8 ms·

iCloud for Developers

99 points by metaedge 12y ago

vladgur 12y ago
so from what I can see(and i did a very very cursory overview) , there are no web apis for icloud :( no cross platform integration i guess
k-mcgrady 12y ago
Sounds like Parse but iOS only. It'll make things a hell of a lot easier for a lot of people though. I wonder what the procedure would be if your app takes off and you want to go cross platform.
badman_ting 12y ago
They're discussing CloudKit now at WWDC. This sounds great - and could take a noticeable chunk of business from current cloud providers. This looks like a smart move from Apple. It only got about a minute and a half during the Keynote, ha.
moyaRD 12y ago
CloudKit is very exciting.Appears to have a very narrow scope , IOS only App with a simple Web service. But for those developer looking to develop only for iPhone customers, it will be great to write all code with a single language and single platform on the client and server. This desire exist out there with web platform like node.js, that seek to united the discrepancy between the client and server development in mobile applications. Will love to try this out, and if work properly , free myself from azure/amazon EC2 in simple iOS apps.
iambateman 12y ago
Question: who owns the data stored with iCloud? Do developers still get to own their data, or is it going to be subject to sniffing from Apple?
- plg 12y ago
  Unlike some other companies (FB, Dropbox, Google) Apple's business model doesn't depend on sniffing your personal information.
- cmelbye 12y ago
  And more importantly, how do you export your data and move it to a different provider? How do you take your app that relies on CloudKit and make it cross platform? If the answer is "you can't, this is only meant to help the Apple ecosystem", I'm not sure of the broad usefulness of this.
- avree 12y ago
  Why would Apple care about your data? They do not make money off ad sales, they make money off platform adoption. A private and secure platform results in more adoption.
jws 12y ago
In the iCloud world, a user pays for his storage space directly to Apple. That will be an interesting shift for startups. There will be no backend expenses on a per user basis. How to monetize the user is still wide open, but Apple will be covering the storage and server tab. (With money added from heavy users. Casual users needn't pay.) The dark side of this is that there doesn't appear to be a way for a browser or non-Apple product to interact with the stored data. So you trade free backend servers for writing software only for Apple customers and even then not when they sit down at a borrowed machine.
- untog 12y ago
  Is storage that large a problem for most startups, though?
  - nl 12y ago
    That's a complex question. I think the shortest answer is "no.. but a small percentage of users use very large amounts which can end up as a problem".
- derefr 12y ago
  > There doesn't appear to be a way for a browser or non-Apple product to interact with the stored data What APIs do the iCloud.com web-apps use, then? ("Non-public ones" is the likely answer.)
  - eridius 12y ago
    They could be running on Apple hardware.
    - eridius 12y ago
      That was a serious suggestion. Was I downvoted because someone doesn't like the idea that Apple could be using Apple hardware to run their own stuff?
- judk 12y ago
onmydesk 12y ago
iOS only. Parse it is then.
zackmorris 12y ago
I wrote an iOS app using Core Data and iCloud, and it was the worst experience I've had so far developing for the platform. From top to bottom, the Core Data concepts are simultaneously too low-level and too opaque. I found myself copying multi-page code snippets from the web and hoping they would work. Basic concepts like merging conflicts were obfuscated and brittle. Contrast that with Firebase, which has been a real pleasure to use. So I'm hopeful that CloudKit will address these issues. Versioned schemas are great for updates but hard to get working initially. I'm sure iCloud has a lot of good ideas like that, but up till now they were simply too esoteric to get a handle on, and I think the general consensus was to avoid iCloud until it was ready for primetime.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  Although there's a lot of boilerplate to get CoreData working I've always found it really good to work with. My guess would be that this iCloud developer stuff builds on top of CoreData so I wouldn't expect much to change unfortunately.
spacefight 12y ago
I wonder who as a developer really loves more and more vendor lock-in than what we already have...? Where would you store your app data for your other platforms like Android or WP?

99 points by metaedge 12y ago

so from what I can see(and i did a very very cursory overview) , there are no web apis for icloud :( no cross platform integration i guess

k-mcgrady 12y ago

Sounds like Parse but iOS only. It'll make things a hell of a lot easier for a lot of people though. I wonder what the procedure would be if your app takes off and you want to go cross platform.

badman_ting 12y ago

They're discussing CloudKit now at WWDC. This sounds great - and could take a noticeable chunk of business from current cloud providers. This looks like a smart move from Apple. It only got about a minute and a half during the Keynote, ha.

moyaRD 12y ago

CloudKit is very exciting.Appears to have a very narrow scope , IOS only App with a simple Web service. But for those developer looking to develop only for iPhone customers, it will be great to write all code with a single language and single platform on the client and server. This desire exist out there with web platform like node.js, that seek to united the discrepancy between the client and server development in mobile applications. Will love to try this out, and if work properly , free myself from azure/amazon EC2 in simple iOS apps.

iambateman 12y ago

Question: who owns the data stored with iCloud? Do developers still get to own their data, or is it going to be subject to sniffing from Apple?

plg 12y ago
Unlike some other companies (FB, Dropbox, Google) Apple's business model doesn't depend on sniffing your personal information.
cmelbye 12y ago
And more importantly, how do you export your data and move it to a different provider? How do you take your app that relies on CloudKit and make it cross platform? If the answer is "you can't, this is only meant to help the Apple ecosystem", I'm not sure of the broad usefulness of this.
avree 12y ago
Why would Apple care about your data? They do not make money off ad sales, they make money off platform adoption. A private and secure platform results in more adoption.

jws 12y ago

In the iCloud world, a user pays for his storage space directly to Apple. That will be an interesting shift for startups. There will be no backend expenses on a per user basis. How to monetize the user is still wide open, but Apple will be covering the storage and server tab. (With money added from heavy users. Casual users needn't pay.) The dark side of this is that there doesn't appear to be a way for a browser or non-Apple product to interact with the stored data. So you trade free backend servers for writing software only for Apple customers and even then not when they sit down at a borrowed machine.

untog 12y ago
Is storage that large a problem for most startups, though?
- nl 12y ago
  That's a complex question. I think the shortest answer is "no.. but a small percentage of users use very large amounts which can end up as a problem".
derefr 12y ago
> There doesn't appear to be a way for a browser or non-Apple product to interact with the stored data What APIs do the iCloud.com web-apps use, then? ("Non-public ones" is the likely answer.)
- eridius 12y ago
  They could be running on Apple hardware.
  - eridius 12y ago
    That was a serious suggestion. Was I downvoted because someone doesn't like the idea that Apple could be using Apple hardware to run their own stuff?
judk 12y ago

onmydesk 12y ago

iOS only. Parse it is then.

zackmorris 12y ago

I wrote an iOS app using Core Data and iCloud, and it was the worst experience I've had so far developing for the platform. From top to bottom, the Core Data concepts are simultaneously too low-level and too opaque. I found myself copying multi-page code snippets from the web and hoping they would work. Basic concepts like merging conflicts were obfuscated and brittle. Contrast that with Firebase, which has been a real pleasure to use. So I'm hopeful that CloudKit will address these issues. Versioned schemas are great for updates but hard to get working initially. I'm sure iCloud has a lot of good ideas like that, but up till now they were simply too esoteric to get a handle on, and I think the general consensus was to avoid iCloud until it was ready for primetime.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
Although there's a lot of boilerplate to get CoreData working I've always found it really good to work with. My guess would be that this iCloud developer stuff builds on top of CoreData so I wouldn't expect much to change unfortunately.

spacefight 12y ago

I wonder who as a developer really loves more and more vendor lock-in than what we already have...? Where would you store your app data for your other platforms like Android or WP?