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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

by 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
Amazon S3 has offered user-pays storage for years, for any client OS.
easytiger 12y ago
A cloud that cannot be accessed from everywhere and everything is not a cloud
- ddoolin 12y ago
  Yes it is. It's not an open cloud. I wasn't aware there was a strict definition.
  - easytiger 12y ago
    The word cloud is a crock and i'm not going to get into that. But the general point of people providing online service based applications is that from many front ends they have one back end. Having it locked down to a platform is utterly utterly pointless and pathetically purposefully divisive. I really am quite sure the future of modern global interpersonal communications is utterly disastrous given the state of rival networks fighting it out instead of working towards inter-operable-fault-tolerant-distributed-vendor-agnostic solutions. Email is still the best way of doing this but as Instant Messaging has shown for the past 20 years (no standard ever caught on) without that we end up unable to communicate reliably and one logical place with everyone. The only thing even close has been SMS.
    - gumby 12y ago
      > The word cloud is a crock and i'm not going to get into that. I can't resist slightly getting into it: it was a perfectly decent metaphor until some marketing numbskull heard a technical person use it and decided to stretch it in ways that made it meaningless. Back when it simply meant, "look, you push your packets into the network and a bunch of routers decide how to get it to its destination without you having to worry about routing" it was fine.
      - easytiger 12y ago
        There's already a name for that: An IPv4/v6 network.

by jws 12y ago

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

Amazon S3 has offered user-pays storage for years, for any client OS.

easytiger 12y ago

A cloud that cannot be accessed from everywhere and everything is not a cloud

ddoolin 12y ago
Yes it is. It's not an open cloud. I wasn't aware there was a strict definition.
- easytiger 12y ago
  The word cloud is a crock and i'm not going to get into that. But the general point of people providing online service based applications is that from many front ends they have one back end. Having it locked down to a platform is utterly utterly pointless and pathetically purposefully divisive. I really am quite sure the future of modern global interpersonal communications is utterly disastrous given the state of rival networks fighting it out instead of working towards inter-operable-fault-tolerant-distributed-vendor-agnostic solutions. Email is still the best way of doing this but as Instant Messaging has shown for the past 20 years (no standard ever caught on) without that we end up unable to communicate reliably and one logical place with everyone. The only thing even close has been SMS.
  - gumby 12y ago
    > The word cloud is a crock and i'm not going to get into that. I can't resist slightly getting into it: it was a perfectly decent metaphor until some marketing numbskull heard a technical person use it and decided to stretch it in ways that made it meaningless. Back when it simply meant, "look, you push your packets into the network and a bunch of routers decide how to get it to its destination without you having to worry about routing" it was fine.
    - easytiger 12y ago
      There's already a name for that: An IPv4/v6 network.