Tag Archives | Apple iCloud

Apple’s iCloud Pricing vs. the Competition

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 2, 2011 at 9:24 am

Apple has announced pricing for its upcoming iCloud service. In typical Apple fashion, the company kept things simple. 5GB of online storage is free; 10GB is $20 a year; 20GB is $40 a year; 50GB is $100 a year. (Most other cloud-storage companies price by the month rather than the year, which makes it tougher to judge what you’re really going to shell out–if you find one of these services useful, you’re going to use it indefinitely, not one month at a time.)

So is Apple’s pricing a deal? Comparing prices for these services is tough. Different ones offer different capacity points. Some have lots of features (SugarSync and Box.net, for instance) and some are far more bare-bones (Amazon Cloud Drive and Microsoft Cloud Drive). Some have their own twists (YouSendIt, for instance, has a built-in digital-signature feature) and some (Amazon Cloud Drive and iCloud) don’t include purchased music in the capacity limits. And anyhow, iCloud isn’t an exact counterpart to any existing service. It’s going to be way more Apple-centric–betcha there won’t be Android clients–and is less about syncing and more about leaving your files in the cloud, period.

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Will Apple’s iCloud Forecast Include the Business Market?

Posted by David Worthington on June 15, 2011 at 9:38 am

Apple’s iCloud announcements last week were very focused on the consumer electronics industry, but Apple has the opportunity to create an offshoot for business customers.

The iPhone, and more recently the iPad, are becoming standard corporate issue within large companies. iCloud services will need to be adapted to meet rules and regulations that govern data.

Cloud computing is most commonly used to offload back-office applications from IT staff; e-mail and other non-proprietary data is hosted in public clouds such as Amazon Web Services or Windows Azure. In theory, that gives IT staff more time and flexibility to focus on services that make the business more competitive.

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In Case It Wasn’t Clear Already, Apple Likes to Build Software for Apple Devices

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 13, 2011 at 1:37 pm

Over at This is My Next, Joshua Topolsky has a thought-provoking piece that says that Apple is going to discontinue its only major browser-based Web apps–the ones that are part of MobileMe–next year after iCloud is fully up and running. There’s a lively debate going on via Twitter between Topolsky and some folks who say that he has it all wrong: the MobileMe Web apps will survive the iCloud transition.

Even if the MobileMe Web apps don’t get the ax, the gist of Topolsky’s piece remains relevant. Apple filled last week’s WWDC keynote to the gills with news, but it was all about operating systems, apps, and an ambitious piece of Internet plumbing called iCloud. No surprise there: there’s never been much evidence that Apple is terribly interested in creating Web apps. But it loves to create traditional software that runs on hardware devices it builds.

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Coming on Monday: WWDC 2011 Live Blog Coverage

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 2, 2011 at 6:29 pm

On Monday June 6th at 10am PT, I’ll be at San Francisco’s Moscone West for Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote. It sounds packed, packed, packed–we’ll get our last big look at OS X 10.7 Lion before it ships, and our first big looks at the next version of iOS, and the long-rumored service now known as iCloud. And rumor has it that there are occasionally surprise announcements at these events. (I’m told Jobs likes to keep them until the end.)

I’ll blog the keynote news as it happens, with color commentary from special guest Doug Aamoth of Techland. Tens of thousands of folks attended our last Apple live coverage (the iPad 2 announcement), but we’ll save room for you. Join us at technologizer.com/wwdc11–and go there now to sign up for an e-mail reminder if you like.

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