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iCloud: Big step for content management, but not for the cloud

All about the 'apps experience'

Cloud as invisible back end

But unlike true cloud aficionados, Apple is not creating web-based access to these services. Instead, it is enabling the core SDK for developers to build in access, keeping the cloud as an almost invisible back end for local apps.

APIs will let developers integrate their own apps with Apple's cloud so that they can be synched across multiple devices too, but it is not clear how far they will be able to build apps in iCloud itself, which could see services that compete with Apple's own.

To highlight the shortcomings of the Apple definition of "cloud", we can look at iTunes. Here, the music library stays on the device – nothing is stored in, or streamed from the cloud, which only houses song identification software and iTunes purchase histories. These are used to match a customer’s iTunes songs with tracks on the full iTunes catalog (also not in the cloud), to support iTunes Match.

Seamless sync

The key benefits for users will be in simplified content management and the ability to span all their iOS devices seamlessly.

Music got the headlines (though video streaming is missing), but iCloud also includes nearly every other Apple service, such as document sharing and synchronisation between PCs and iOS, online storage, calendar and contacts platform, multidevice application downloads, and instant automatic photo sharing.

The half-hearted approach to the cloud is not a bad thing – it may well provide a more usable and comprehensible system for Apple lovers than many more "pure" implementations, though it does preclude the chief end user benefit of the cloud, the ability to access one's data and files from any browser on any machine.

For instance, the document sharing service does demote the PC, but it does not create a true cloud offering like Google Docs, in which a cloud engine handles document creation, editing and collaboration.

In Apple's version, documents created in iWork are synchronised over the air, but they still open natively. iCloud keeps a master copy and any changes made to a file are instantly updated and synchronized to other users, but the real work is being done on the device itself.

This will be a very familiar experience, and less susceptible to poor wireless connectivity than many services – and of course it keeps users investing in larger numbers of more powerful iOS products, rather than trading down to a simple appliance like a Chromebook.

Apple may be making increasing amounts of revenue from content sharing and apps, but it still needs to sell heavy duty hardware, and so has to have a very different agenda from that of Google (encourage everyone to do more web activity via cheap gadgets, in order to drive its adverts and services), or Amazon (ditto to drive content purchasing).

Just another way to sell more products

As the analysts at ConnectedPlanet neatly put it:

"Google views the cloud as the central repository of apps, content and service intelligence into which device or browser can tap; Apple sees the cloud as more of way station between the devices it sells and the software it and its close partners have developed, to the exclusion of all others."

That will provide many useful services for those with multiple Apple devices, but does little to push the boundaries of its services to appeal to new users and those who have so far been unconverted to the charms of iOS.

But iCloud will have a strong impact nonetheless, because the Apple community is so vocal. CEO Steve Jobs pleased the crowd at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco by returning from sickness leave to address the event and unveil the platform.

"iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices," he explained. "It automatically uploads it, stores it, and pushes it … Now, when I buy a song on one of my devices it automatically downloads to all of my devices without having to sync or do anything at all. We're making it free, and we're very excited about it.”

If Jobs' address lacked some of its usual dramatic impact, that was not because of his health problems but because iCloud had been so thoroughly dissected in advance – and, in some respects, pipped to the post by Google’s and Amazon's cloud storage moves.

Indeed, Jobs showed some rare humility when he admitted that Apple's first, and hugely limited, mobile cloud offering, MobileMe, had "not been our finest hour". That service will now be moved into iCloud.

Wireless Watch is published by Rethink Research, a London-based IT publishing and consulting firm. This weekly newsletter delivers in-depth analysis and market research of mobile and wireless for business. Subscription details are here.

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