dropped".
- eevilspock 15y ago
  you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC To steal means to deprive someone of something that by all rights they should have had. So the only way this could be construed as theft is if Xerox PARC's plan was to wait 20-30 years and then capitalize on the idea. But damn, Apple stole it at the last moment! To prevent the world from benefiting from an idea just because it came to you first is the ultimate theft. Fortunate the Xerox PARC guys are not evil or dishonest and won't charge Apple with theft. If they don't call it theft, no one else can.
- tjogin 15y ago
  I guess the way I feel about ideas is that you don't own an idea just for having described it once, thus if someone else implements it they didn't steal it either. In my opinion, you don't even own an idea that you've implemented poorly. Thus if someone else thinks they can implement it well, they didn't steal the idea. You own an idea when you've implemented it well, maybe even really really well. Before that it's just a proof of concept. And even then you still don't own the idea, you've just got bragging rights to it. A good example would be the tablet. In the minds of most people, Apple owns that concept, everybody else are imitating it; that's what Apple gets for making the first really good implementation of it, even though Microsoft and a bunch of other companies made several really poor implementations of it years before.
- ArthurD006 15y ago
  I've just had my first branded backup device fail (with electronics grief, not media grief), received contradictory information about whether it was supported, and been told that, even if it was, there's no plan to put the media into new electronics, so I'm currently very resistant to any 'it just works' story.
- meric 15y ago
  In a way, Xerox PARC did get compensated for some of its ideas. Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company) "The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product." Yes, Xerox later did sue Apple but... "The lawsuit was dismissed because the presiding judge ruled "that Xerox's complaints were inappropriate for a variety of legal reasons,""
programminggeek 15y ago
Ok, that all sounds grandiose, but I think that perhaps people are overplaying the impact of iCloud. Yes, it's a big deal to be sure, but perhaps some pragmatism is in order. The author gets one bit right, that what Apple is theoretically "killing" is mostly irrelevant. On the other hand, what Apple showed thus far with iCloud is more about the fact that they are doing the cloud quite a bit differently than Google is. Apple is saying, yes syncing and pushing is important, but so are rich apps. They are showing that cloud doesn't just mean doing HTML5 apps. That is the right approach IMO. The cloud isn't just the web, it's your data across all devices in the best possible format for each device. Dropbox got this right, Apple is getting this right(on their own platforms), Google doesn't seem to do this as much yet and their products seem to suffer as a result. I would love Google to do more with say Google Docs on Android than forcing mobile web apps down our throats, but they have a web-based advertising business to prop up so of course they love the web-only approach. In theory Microsoft is doing some kind of hybrid approach or something to the Office cloud, but really I wish they would just put out a killer version of Office on all platforms. It would make them lots of money and would enable them to lock people into their cloud (for better or worse). As it stands, Microsoft's cloud strategy by comparison is to throw crap at the wall and hope something sticks. Thank goodness they didn't offer $9 Billion to buy Dropbox...
- dannyr 15y ago
  Google is not forcing web apps on mobile devices. There are Android apps for Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Maps, and Reader.
  - ajross 15y ago
    That's kind of what I'm thinking. This only looks revolutionary if you haven't been watching Android at all. When the G1 shipped with universal integration with gmail, calendar, contacts, google checkout, etc... it was a revelation. When the "share via..." interface was extended (often via third parties) to handle youtube and twitter and facebook etc... it was really great... And now this is a focus for Apple too. Great, I'm sure they'll do a good job and come up with some fantastic new ideas. But let's not pretend this is a whole new market or a fundamental innovation. Handsets have been moving in this direction for 3+ years now.
joebadmo 15y ago
Am I the only one that thinks Apple is using revolutionary technology to work toward the perfection of a deprecated computing paradigm? I mean, yes, iCloud makes computing work like magic, but it sort of ignores what post-web computing means. Computing anymore isn't just about working on the same documents on any device that you own seamlessly (that part is, to be sure, great), it's about sharing and collaboration. iCloud gives you access to your docs and photos and music wherever you are, but it doesn't seem to do anything to let you share your digital life. Am I wrong? What am I missing?
- tptacek 15y ago
  I see your point but find it hard to accept the idea that letters to teachers, school assignments, price quotes, proposals, contracts, sales presentations, and reports are "deprecated" because the cloud enables other kinds of documents.
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    Deprecated was probably the wrong word. The things you cite are clearly still an important part of computing life, but it's still strange to me to use the connective tissue of the internet to enable computing, but completely ignore the actual connection part, the new part of what the web promises. It feels a bit to me like publishing companies using the web to make their old publishing models better, instead of grappling with how the web challenges the fundamental underpinnings of their model.
    - matthew-wegner 15y ago
      Doesn't one lead to the other? What's the technical difference between allowing person to touch the same document on 4 devices, and two people touching the same document on 6 devices?
      - joebadmo 15y ago
        I don't know what the technical differences are, but I'm not sure how that's relevant. My point is, Apple doesn't seem to be interested in enabling that. And I'm not necessarily talking about collaboration, but even just sharing. Apple has given me great ways to take, edit, store, and organize my photos, but my primary purpose for all of that is to show my photos to others. They seem to have ignored that part. If you're implying that that's the obvious next step for them, then, great, I hope that's the case. But the only time as far as I can remember that they even made gestures toward addressing this was Ping, which was an unmitigated disaster.
rayiner 15y ago
Re: the "this is how it should have always worked" comment. I've watched my girlfriend use her computer, and this is essentially how she works. She just leaves everything open, never saving anything. She's comfortable using Expose to manage the million windows she ends up having open, but doesn't bother exiting apps when she's done with them and then starting them when she needs them again. If she could do this and have everything always auto-save and be instantly available anywhere she went, she'd be ecstatic. And even though I grew up on the Windows 95 model of apps and documents... I gotta say I kinda see her angle. I hate that our IT policy makes us log out every night so I lose my windows. If I left for the night then came back and the cleaning person had put away all the papers on my physical desk I'd have a fit!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- banjomonster 15y ago
  My girlfriend does exactly the same thing. I wonder if its a gender thing? Her PC kept freezing, but she loves her new Mac Air.
  - ghiculescu 15y ago
    More likely it's a non-tech-person thing. Leaving everything open and clicking around in expose until you find stuff is easy: closing programs and then trying to find where you saved stuff via a file manager is hard.
    - brisance 15y ago
      That's because "tech people" have been conditioned, through the years, by the limitations of the hardware (limited memory) and operating system. It's the OS's job to manage resources, but we still do it anyway. Which is why Apple's upcoming Lion OS with auto-save, auto-resume, window management etc will be a god-send for many people I know.
  - bonzoesc 15y ago
blantonl 15y ago
Quote: "Apple’s keynote message was loud and clear: iOS 5, Lion, and iCloud are not feature bumps — they are revolutions in how consumers are to think and use computing devices." My emphasis above highlights an amazing observation. Per this, Apple has now crossed over the line of "what people want" to "what people need."
- bane 15y ago
  I think Apple crossed this long ago with the iPod. "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
  - rimantas 15y ago
    And similar sentiments were repeated with iPhone and even more with iPad. Apple does not do focus groups research for a reason.
    - leviathant 15y ago
      The first iPod actually was pretty lame. Sales didn't take off until it was cheaper, used USB, and iTunes was Windows compatible - see also http://www.systemshootouts.org/ipod_sales.html http://www.systemshootouts.org/ipod_sales.html ... Apple's "focus groups research" involves selling a product, sometimes with absurd flaws (e.g. the headphone jack on the 1st gen iPhone) and selling an updated version a year later. This works out because there are people who have bought every iteration of the iPod and keep them in collections, and people who deny to this day that the iPhone4 deathgrip exists (bought my iPhone4 three months ago, when I hold it like I've held my 1st gen iPhone, I lose signal, but have a case now so that's moot), and it seems to work out for them. Why pay for focus groups when you can have the focus groups pay you?
ImperatorLunae 15y ago
"Documents you’ve written, presentations you’ve prepared, spreadsheets you’ve made — your iWork apps can store them in iCloud. Which means you can view and edit the same document, in its latest state, on all your devices. And since iCloud automatically updates any changes you make, you don’t even have to remember to save your work." But I already do this on Google Docs, and I don't have to buy a Mac to do it. In fact, I don't have to buy anything to do it; I already have a desktop/laptop/phone, and Google Docs is free of charge. Plus, most people I know already have Google Accounts, so sharing is already implemented.
- nostromo 15y ago
  I think Apple is trying to differentiate by having the best of both worlds (native software and webapps). Personally I think it's really compelling. I love Google Docs, but can find the interface really frustrating. If you told me I could have all of the benefits of Google Docs with a native software experience, I'd be at least willing to try it out.
- pwthornton 15y ago
  Google Docs is a limited suite of Web apps trying to mimic Microsoft Office. iCloud has an API that 3rd party developers can use for all sorts of applications. Neither Microsoft Office nor Google Docs is anything near the caliber of using Omnioutliner for note taking and doing great outlines. iCloud will allow the developer to store documents on iCloud and provide syncing across computers and mobile devies, which Omnioutliner for the iPad currently can't do. Google Docs big selling point is collaboration. That's what I use it for, and I love it. But sometimes I need a richer and more powerful experience, and that's what dedicated apps provide. I'm glad that Apple is pursuing this strategy, because I believe there is a need for both. The other big plus of Apple's iCloud strategy is offline support.
gavanwoolery 15y ago
YAWN
- timinman 15y ago
  This is all big news for anyone who never uses anything but Apple products, but not so much for the rest of the world.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
stretchwithme 15y ago
Its all about using what you've already done to save you unnecessary work, even if you move from one device to another. That's been a dream of mine for a long time. The vast majority of bits on your computer are just copies from somewhere else. It is the things you do and the data that should be creating that are the valuable things. These should be preserved and leveraged to serve YOU, not advertisers, wherever you happen to be.
bad_user 15y ago
I don’t know of a single other way to take a document I am working on with my iPad and jump to my Mac having the document up-to-date I do, it's called Google Docs.
- mclin 15y ago
  If I add a calendar event to google calendar I'm still a bit surprised when I later notice it in my iPhone calendar. Same with updating contacts across devices.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    To speak the truth - the Android integration with Google's contacts could be better. To transform all my locally stored contacts and make them Google contacts I had to first export them to a file, copy them on my laptop, upload to Google, mix&match duplicates and other corrections, download an export again on my computer, delete all my contacts from my phone (which also deleted my contacts from Google), reupload that export to Google, then synchronize my phone with Google's Contacts. Now everything I do on my phone or in Google's Contacts is kept in sync nicely. I also have Facebook sync set so I get faces of people for free and sometimes email addresses or phone numbers that I didn't have :-) But it was a painful experience to export my old sim-stored contacts and sometimes I get the feeling that while Google has the right idea about what people want, they are moving too slowly to fix their shit.
    - tftfmacedo 15y ago
      You could also use something like http://www.soocial.com/ http://www.soocial.com/ Disclaimer: I used to work there and they're working really hard on solving this kind of issues.
    - seabee 15y ago
      > download an export again on my computer What does this step achieve? The process was pretty easy for me - install Motorola Phone Tools, export the CSV file containing my contacts, make some changes in Excel, upload to Google. There's even an 'Import from SIM' option on my phone (possibly a feature of HTC's People app). Even on a featurephone your SIM contacts will conflict with your phone-stored contacts. There's an easy solution: don't view your SIM contacts. I don't see what shit Google needs to fix here, other than documentation, and in this case isn't that the handset manufacturer's responsibility?
saturdaysaint 15y ago
Everything I really want in the cloud, I have in the cloud - music (Rdio), podcasts (Instacast), books (Kindle), text files (Dropbox/apps). I am hopeful that Apple can simplify cloud services for appmakers. I've found many of the Dropbox syncing apps (ie text editors) fairly wonky - requiring an explicit sync confirmation or mostly just allowing me to push a file to a Dropbox. I hope that they enable/encourage a more seamless "autosave" experience to be standard.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
Am I the only one who thinks that a secure git server is so much ore useful than Dropbox, iCloud, etc.? Versioning. Access to old versions of artifacts.
- leviathant 15y ago
  A van with a V8 and a manual transmission is so much more useful than a compact four-banger auto-trans hatchback. What kind of car do you drive?

118 points by showngo 15y ago

I think this article pretty much nails a key part of it. What Apple wants to do is implement a seamless digital world that Just Works. (It remains to be seen whether it does in fact Just Work.) Oddly enough, you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC (and, once again, be redirected to Douglas Englebart et al) ... the kind of thing Apple is demonstrating with iCloud, iOS5, and Lion is essentially the computing paradigm described in a Scientific American article on Xerox PARC in the 80s (I wish I could give the exact issue, but the article described four basic kinds of computers - post-it notes, slates, desktops, and wall screens - all, except the post-its which were a rough prototype with a rudimentary display, sharing a common UI with data stored on the network.) An interesting remark that touches on this topic on The Talk Show was (and I paraphrase) "how come this [the app-centric universe] feels so reasonable and natural and yet has taken so long to come". In fact, there was a huge detour in the opposite direction exemplified by OpenDoc (on the Mac) and OLE (on Windows). How many of us remember copying a table from excel, pasting it into PowerPoint and getting some kind of weird icon? In the 90s the idea was to remove the app and make the document (or perhaps the workflow) the center of attention. This may actually have been a Good Idea but it was (in the case of OpenDoc) badly conceived and not especially well-implemented. Or, perhaps, it was just too far ahead of its time.

Mazer23 15y ago
The article you're referring to I think was written by Mark Weiser. It was called "The Computer for the 21st Century" unless you were thinking of a different one. It's quite a vision for 1991: http://www.ubicomp.com/want/papers/ubi-sciam-sep91.pdf http://www.ubicomp.com/want/papers/ubi-sciam-sep91.pdf
- podperson 15y ago
  Thank you sir, that's the one. I was off by a few years I guess :-)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
stinkytaco 15y ago
Isn't GNUstep working on an evolution of OpenDOC? I thought I read or heard about it once, but couldn't find much info on it. OpenDoc is something I really want to work.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  No. GNUStep is an implementation of the OpenStep standard (designed by NeXT and Sun, based on NeXTStep). OpenDoc was designed by Apple in the pre-OS X days.
  - stinkytaco 15y ago
    After more searching I realized I'm thinking about Etoile, a GNUstep based environment that's trying to break down the document model similar to how OpenDoc tried to. It's interesting, but seems a long way from maturity.
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      Interesting-looking project.
stcredzero 15y ago
I think this article pretty much nails a key part of it. What Apple wants to do is implement a seamless digital world that Just Works... Oddly enough, you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC It's also a pragmatic vision of what a seamless Object Oriented world would look like. Steve and the Next gang went and made it work. Now they're in a position to take the computing world out of the early 1990s, just like they took it out of the 70's with Macintosh.
bane 15y ago
Oddly enough, you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC Some people criticize Apple for this, but I think I'm actually quite okay with it to an extent if you think of this as just a natural example of science & engineering working hand in hand to make cool stuff. Xerox PARC did the science, Apple is doing the Engineering. It's not really much different than basic R&D in materials science and physics modeling getting turned into a bridge or a skyscraper. Or basic academic research in medicine becoming the next billion dollar drug. A side question is, with these kinds of R&D shops now quite rare (Microsoft Research and....) and seeing how Xerox and AT&T not able to capitalize on their research, what does this mean for the modern version of these places? Is some other company going to just come along and build what Microsoft is researching today? Or is there a chance for one of these companies to actually benefit from these paradigm shifting revolutions in research?
- podperson 15y ago
  Of course I agree, but felt like I should point out that this was another example of Apple picking up a ball Xerox "dropped".
eevilspock 15y ago
you could accuse them of, once again, stealing ideas from Xerox PARC To steal means to deprive someone of something that by all rights they should have had. So the only way this could be construed as theft is if Xerox PARC's plan was to wait 20-30 years and then capitalize on the idea. But damn, Apple stole it at the last moment! To prevent the world from benefiting from an idea just because it came to you first is the ultimate theft. Fortunate the Xerox PARC guys are not evil or dishonest and won't charge Apple with theft. If they don't call it theft, no one else can.
tjogin 15y ago
I guess the way I feel about ideas is that you don't own an idea just for having described it once, thus if someone else implements it they didn't steal it either. In my opinion, you don't even own an idea that you've implemented poorly. Thus if someone else thinks they can implement it well, they didn't steal the idea. You own an idea when you've implemented it well, maybe even really really well. Before that it's just a proof of concept. And even then you still don't own the idea, you've just got bragging rights to it. A good example would be the tablet. In the minds of most people, Apple owns that concept, everybody else are imitating it; that's what Apple gets for making the first really good implementation of it, even though Microsoft and a bunch of other companies made several really poor implementations of it years before.
ArthurD006 15y ago
I've just had my first branded backup device fail (with electronics grief, not media grief), received contradictory information about whether it was supported, and been told that, even if it was, there's no plan to put the media into new electronics, so I'm currently very resistant to any 'it just works' story.
meric 15y ago
In a way, Xerox PARC did get compensated for some of its ideas. Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company) "The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product." Yes, Xerox later did sue Apple but... "The lawsuit was dismissed because the presiding judge ruled "that Xerox's complaints were inappropriate for a variety of legal reasons,""

programminggeek 15y ago

Ok, that all sounds grandiose, but I think that perhaps people are overplaying the impact of iCloud. Yes, it's a big deal to be sure, but perhaps some pragmatism is in order. The author gets one bit right, that what Apple is theoretically "killing" is mostly irrelevant. On the other hand, what Apple showed thus far with iCloud is more about the fact that they are doing the cloud quite a bit differently than Google is. Apple is saying, yes syncing and pushing is important, but so are rich apps. They are showing that cloud doesn't just mean doing HTML5 apps. That is the right approach IMO. The cloud isn't just the web, it's your data across all devices in the best possible format for each device. Dropbox got this right, Apple is getting this right(on their own platforms), Google doesn't seem to do this as much yet and their products seem to suffer as a result. I would love Google to do more with say Google Docs on Android than forcing mobile web apps down our throats, but they have a web-based advertising business to prop up so of course they love the web-only approach. In theory Microsoft is doing some kind of hybrid approach or something to the Office cloud, but really I wish they would just put out a killer version of Office on all platforms. It would make them lots of money and would enable them to lock people into their cloud (for better or worse). As it stands, Microsoft's cloud strategy by comparison is to throw crap at the wall and hope something sticks. Thank goodness they didn't offer $9 Billion to buy Dropbox...

dannyr 15y ago
Google is not forcing web apps on mobile devices. There are Android apps for Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Maps, and Reader.
- ajross 15y ago
  That's kind of what I'm thinking. This only looks revolutionary if you haven't been watching Android at all. When the G1 shipped with universal integration with gmail, calendar, contacts, google checkout, etc... it was a revelation. When the "share via..." interface was extended (often via third parties) to handle youtube and twitter and facebook etc... it was really great... And now this is a focus for Apple too. Great, I'm sure they'll do a good job and come up with some fantastic new ideas. But let's not pretend this is a whole new market or a fundamental innovation. Handsets have been moving in this direction for 3+ years now.

joebadmo 15y ago

Am I the only one that thinks Apple is using revolutionary technology to work toward the perfection of a deprecated computing paradigm? I mean, yes, iCloud makes computing work like magic, but it sort of ignores what post-web computing means. Computing anymore isn't just about working on the same documents on any device that you own seamlessly (that part is, to be sure, great), it's about sharing and collaboration. iCloud gives you access to your docs and photos and music wherever you are, but it doesn't seem to do anything to let you share your digital life. Am I wrong? What am I missing?

tptacek 15y ago
I see your point but find it hard to accept the idea that letters to teachers, school assignments, price quotes, proposals, contracts, sales presentations, and reports are "deprecated" because the cloud enables other kinds of documents.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Deprecated was probably the wrong word. The things you cite are clearly still an important part of computing life, but it's still strange to me to use the connective tissue of the internet to enable computing, but completely ignore the actual connection part, the new part of what the web promises. It feels a bit to me like publishing companies using the web to make their old publishing models better, instead of grappling with how the web challenges the fundamental underpinnings of their model.
  - matthew-wegner 15y ago
    Doesn't one lead to the other? What's the technical difference between allowing person to touch the same document on 4 devices, and two people touching the same document on 6 devices?
    - joebadmo 15y ago
      I don't know what the technical differences are, but I'm not sure how that's relevant. My point is, Apple doesn't seem to be interested in enabling that. And I'm not necessarily talking about collaboration, but even just sharing. Apple has given me great ways to take, edit, store, and organize my photos, but my primary purpose for all of that is to show my photos to others. They seem to have ignored that part. If you're implying that that's the obvious next step for them, then, great, I hope that's the case. But the only time as far as I can remember that they even made gestures toward addressing this was Ping, which was an unmitigated disaster.

rayiner 15y ago

Re: the "this is how it should have always worked" comment. I've watched my girlfriend use her computer, and this is essentially how she works. She just leaves everything open, never saving anything. She's comfortable using Expose to manage the million windows she ends up having open, but doesn't bother exiting apps when she's done with them and then starting them when she needs them again. If she could do this and have everything always auto-save and be instantly available anywhere she went, she'd be ecstatic. And even though I grew up on the Windows 95 model of apps and documents... I gotta say I kinda see her angle. I hate that our IT policy makes us log out every night so I lose my windows. If I left for the night then came back and the cleaning person had put away all the papers on my physical desk I'd have a fit!

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
banjomonster 15y ago
My girlfriend does exactly the same thing. I wonder if its a gender thing? Her PC kept freezing, but she loves her new Mac Air.
- ghiculescu 15y ago
  More likely it's a non-tech-person thing. Leaving everything open and clicking around in expose until you find stuff is easy: closing programs and then trying to find where you saved stuff via a file manager is hard.
  - brisance 15y ago
    That's because "tech people" have been conditioned, through the years, by the limitations of the hardware (limited memory) and operating system. It's the OS's job to manage resources, but we still do it anyway. Which is why Apple's upcoming Lion OS with auto-save, auto-resume, window management etc will be a god-send for many people I know.
- bonzoesc 15y ago

blantonl 15y ago

Quote: "Apple’s keynote message was loud and clear: iOS 5, Lion, and iCloud are not feature bumps — they are revolutions in how consumers are to think and use computing devices." My emphasis above highlights an amazing observation. Per this, Apple has now crossed over the line of "what people want" to "what people need."

bane 15y ago
I think Apple crossed this long ago with the iPod. "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
- rimantas 15y ago
  And similar sentiments were repeated with iPhone and even more with iPad. Apple does not do focus groups research for a reason.
  - leviathant 15y ago
    The first iPod actually was pretty lame. Sales didn't take off until it was cheaper, used USB, and iTunes was Windows compatible - see also http://www.systemshootouts.org/ipod_sales.html http://www.systemshootouts.org/ipod_sales.html ... Apple's "focus groups research" involves selling a product, sometimes with absurd flaws (e.g. the headphone jack on the 1st gen iPhone) and selling an updated version a year later. This works out because there are people who have bought every iteration of the iPod and keep them in collections, and people who deny to this day that the iPhone4 deathgrip exists (bought my iPhone4 three months ago, when I hold it like I've held my 1st gen iPhone, I lose signal, but have a case now so that's moot), and it seems to work out for them. Why pay for focus groups when you can have the focus groups pay you?

ImperatorLunae 15y ago

"Documents you’ve written, presentations you’ve prepared, spreadsheets you’ve made — your iWork apps can store them in iCloud. Which means you can view and edit the same document, in its latest state, on all your devices. And since iCloud automatically updates any changes you make, you don’t even have to remember to save your work." But I already do this on Google Docs, and I don't have to buy a Mac to do it. In fact, I don't have to buy anything to do it; I already have a desktop/laptop/phone, and Google Docs is free of charge. Plus, most people I know already have Google Accounts, so sharing is already implemented.

nostromo 15y ago
I think Apple is trying to differentiate by having the best of both worlds (native software and webapps). Personally I think it's really compelling. I love Google Docs, but can find the interface really frustrating. If you told me I could have all of the benefits of Google Docs with a native software experience, I'd be at least willing to try it out.
pwthornton 15y ago
Google Docs is a limited suite of Web apps trying to mimic Microsoft Office. iCloud has an API that 3rd party developers can use for all sorts of applications. Neither Microsoft Office nor Google Docs is anything near the caliber of using Omnioutliner for note taking and doing great outlines. iCloud will allow the developer to store documents on iCloud and provide syncing across computers and mobile devies, which Omnioutliner for the iPad currently can't do. Google Docs big selling point is collaboration. That's what I use it for, and I love it. But sometimes I need a richer and more powerful experience, and that's what dedicated apps provide. I'm glad that Apple is pursuing this strategy, because I believe there is a need for both. The other big plus of Apple's iCloud strategy is offline support.

gavanwoolery 15y ago

YAWN

timinman 15y ago
This is all big news for anyone who never uses anything but Apple products, but not so much for the rest of the world.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

stretchwithme 15y ago

Its all about using what you've already done to save you unnecessary work, even if you move from one device to another. That's been a dream of mine for a long time. The vast majority of bits on your computer are just copies from somewhere else. It is the things you do and the data that should be creating that are the valuable things. These should be preserved and leveraged to serve YOU, not advertisers, wherever you happen to be.

bad_user 15y ago

I don’t know of a single other way to take a document I am working on with my iPad and jump to my Mac having the document up-to-date I do, it's called Google Docs.

mclin 15y ago
If I add a calendar event to google calendar I'm still a bit surprised when I later notice it in my iPhone calendar. Same with updating contacts across devices.
- bad_user 15y ago
  To speak the truth - the Android integration with Google's contacts could be better. To transform all my locally stored contacts and make them Google contacts I had to first export them to a file, copy them on my laptop, upload to Google, mix&match duplicates and other corrections, download an export again on my computer, delete all my contacts from my phone (which also deleted my contacts from Google), reupload that export to Google, then synchronize my phone with Google's Contacts. Now everything I do on my phone or in Google's Contacts is kept in sync nicely. I also have Facebook sync set so I get faces of people for free and sometimes email addresses or phone numbers that I didn't have :-) But it was a painful experience to export my old sim-stored contacts and sometimes I get the feeling that while Google has the right idea about what people want, they are moving too slowly to fix their shit.
  - tftfmacedo 15y ago
    You could also use something like http://www.soocial.com/ http://www.soocial.com/ Disclaimer: I used to work there and they're working really hard on solving this kind of issues.
  - seabee 15y ago
    > download an export again on my computer What does this step achieve? The process was pretty easy for me - install Motorola Phone Tools, export the CSV file containing my contacts, make some changes in Excel, upload to Google. There's even an 'Import from SIM' option on my phone (possibly a feature of HTC's People app). Even on a featurephone your SIM contacts will conflict with your phone-stored contacts. There's an easy solution: don't view your SIM contacts. I don't see what shit Google needs to fix here, other than documentation, and in this case isn't that the handset manufacturer's responsibility?

saturdaysaint 15y ago

Everything I really want in the cloud, I have in the cloud - music (Rdio), podcasts (Instacast), books (Kindle), text files (Dropbox/apps). I am hopeful that Apple can simplify cloud services for appmakers. I've found many of the Dropbox syncing apps (ie text editors) fairly wonky - requiring an explicit sync confirmation or mostly just allowing me to push a file to a Dropbox. I hope that they enable/encourage a more seamless "autosave" experience to be standard.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

Am I the only one who thinks that a secure git server is so much ore useful than Dropbox, iCloud, etc.? Versioning. Access to old versions of artifacts.

leviathant 15y ago
A van with a V8 and a manual transmission is so much more useful than a compact four-banger auto-trans hatchback. What kind of car do you drive?