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18 Juin 2011
iCloud and MicroContent
The announcement by Apple of the iCloud has made me wonder how I should look at it from a MicroContent point of view. As details are still unclear, I can only indicate where I see some touch-points between iCloud and MicroContent.
There have been already many good articles explaining the iCloud and describing the differences between the Apple, Google and Amazon approach to the cloud. Check out my Delicious icloud tag to get started.
What I get out of the iCloud is the idea of a data-centered approach. Apple talks about documents, but you might also think of MicroContent data. This data is centrally stored in the Apple iCloud and pushed to any of your iDevices. Any changes to the data locally on an iDevice is uploaded and distributed between your registered iDevices. So from a user point of view you no longer have to worry where your data is, you just have it.
So far so good. This basic idea however leaves various questions open and we will see how these are filled in.
The first is how conflict resolution is solved. This happens when the same data has been changed on different devices. Which version is then the good one? The suggestion is that Apple will decide which version is the best one, the truthful one. So no pop-up windows where the user has to decide. And if you do not agree you can revert back to another version.
The iCloud is really an Apple realm. It only concerns the data for your iDevices. it is unclear how this will include a windows PC. As no synching with iTunes is necessary anymore, no backup is necessary neither, iTunes on a PC is no longer needed. Or will this be limited to audio, video and images only?
In a larger context one wonders whether there are possibilities that non-iDevices can be included in the iCloud. I would guess the answer is no. Getting things out the iCloud and into the iCloud will still be called exporting and importing and left to an iApp.
There is still some discussion whether Apple will add a web-interface to the iCloud. However the discussion seems to be linked to a MobileMe replacement service, which is a publishing question. What if you want to access your iCloud data on a non-iDevice through a web-browser?
The data in the iCloud will be mainly personal, it is all about your data and having that available to you in the easiest possible way. Would we like to synch that data with other clouds, which ones? The Google cloud? Undoubtedly services will appear that do this for you.
Finally what about publishing data for others. Will the iCloud offer web-hosting, just like MobileMe? And how transparent will this be? Will there be links with other services, like YouTube, Flickr, etc? Or will this be handled through the iApps? This integration can be interesting and it is where MicroContent can surface.
At the moment we just have to wait.