Yesterday's Apple keynote was big if you're a Mac or iOS user. If you're not, you might have given it nothing more than a passing glance. Whether you care or not, the implications of iCloud will resonate across the industry, as Apple succeeds, yet again, in setting the bar for how content is managed, sold and stored.
iCloud evolves Apple's ability to control a user's content. Control of content has driven the company's hardware business since the inception of iTunes. Now Apple users will be storing and sharing all of their content via Apple's servers. And as Steve Jobs said at the close of yesterday's keynote, the company has scaled to handle pretty much anything users throw at them (re: massive North Carolina data facility).
I've switched from iOS to Android and back again over the past year and a half. Even before the rollout of iCloud, or even Amazon and Google's latest cloud offerings, Android has never had anything even close to iTunes as far as usability. Yesterday, Apple beat Amazon on price. Apple also beat Google on price and features. And last but not least, yesterday's announcement also drastically improved, or should we say refined, the best content ecosystem in the land.
As with many other commonplace features, it took Apple a little longer than everyone else to arrive at wireless syncing of content, but as usual, they did it and they did it right. iCloud sets the stage for Apple's future technologies. While Apple TV may have been nothing more than a "hobby" for the company, it's certainly a sign of things to come and an example of the elegant solutions possible within the iOS and Mac ecosystem now that the hub has moved to the heavens.
I have had my gripes in the past with the way Apple uses my own content to trap me into buying another of their devices. It's the primary reason I switched to Android. Still, the alternatives I found on Android were ad-hoc, confusing and often buggy or not yet available for my particular device. I actually breathed a sigh of relief upon returning to my iPhone and not because it was familiar but rather because I'd returned to a system that works flawlessly, intuitively and across devices.
Aside from iCloud, yesterday's keynote was yet another example of the continuity inherent in a closed system. All of the upgrades that were unveiled yesterday will be available across all iOS devices (with the exception of a few earlier model iPhones and iPods) immediately upon release. I've been watching a friend on an HTC Thunderbolt bemoan the fact that Netflix streaming is not yet available for his device, while other, older HTC phones already have received the update. While a closed system is admittedly frustrating at times, it's at least predictable, which is no small thing in the world of technology.
Perhaps there's some hyperbole herein. Apple users are often chided for their unwavering adoration of their iDevices. For instance, following the announcement yesterday, I read a piece that proclaimed Apple had just killed SMS with its iMessage feature. I doubt that's the case, but I understand the author's enthusiasm for a company that seems to be continually re-inventing the wheel, or in the case of iCloud, removing the wheels altogether.