Related: Steve Jobs Takes Stage to Introduce iCloud
With an "I" heading the word, iCloud will work miracles.
Traditional personal computers have been "driving us crazy trying to keep in sync" the photos, movies and music, Apple's mastermind Steve Job said. Here is his solution: "Moving the digital hub into the cloud."
It means that if a user purchases a song or a movie from the Apple store, all the Apple devices registered by the user, iPhone, iPad or Mac computer, can automatically share.
Job announced Monday at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference its online cloud storage service called iCloud, which will make it simple to share data wirelessly between handheld gadgets and desktop computers.
In cloud computing, all programs and files reside "in the cloud." This means users don't have to spend much in hardware, because they don't need the processing power of a traditional computer. The same data can be accessed from any device that can surf the Web.
For example, a user can add a new contact, calendar or mail item to his mobile device and have it automatically copied on the cloud and advanced to his other devices. Even if his smartphone dies, he can still reach the files with another device.
The new online cloud storage service of Apple attempts to harness the power and flexibility of cloud computing for home users. It uses techniques that have already proved popular with businesses to make it easier to move data stored on Apple's servers back and forth between iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac computers.
ICloud represents a direct challenge to Google's cloud-based offerings, such as Gmail, Calendar, Picasa, and Google Docs to let users see and edit the same document or photo across multiple devices.
Google's Dropbox has become popular as a way to store and retrieve data from the "cloud."
According to Computerworld magazine, Apple and Google now dominate the world's smartphone and mobile device markets and both are pushing quickly into the cloud.
It is hard to judge which is better in the cloud computing competition.
Basically, most Microsoft users will use Google's cloud service. They don't have to make any changes. They can prepare their documents in Word, Excel or Presentation and store them in Dropbox. Since the files are stored in the cloud, they can be retrieved at any time, any place, with any computer.
But iCloud will make Mac users happy since it can let them share their files between iPhone, iPad and Mac computers.
The cloud computing technology has been there for years, and Apple seems to be a late comer. However, once it realizes its importance, it will resort to all means to make it better.
Before Jobs announced his iCloud service plan, Apple took administrative control of the iCloud.com domain on June 1.
Reports said Apple paid 4.5 million dollars to Xcerion, a Swedish firm that owned the domain. It is predicted that with the domain, Apple will provide more cloud services.
Besides Apple and Google, Amazon, HP, IBM and Intel are all working to develop cloud computing technology.
However, Apple's announcement concerning iCloud will definitely push forward the "cloud computing" revolution. People will depend more on cloud services to store and retrieve data and even use cloud software on line, and the role of personal computers will become less important.
However, there are disadvantages to cloud computers. Users don't know where their files live nor whether they're secure, and if their Internet or cloud computing service goes down, they will be in trouble.
Users of Microsoft's Office Live were dismayed recently when the service went down on two occasions.
For the moment, most small businesses are still using traditional approaches while exploring new technologies, and that will continue at least in the short term.
It is not clear when people are willing to commit to the cloud computing, but users should be prepared since the world is becoming more mobile, more social, and less private than ever before.
