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Apple wants this to work with anyone with a Mac and an internet connection. Directly connecting might have NAT issues, or you might turn your host computer off

by qopp 12y ago

Apple wants this to work with anyone with a Mac and an internet connection. Directly connecting might have NAT issues, or you might turn your host computer off (or close your macbook without having power sleep on) preventing connection. These types of issues frustrate the average user since they don't know or care what's preventing it from working.

fit2rule 12y ago
.. and what I'm saying is that its the job of the operating system to make these issues less frustrating and irrelevant in terms of problems. If the average person understood that they could gain access to their content/media safely while on the road, and if the OS had a low-power mode that could traverse NAT's (it does exist and can be done easily and safely) then it wouldn't be necessary to be building secret mega-data centers in the desert to hold all the worlds data - it'd be distributed, and thus safer/better, instead, among all of the existing computers - which face it, are mostly under-utilized in the grand computing scheme of things. Well, I guess I can see this as an opportunity more than anything else: design an application that will give users power over their own cloud. What a pity that there's no easy way for the iDevices to be gaining access to this, or maybe there is, indeed a way ..
- evan_ 12y ago
  I keep my photos on my laptop. With your concept, I have to think about whether my laptop is open and online. If I'm traveling with my laptop and my phone and I want to get a photo, I have to figure out how to get my laptop online. No thanks.
  - fit2rule 12y ago
    Well this is definitely a fair argument for the Cloud - it prevents you from needing to buy another smaller, cheaper computer to leave at home and do all the serving duty. Even though that would be an effective solution to your problem (it can be done quite cheaply), because the Cloud is there - you probably won't consider it.
    - evan_ 12y ago
      I could do that but I don't want to do that. Most people don't want to do that, or can't.
- comex 12y ago
  So they have to leave their laptop plugged in and connected to the network - I think most Macs sold are laptops - which is a pain in general (prevents you from just closing the lid and forgetting about the laptop whenever you want), but especially difficult in various travel-related situations - say, one has brought the laptop with them but has left it in the hotel safe (or the hotel has poor Wi-Fi, etc.)... [1] ...and they have to be able to traverse the NAT, which is possible in some way on most, but not all connections (suppose Apple could proxy, but then you get back to data centers)... ...and they have to have good upload speed, if the browsing process from the client phone is to be sufficiently interactive, which, sadly, is relatively uncommon even on connections with good download speed, not to mention the many connections that are just crap... ...and if the server's drive fails, their treasured data is lost, so they should make sure to keep backup drives around (or online backups, but ditto data centers)... ...and they have to have a Mac (or PC) to act as a server, which an increasing number of iOS users don't (yet they still want to be able to store more photos than fit on their phone)... For what? Saving a few dollars on a cloud plan for your expensive iOS devices? Preventing the NSA from snooping on your vacation photos? (Most people don't care, but for those who do, an easier solution for Apple would be implementing client side encryption. Of course, this does not currently exist, except for iCloud Keychain.) Saving energy? (Apple's data centers use purely renewable energy, your home probably doesn't.) Reliability, resilience to cloud outages? That's a fair point, and an option to use a desktop as a backup would be nice, but I guarantee you most users would still opt to use Apple's secret mega-data centers in the desert. (Also, Apple's servers are more reliable than they were in the past, and since we're talking about new engineering effort - if they were as reliable as, say, Google, would this still really be an issue?) The logic causing you to use a RPi makes sense to you (and I bet part of it is the flexibility that's available to a sysadmin/programmer but wouldn't be to an average user in any scenario), but for most people's use cases, I think it simply doesn't make any sense. So it's no surprise that Apple isn't working on it. [1] A separate device like your Raspberry Pi, or Apple's AirPort Express, would solve this problem, but not the others.
- themoonbus 12y ago
  The operating system is doing this, it's just not in a way that appeals to you. Luckily, we can write software for the OS that fills in the gaps.

by qopp 12y ago

fit2rule 12y ago

.. and what I'm saying is that its the job of the operating system to make these issues less frustrating and irrelevant in terms of problems. If the average person understood that they could gain access to their content/media safely while on the road, and if the OS had a low-power mode that could traverse NAT's (it does exist and can be done easily and safely) then it wouldn't be necessary to be building secret mega-data centers in the desert to hold all the worlds data - it'd be distributed, and thus safer/better, instead, among all of the existing computers - which face it, are mostly under-utilized in the grand computing scheme of things. Well, I guess I can see this as an opportunity more than anything else: design an application that will give users power over their own cloud. What a pity that there's no easy way for the iDevices to be gaining access to this, or maybe there is, indeed a way ..

evan_ 12y ago
I keep my photos on my laptop. With your concept, I have to think about whether my laptop is open and online. If I'm traveling with my laptop and my phone and I want to get a photo, I have to figure out how to get my laptop online. No thanks.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  Well this is definitely a fair argument for the Cloud - it prevents you from needing to buy another smaller, cheaper computer to leave at home and do all the serving duty. Even though that would be an effective solution to your problem (it can be done quite cheaply), because the Cloud is there - you probably won't consider it.
  - evan_ 12y ago
    I could do that but I don't want to do that. Most people don't want to do that, or can't.
comex 12y ago
So they have to leave their laptop plugged in and connected to the network - I think most Macs sold are laptops - which is a pain in general (prevents you from just closing the lid and forgetting about the laptop whenever you want), but especially difficult in various travel-related situations - say, one has brought the laptop with them but has left it in the hotel safe (or the hotel has poor Wi-Fi, etc.)... [1] ...and they have to be able to traverse the NAT, which is possible in some way on most, but not all connections (suppose Apple could proxy, but then you get back to data centers)... ...and they have to have good upload speed, if the browsing process from the client phone is to be sufficiently interactive, which, sadly, is relatively uncommon even on connections with good download speed, not to mention the many connections that are just crap... ...and if the server's drive fails, their treasured data is lost, so they should make sure to keep backup drives around (or online backups, but ditto data centers)... ...and they have to have a Mac (or PC) to act as a server, which an increasing number of iOS users don't (yet they still want to be able to store more photos than fit on their phone)... For what? Saving a few dollars on a cloud plan for your expensive iOS devices? Preventing the NSA from snooping on your vacation photos? (Most people don't care, but for those who do, an easier solution for Apple would be implementing client side encryption. Of course, this does not currently exist, except for iCloud Keychain.) Saving energy? (Apple's data centers use purely renewable energy, your home probably doesn't.) Reliability, resilience to cloud outages? That's a fair point, and an option to use a desktop as a backup would be nice, but I guarantee you most users would still opt to use Apple's secret mega-data centers in the desert. (Also, Apple's servers are more reliable than they were in the past, and since we're talking about new engineering effort - if they were as reliable as, say, Google, would this still really be an issue?) The logic causing you to use a RPi makes sense to you (and I bet part of it is the flexibility that's available to a sysadmin/programmer but wouldn't be to an average user in any scenario), but for most people's use cases, I think it simply doesn't make any sense. So it's no surprise that Apple isn't working on it. [1] A separate device like your Raspberry Pi, or Apple's AirPort Express, would solve this problem, but not the others.
themoonbus 12y ago
The operating system is doing this, it's just not in a way that appeals to you. Luckily, we can write software for the OS that fills in the gaps.