Apple Cloud Syncing Is Coming

[nikster]

The BGR says that iTunes will soon sync wirelessly:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/01/exclusive-apple-itunes-in-the-cloud-definitely-happening-soon-wireless-syncing/comment-page-2/#comment-947081

Given that this is Apple, I have a feeling they won't stop there. They'll provide a service where your entire machine is moved to the cloud. I think.

[negreanu]

My money is on only Itunes Store purchased items will be on the cloud. Cannot see them hosting my 1.1TB of media on their cloud for me and I don't fancy uploading it either ha

[bangkokburning]

Agreed, the day I upload my 26K songs to Apple ... ain't gonna happen. If it manages media like Itunes does not, I don't see a lot of sharing going on.

and I do likes to share :-)

Then you have to ask why? An external HDD will always be faster than cloud. Cloud Shmoud.

[nikster]

Well I think it's down the road anyway... but with the exception of my media library, everything could be on the cloud easily. The stuff that we are syncing already to our phones and iPads fits in 16GB, so it's not too much. Maybe it will work the same? I don't know - but if you have cloud syncing the one thing I am pretty sure about is that Apple will provide a solution that makes sense and it easy to use.

I didn't mention this but the rumor also says that iTunes will be able to stream your stuff to your iDevices.

E.g. you can stream your movies from your Mac to your iPhone / iPad. I can imagine that would be pretty cool.

[nikster]

Forgot to say this: Why is cloud syncing cool? It's not, except if you have more than 1 device. 2 laptops, or a desktop, a laptop, an iPad, and an iPhone. The more devices you want to keep in sync, the more valuable it is having things on a central server.

I never had any need for this - I kept all my things on one laptop for the precise reason that I don't want to have to sync my data. But now I have the laptop, the iPad, and the iPhone, it's getting to the point where cloud syncing would be useful. For example, I want all the pictures that I take with my iPhone to appear on my iPad and MacBook Pro - I don't want to have to connect all these devices via USB to make it happen. I just want it to work. Generally, the iPhone syncing experience is pretty lame - first iTunes pops to the front, taking over from whatever you were doing. Then, it shows a spinning beach ball and freezes for a few seconds before it recognizes the iPhone. The whole process seems very un-Apple like. Put it another way - I never want to have to connect my iPhone. I want music from my Mac appear on the phone on demand. And pictures from the phone appear on the Mac automatically. And contacts entered in one place to appear in the others. Calendar entries too. I believe could syncing will do all this "magically".

Edit: One more thing - I also expect Apple to keep my data encrypted in the cloud, and to not scavenge it for information the way Google does.

[bangkokburning]

Nik, you can turn off sync automatically by deselecting the box. I agree that is really annoying. It should be deselected by default.

I'm old school Ipod user - I use a classic. It is perfect for long trips and being away from computers. Gives access to most of my library. I might go with a touch, when it goes to 64gb, its slick and Apple has really relegated these models to the bin. But it serves me well.

In town, I have about 2gb of songs on my smartphone.

I don't mind he cables, but yes, can be a hassle. Cables will always be faster than wifi connection, esp w/ usb3 coming.

Funny, cloud computing. Isn't this where computing was 40 years ago?? :-)