Apple’s unveiling of their latest service offering seems akin to playing catch-up more than anything else. Yes; it has been rumored (prior to Amazon and Google launching cloud-players) that this was one of their next major announcements. Nevertheless, there are some challenges with Apple’s iCloud:
- What happens to MobileMe users who will cease to have said service during the gap between when this is shuttered and when iCloud officially opens?
- At this juncture; streaming videos is still an unknown. Will this service be offered? If so; will Apple charge extra for it?
- Many of the features of iCloud are currently offered by Google; so there’s not the landmark differentiation herein as with some of Apple’s other offerings.
- A major difference though is how Apple is providing an incentive for consumers to upgrade their OS (and/or just buy Mac device outright with it therein) in order to get access to their iCloud f0r free (which is certainly a differentiator).
- The old clash between being on a PC vs. a Mac (and, by extension, iPhone / iPad vs. Android / Tablets, etc.) is still inherent as interoperability seems to have also (in some respects) taken another step towards it being less so than more…
These are a few (of a numbers of) points that come to mind…
Finally, even though being able to stream your digital content to 10 devices is obviously more generous than the maximum authorization number that Apple currently allows; it is still the case that the battle between “I own X… I should be able to do what I want with it” versus “No, you are actually paying for the license to use X and we are going to attempt to limit your usage of it” still goes on…
From CNET: http://cnet.co/lDwvW1
Chart: Cloud_Comparison