Apple had another blowout quarter. No surprise there.
But what's hidden in the numbers is a surprise. Tremendous optimism for the new Apple Cloud strategy – iCloud – that is only partly revealed. As I mentioned in a previous post about AirPlay, Apple is looking to change the way the world experiences video in a more massive way than it how it changed the way we listen to music.
With music, we already had Walkman and radio players with headphones. Steve Jobs liberated us from our desktops by allowing us to take all our music with us anywhere we go. But the priviledge – which remade an entire industry around iTunes – still chained us to our desks to sync and backup all our songs.
With my iPad, I now let Netflix worry about storing and saving all those movies – all I do is click a button and watch what I want, where I want with narry a concern about actually owning or backing up a single video file.
This then is the Apple iCloud vision: to provide you with access to all your media wherever you go. When you buy a song or movie with iTunes it will be available to you anywhere, just log onto iCloud. At a friends house and want to watch your shows? Just log on with your AppleID via her AppleTV and watch away. At grandma's house and want to show her a video of the grandkids? Pull out her iPad and log into iCloud…there it is.
If you are a Netflix user like me you already know how liberating this is for movies and television shows. Now add to that vision all your photos, all your music, all your iPhone videos, your contacts, your emails, someday even all your apps. All your media will be "with you" wherever you go – reminds me of the line from Buckaroo Bonzai (or was it Confucius?) "No Matter Where You Go, There You Are"
With music, we already had Walkman and radio players with headphones. Steve Jobs liberated us from our desktops by allowing us to take all our music with us anywhere we go. But the priviledge – which remade an entire industry around iTunes – still chained us to our desks to sync and backup all our songs.
Yes, but now you can sync wirelessly and not even worry about missing a beat – song not on that device, just redownload it from iCloud (and don’t be fooled, in the future you’ll simply stream it instead)
cannot wait for iCloud. I have a 16gb 3g ipad 2 and have always regretted cheaping out because I can’t fit anything else onto itg. Hopefully iCloud will go some way to fixing that problem for me.
I’m very excited about this. It’s basically like carrying around an external hard drive where ever you go. Gone are the days of people saying, “ohh shoot I didn’t bring my camera with me, I’ll have to show you those pictures some other time” because they’ll all be on the cloud! Very cool.