I think this is a vast improvement over their previous cloud offering (MobileMe) but basic functionality is still missing from iCloud. For example, how can I delete pictures from photostream ? I can't. So if I took dozens of bad pictures and one good picture on my iPhone I'm stuck with copies of all pictures in all my computers until I either reset photostream or the 30 days expire the photos.
The fact that photostream is not supported on os x 10.6 is just stupid. I can't access my photos from my iphone on my mac unless I boot it up in win 7! And there is no web service for photos, so I can't casually show my images to friends and family, which I thought was the whole point of the service. Apple has completely misunderstood the concept of the cloud!
iCloud freezes the crashes all instances of IE in Windows XP... that to say: logged into iCloud ok, clicked on "contacts" at which point CPU usage by iexplore.exe (IE) on my Windows XP machine goes to 100% (also: a warning about script using a lot of CPU shows up). Let it work for a good 5 minutes trying to display maybe a 100 entry contact list. Finally I "X" the window from the task tray... and ALL OTHER IE windows also disappear. Not for prime time - at least in this environment.
That's just the control panel, not the web interface. The web interface doesn't work on Chrome on Windows 7, for example; Find My iPhone just displays a map, for example, with no list of devices or location displayed. Safari on Win7 had no such issues.
and again, microsoft does the stupid thing. they had a perfectly working system of sync between their "old" phones and a web-site (myphone, wich worked on windows mobile 6.x). it saved ALL the content from the phone and made it available on a single site (even SMS's and contact pictures). it should be fairly easy to create some desktop app to sync with this site.
but NOOOOO, they decided to kill the fracking service altogheter. make windows phone 7 NOT work with it, then block the site and disable sync. by today they have completely shut-down the service.
now they will restart from scratch and maybe 5 years from now we will have a cloud-storage competitor from MS for this iCloud stuff....
WP7.5 / Mango already has many cloud services and integration with SkyDrive which gives you 25GB free, and it's better than what Win Mobile ever had. The 25GB essentially becomes a part of your phones memory. This is Apple playing catch up to both Google and MS. And as usual Apple have done a poor job of it, while at the same time idiots like you are falling for there advertising.
just to be clear: I'm NOT an user of any Apple product. i believe their product is marketing, not actual phones/players/pcs/anything.
and I'm trying to update myself too: after 3 months owning an android 2.3 phone, my best impression is that it is like Windows 95 for phones. full of bugs and you need deep knowledge to adjust anything it.
skydrive is a good name, but it wont sync HALF the stuff myphone did. with that aging service i could completely wipe my device and after entering 1 id/password, have ALL of its contents restored. not just music/pic/videos/contacts, but also SMS/notes/contact images/contact notes/browser bookmars/application list (you had to re-download them tough, but they were pre-marked). wm 6.5 was the easiest OS to format and haver your phone fully restored in a matter of minutes. you could even change your phone and migrate all your content to another pain-free.
MS is re-inventing the wheel this time.
anyway, i still can't trhow away my wm 6.5 phone because of a fraking corporate app that only works in it. it does NOT work on either iOS, Android or WP7 because none of these OSes is able to call an executable file passing another file as parameter (like windows CE / wm6.x does). this is NOT what i want, just to be crystal clear.
It depends on what you want. Its an assumption that most people need access to M/S SkyDrive or Google's Cloud Sync (or whatever's its called).
For some people a phone (like an iPhone) that works well out the box, has many great apps, and works well with an eco system. My family have the full range of mobile devices and actually managing them all is very simple. Plus it helps drive VOD, content sharing etc. I also need a tablet and I dont want to manage two different ecosystems. Its unfortunate but M/S are late to the party here. Of course you are now going to say that with an XBox or a Media Centre etc. you can do the same thing and you probably can.
Its a matter of personal choice. For someone to say that WP sucks is naive. For you to beat your chest and slate Apple.. well also nonsense isnt it?
Where M/S will have it over the others will be next year when WP8 comes out and there is a working tablet. If all neatly integrates with the desktop Outlook etc and SkyDrive then M/S has a strong play.
I look forward to Windows 8 but until then M/S does not tick all the boxes
"You should, however, note that iCloud only wants to work with Apple-supplied programs on OS X - if you want your mail in Outlook or Thunderbird or your bookmarks in Firefox or Chrome, too bad."
True. True. But … anyone is free to use the published API for iOS and OS X to write iCloud integration into their apps.
"...... iCloud on OS X is all about locking you into Apple’s ecosystem."
Where have they locked the user in with iCloud? There is a developer API. Developer are free to write any software for iOS or OS X that can leverage iCloud.
But then this article is about iCloud on Windows. Windows has no ecosystem lock in.
khurt's point bears repeating. It's hard to see exactly how a set of published APIs, based on standard internet technologies like SSL and IMAP, corresponds to "lockin".
This is the same BS that we've seen for ten years now. Apple chooses to use AAC --- OMG, proprietary! Apple chooses to use h.264 --- OMG lockin. So use of international standards, which I can buy and use to implement my own code or HW, is "lockin", but apparently WMA or WMV --- no standards, changed by MS as they feel like it --- correspond to freedom or something?
No iCloud API access if you're not in the App Store. So, even if you're not using Apple products, Apple gets its cut.
Also, I don't know how saying "Apple tries to lock you in," which is demonstrably true, implies some anti-Windows bias. Everyone tries to lock you in these days. This post is about Apple products, so Apple lock-in is what we're going to talk about.
The switch to iCloud breaks any Mac or iOS device that can't run Lion or iOS5 though. In my house, that's one mac and two older iPhones that can't connect to iCloud, which is a bummer.
Having more than 1 Apple ID when you enable iCloud is a real problem as well. You can't switch accounts easily because Apple imposes a 90-day delay on account switching.
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felipeb8 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
I think this is a vast improvement over their previous cloud offering (MobileMe) but basic functionality is still missing from iCloud.For example, how can I delete pictures from photostream ? I can't.
So if I took dozens of bad pictures and one good picture on my iPhone I'm stuck with copies of all pictures in all my computers until I either reset photostream or the 30 days expire the photos.
Samoht - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
The fact that photostream is not supported on os x 10.6 is just stupid. I can't access my photos from my iphone on my mac unless I boot it up in win 7! And there is no web service for photos, so I can't casually show my images to friends and family, which I thought was the whole point of the service. Apple has completely misunderstood the concept of the cloud!IceDread - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Good review but the product sure is not of interest for me.I do not like how apple tries to lock me in and I also find these prices for storage to be very much to high.
So no thanks, I'm happier without apple in my life.
all_is_well_in_nj - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
iCloud freezes the crashes all instances of IE in Windows XP... that to say: logged into iCloud ok, clicked on "contacts" at which point CPU usage by iexplore.exe (IE) on my Windows XP machine goes to 100% (also: a warning about script using a lot of CPU shows up). Let it work for a good 5 minutes trying to display maybe a 100 entry contact list. Finally I "X" the window from the task tray... and ALL OTHER IE windows also disappear. Not for prime time - at least in this environment.all_is_well_in_nj
www.BambooHollow.com
Andrew.a.cunningham - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Officially, Windows XP isn't supported - you're probably having problems because the software wasn't tested against your operating system.See: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455
Guspaz - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
That's just the control panel, not the web interface. The web interface doesn't work on Chrome on Windows 7, for example; Find My iPhone just displays a map, for example, with no list of devices or location displayed. Safari on Win7 had no such issues.Andrew.a.cunningham - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Ah! Well that's weird, since it works fine in Chrome on other platforms. What about Safari on XP?marc1000 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
and again, microsoft does the stupid thing. they had a perfectly working system of sync between their "old" phones and a web-site (myphone, wich worked on windows mobile 6.x). it saved ALL the content from the phone and made it available on a single site (even SMS's and contact pictures). it should be fairly easy to create some desktop app to sync with this site.but NOOOOO, they decided to kill the fracking service altogheter. make windows phone 7 NOT work with it, then block the site and disable sync. by today they have completely shut-down the service.
now they will restart from scratch and maybe 5 years from now we will have a cloud-storage competitor from MS for this iCloud stuff....
B3an - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Come out your of cave once in while.WP7.5 / Mango already has many cloud services and integration with SkyDrive which gives you 25GB free, and it's better than what Win Mobile ever had. The 25GB essentially becomes a part of your phones memory. This is Apple playing catch up to both Google and MS. And as usual Apple have done a poor job of it, while at the same time idiots like you are falling for there advertising.
marc1000 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
just to be clear: I'm NOT an user of any Apple product. i believe their product is marketing, not actual phones/players/pcs/anything.and I'm trying to update myself too: after 3 months owning an android 2.3 phone, my best impression is that it is like Windows 95 for phones. full of bugs and you need deep knowledge to adjust anything it.
skydrive is a good name, but it wont sync HALF the stuff myphone did. with that aging service i could completely wipe my device and after entering 1 id/password, have ALL of its contents restored. not just music/pic/videos/contacts, but also SMS/notes/contact images/contact notes/browser bookmars/application list (you had to re-download them tough, but they were pre-marked). wm 6.5 was the easiest OS to format and haver your phone fully restored in a matter of minutes. you could even change your phone and migrate all your content to another pain-free.
MS is re-inventing the wheel this time.
anyway, i still can't trhow away my wm 6.5 phone because of a fraking corporate app that only works in it. it does NOT work on either iOS, Android or WP7 because none of these OSes is able to call an executable file passing another file as parameter (like windows CE / wm6.x does). this is NOT what i want, just to be crystal clear.
Biscuit1018 - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
It depends on what you want.Its an assumption that most people need access to M/S SkyDrive or Google's Cloud Sync (or whatever's its called).
For some people a phone (like an iPhone) that works well out the box, has many great apps, and works well with an eco system.
My family have the full range of mobile devices and actually managing them all is very simple. Plus it helps drive VOD, content sharing etc.
I also need a tablet and I dont want to manage two different ecosystems. Its unfortunate but M/S are late to the party here.
Of course you are now going to say that with an XBox or a Media Centre etc. you can do the same thing and you probably can.
Its a matter of personal choice. For someone to say that WP sucks is naive. For you to beat your chest and slate Apple.. well also nonsense isnt it?
Where M/S will have it over the others will be next year when WP8 comes out and there is a working tablet. If all neatly integrates with the desktop Outlook etc and SkyDrive then M/S has a strong play.
I look forward to Windows 8 but until then M/S does not tick all the boxes
khurt - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
"You should, however, note that iCloud only wants to work with Apple-supplied programs on OS X - if you want your mail in Outlook or Thunderbird or your bookmarks in Firefox or Chrome, too bad."True. True. But … anyone is free to use the published API for iOS and OS X to write iCloud integration into their apps.
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/10/18/fantastical-...
http://blog.agilebits.com/2011/10/on-1password-and...
"...... iCloud on OS X is all about locking you into Apple’s ecosystem."
Where have they locked the user in with iCloud? There is a developer API. Developer are free to write any software for iOS or OS X that can leverage iCloud.
But then this article is about iCloud on Windows. Windows has no ecosystem lock in.
Mystermask - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
This kind of hypocrisies is unfortunately all to common among Windows users ..name99 - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
khurt's point bears repeating.It's hard to see exactly how a set of published APIs, based on standard internet technologies like SSL and IMAP, corresponds to "lockin".
This is the same BS that we've seen for ten years now. Apple chooses to use AAC --- OMG, proprietary! Apple chooses to use h.264 --- OMG lockin. So use of international standards, which I can buy and use to implement my own code or HW, is "lockin", but apparently WMA or WMV --- no standards, changed by MS as they feel like it --- correspond to freedom or something?
Andrew.a.cunningham - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
I know these comments are from, like, awhile ago, but I just saw them and wanted to throw this out there: http://mjtsai.com/blog/2012/01/25/pdfpen-and-iclou...No iCloud API access if you're not in the App Store. So, even if you're not using Apple products, Apple gets its cut.
Also, I don't know how saying "Apple tries to lock you in," which is demonstrably true, implies some anti-Windows bias. Everyone tries to lock you in these days. This post is about Apple products, so Apple lock-in is what we're going to talk about.
rdamiani - Sunday, October 30, 2011 - link
The switch to iCloud breaks any Mac or iOS device that can't run Lion or iOS5 though. In my house, that's one mac and two older iPhones that can't connect to iCloud, which is a bummer.Having more than 1 Apple ID when you enable iCloud is a real problem as well. You can't switch accounts easily because Apple imposes a 90-day delay on account switching.