Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always a senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I can see clearly now the rain is gone. Nice.
Speaker 1: That was a particularly good one for our topic too. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're talking about iCloud, which is a new service, a
Speaker 1: new as the recording of this podcast anyway, service from Apple,
Speaker 1: and it's facts in fact, so new that it's just
Speaker 1: in beta right now, which we're like, hey, Apple, who
Speaker 1: do you think you are? Google? Sometimes? Um, yeah, well
Speaker 1: not not all of it's in Vada. Some of it
Speaker 1: is still slated to come out. We had a lot
Speaker 1: of requests from people After Apple Worldwide Developers Conference Keynote,
Speaker 1: which was an early which was in early June, they
Speaker 1: announced basically they gave updates on three major things, two
Speaker 1: of which were one of which was no secret at all.
Speaker 1: That was the new Apple OS ten Lion that's the
Speaker 1: next version, which, um, then people were really expecting to
Speaker 1: hear about the new iOS that's the operating system for iPod, Touch,
Speaker 1: iPhone and iPad, so it'd be iOS five. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people were pretty sure that they were going to hear
Speaker 1: and they did well of course as the developer's conference,
Speaker 1: so you would expect them to talk about the software
Speaker 1: available for the platform the platforms. But the third and
Speaker 1: the one that we're going to talk about today is
Speaker 1: is iCloud. And that's UM again something that people really expected.
Speaker 1: In fact, uh, people actually identified the logo before it's
Speaker 1: where it got announced. People called it the most poorly
Speaker 1: kept secret uh for this particular conference, which I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone was pretty sure that Apple was going to come
Speaker 1: out with some sort of cloud based service because of
Speaker 1: uh movements from Amazon and Google and the fact that
Speaker 1: Apple had purchased some other companies that were related to
Speaker 1: cloud services. Uh. Everything pointed towards that the the giant
Speaker 1: data center they were building in North Carolina, right, but
Speaker 1: the details behind the service were still pretty fuzzy. And
Speaker 1: then actually, to tell you the truth, even almost a
Speaker 1: month later, the details are still a little scarce. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's some stuff we know, and then
Speaker 1: there's some stuff we suspect and there's some stuff that
Speaker 1: just hasn't been answered yet. Yeah. And um, it's it's
Speaker 1: funny because with the building of this data center, which
Speaker 1: has been going on for what probably a couple of
Speaker 1: years now, I mean, people knew that Apple was building
Speaker 1: a very very large building in North Carolina. Um. When
Speaker 1: you see other companies doing this, people like Google and Facebook,
Speaker 1: you realize that there's, uh, they're probably gonna be quite
Speaker 1: a few employees in there, there's probably gonna be a
Speaker 1: whole lot of hardware in there. Um, especially if they're
Speaker 1: looking for giant sources of power like Google, you know,
Speaker 1: building along the Columbia River for hydro electricity. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's gonna be so you can you can take
Speaker 1: some inferences from from the way they're behaving. Um. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the speculation revolved around the possibility that
Speaker 1: there would be a cloud based iTunes service and or
Speaker 1: a streaming video service to rival you know, someone like
Speaker 1: uh Netflix or Amazon Prime, um, you know, something where
Speaker 1: where Apple would or Hulu they would you know, you
Speaker 1: would subscribe to or I guess in this case, Hulu Plus,
Speaker 1: where you would pay a subscription fee and you'd get
Speaker 1: your music and your uh, your video on download. That's
Speaker 1: and I think that's why people have been sort of
Speaker 1: nonplussed about what actually came out by a little perplexed
Speaker 1: or a little perplexed and um, and I think there
Speaker 1: are some of that is sort of in there, and
Speaker 1: I don't know that you can rule out those things
Speaker 1: showing up in the service later. It's just that the
Speaker 1: wording has been very careful to avoid that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff recently. Yeah. Yeah, And what what rolled out is actually,
Speaker 1: I think, compared to some of the other services that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about recently, sort of compelling, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're definitely some advantages and some disadvantages of I
Speaker 1: Cloud if you compare it to similar services. So let's
Speaker 1: kind of talk about what I cloud is and what
Speaker 1: it is not. I'll start off with what it is
Speaker 1: not in the sense that, as far as we know
Speaker 1: right now, it is not going to be any sort
Speaker 1: of streaming service. So, in other words, you will not
Speaker 1: be streaming content from a cloud storage system to a
Speaker 1: device in order to enjoy it on the fly. Um. So,
Speaker 1: unlike some of the other services like the Amazon Music
Speaker 1: Player service, where you can store music in an Amazon
Speaker 1: count and then access a streaming file version of that
Speaker 1: song and listen to it. Uh. You will not necessarily
Speaker 1: be able to do that on iCloud, at least according
Speaker 1: to the way they've worded things so far. In the
Speaker 1: way the system works right now, Well, that's that's sort
Speaker 1: of pardon the pun, seriously hazy. Um, there is one
Speaker 1: feature that sort of suggests that there is something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: should we should we get into the futures that maybe
Speaker 1: we can we can touch on that way, get closer. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're the iCloud website is actually a great place to
Speaker 1: look for information if you want to learn more about it. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's where I what I use for my primary source. UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: what they want to try to do over overall is
Speaker 1: to give you the ability to sink your information will
Speaker 1: will was use it in a general sense here different
Speaker 1: kinds of files to multiple devices, your iOS devices and
Speaker 1: your computers, and not just MAX but PCs as well.
Speaker 1: Hey how about Lennox. Well no, sorry at yes, that
Speaker 1: that would be a bunto one. UM and I have
Speaker 1: account there to actually, But anyway, h so for one thing,
Speaker 1: and where where should we start? Should we start with
Speaker 1: the music things. Let's start with storage. Okay, we're just okay.
Speaker 1: So so basically, your eye Cloud account would be a
Speaker 1: storage account where you could store uh. Now, primarily in
Speaker 1: the beta version, you're storing things like apps, books, and music, right,
Speaker 1: and UH you get by signing up, you get five
Speaker 1: gigabytes of storage for free. Now here's the Here are
Speaker 1: two things that make this really compelling. Uh. It will
Speaker 1: go through your iTunes library and we'll match uh any
Speaker 1: song that you've purchased through iTunes since you since you're
Speaker 1: registering it through your iTunes account. UH, any song that
Speaker 1: you purchased through iTunes automatically becomes part of your eye
Speaker 1: Cloud storage locker we'll call it, but does not count
Speaker 1: against your five gigabytes of storage. So if you've purchased,
Speaker 1: you know, five thousand songs through iTunes over the history
Speaker 1: of your iTunes account, all those songs are going to
Speaker 1: show up in your eye Cloud UH locker without you
Speaker 1: having to uh to have that kind of gainst your
Speaker 1: five gigabytes of storage. And you can share that information
Speaker 1: with any other device that's hooked up through your iTunes account,
Speaker 1: up to ten devices, which is another big move. Right.
Speaker 1: Five used to be the magic number for things like that,
Speaker 1: and you can do it wirelessly, which is the beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: So you could say, let's say that you have a
Speaker 1: desktop computer at home and that's like your media computer.
Speaker 1: You have a we'll call it. We'll say it's a
Speaker 1: Mac because this happens to be me. I've got a
Speaker 1: Mac media computer at home and that has my iTunes
Speaker 1: library on it, and then I sink my iPod to
Speaker 1: my iTunes library. So whenever I buy a new song,
Speaker 1: I have to sink my iPod in order to get it.
Speaker 1: Now I've got an older iPod. But let's say that
Speaker 1: I get a newer iPod. And then let's say we
Speaker 1: I buy some music on my uh, my iPod Touch
Speaker 1: or my iPhone. Then I have to sync my device
Speaker 1: to my computer. I have to, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of steps in order to make sure
Speaker 1: that your music collection is is equal across multiple devices. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's a pain in the neck to to uh
Speaker 1: to have to restore your music player, especially if it's
Speaker 1: got if you've got a large music collection. It even
Speaker 1: on a faster connection on the USB two for example, UM,
Speaker 1: which is you know, I know, not necessarily the fastest.
Speaker 1: There are other standards like USB three and Thunderbolt that
Speaker 1: are technically faster, but I mean reasonably fast by today's standards. Um,
Speaker 1: it's still gonna take you a while to upload you know,
Speaker 1: gigs of data these songs to your your iPod again. Right,
Speaker 1: So with iCloud, using your iTunes library to start with,
Speaker 1: you know, the purchase history you have to start with,
Speaker 1: uh it uh. The means that you don't have to
Speaker 1: upload those songs. That that's a huge advantage over things
Speaker 1: like the Amazon and Google approaches, where you do have
Speaker 1: to upload your files to that cloud storage in order
Speaker 1: to store them there. Right, So if I have five
Speaker 1: thousand songs on my computer and I want to use
Speaker 1: Google's approach, I have to actually upload those songs first
Speaker 1: to my Google account. So that's gonna take a while
Speaker 1: because upload speeds tend to be slower than download speeds
Speaker 1: because you know, people download more than they upload, so
Speaker 1: upstream is a slower data transfer rate. So if you're
Speaker 1: uploading a lot of content, depending on your Internet connection,
Speaker 1: it can take a long long time. So iTunes approach
Speaker 1: there saves you all that time. Right, Your purchase history
Speaker 1: becomes your library immediately in the iCloud. On top of that,
Speaker 1: if you have songs in your iTunes library that you
Speaker 1: did not purchase through iTunes. Let's say that you had
Speaker 1: a collection of cd s that you ripped from using
Speaker 1: iTunes and you've got them in your library, but you
Speaker 1: didn't purchase them through iTunes. Well, if iTunes has those
Speaker 1: albums and those songs in its library, that's got like
Speaker 1: eighteen million songs in the iTunes library. So if those
Speaker 1: songs appear in the iTunes library, what will happen is
Speaker 1: the the service will identify those songs and match it
Speaker 1: to the song that's in the iTunes library. Yeah, so basically, um,
Speaker 1: you know, say you have, um, I don't know, a
Speaker 1: cold Play album and your I'm just picking cold Play.
Speaker 1: It's a band that I don't particularly like. I you know, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I just picked something. I was gonna say, you too.
Speaker 1: I don't know why either of them. So sorry, Okay.
Speaker 1: So you know, let's say you have a record that's
Speaker 1: in your collection and you want to add it to
Speaker 1: your you know, your cloud storage. Um, as soon as
Speaker 1: it recognizes that you have that in there, it says, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we've already got that. Well we'll just give you. You
Speaker 1: don't have to uploaded, we'll put it in here for you.
Speaker 1: And the files that they're using are two fifty six
Speaker 1: K iTunes plus level files. So so it might even
Speaker 1: be like, let's say that you when you ripped the CD,
Speaker 1: you ripped it at a lower a lower rate than
Speaker 1: technically the higher rates one it essentially equates to as
Speaker 1: a higher rate in general means better sound or more
Speaker 1: accurate to the original version sound. So the more compression
Speaker 1: you use, the smaller bit rate that you encode the
Speaker 1: file ad basically means that you're leaving out more information
Speaker 1: in the music file. So it's not going to have
Speaker 1: his high fidelity. Depending upon your the sensitivity of your hearing,
Speaker 1: you may or may not be able to detect that
Speaker 1: with certain songs. Uh, my hearing has been to the
Speaker 1: point where I really don't tend to notice unless it's really,
Speaker 1: really really bad transfer. So yeah, so for me, it's
Speaker 1: not as big a deal. But it's a nice thing
Speaker 1: to know that that iTunes is going to match your
Speaker 1: songs and probably match them to a quality that is
Speaker 1: superior to whatever it was you were you were using before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and this is where this is where I'm a
Speaker 1: little fuzzy, because it suggests that those files are in
Speaker 1: our stored in the cloud, and therefore that's how you
Speaker 1: would access the access them, um, rather than having it,
Speaker 1: you know, download back to your music player. I think
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's worded in a very vague way,
Speaker 1: but based upon what I've been reading, it sounds to
Speaker 1: me that you would then, uh, let's say again, We'll
Speaker 1: use the example of my my desktop computer at home
Speaker 1: and I've got my master music collection on there, and
Speaker 1: then I've got several eye devices. Um, it sounds to
Speaker 1: me that even the iTunes match part would just mean
Speaker 1: that if my brand new iPhone, I brought my brand
Speaker 1: new iPhone home and registered it and connected it to
Speaker 1: my iTunes account, it would then download all those songs
Speaker 1: that wouldn't stream them, it would download them and store
Speaker 1: them locally on the uh the iPhone. Uh So that's
Speaker 1: my interpretation based upon the wording. And again, like we said,
Speaker 1: it's pretty vague. Uh there there. Maybe it's vague because
Speaker 1: they plan to open up streaming later. It maybe that
Speaker 1: streaming is still a sensitive topic with the music labels
Speaker 1: that iTunes has partnered with. UM, I mean, that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I think they went with the
Speaker 1: download method is because you know, they actually had to
Speaker 1: partner with these music labels, as opposed to Amazon's approach
Speaker 1: where they're like, this is just another way of accessing
Speaker 1: content you already own. iTunes wanted this to be uh
Speaker 1: more of a widespread data management system where you could
Speaker 1: have that you can have access to the same data
Speaker 1: across multiple devices. So uh, I think it's still download,
Speaker 1: upload and download, it's not streaming. That's that's based upon
Speaker 1: my interpretation of what they've written, and I understand that. Um.
Speaker 1: The other piece being that, uh what we've talked about
Speaker 1: basically the free option here because basically anyone with an account, um,
Speaker 1: an iTunes account should be able to get iCloud just
Speaker 1: as part of the service. But you can. They're offering
Speaker 1: an option for ninety nine a year where you can
Speaker 1: hold your entire collection. So that would be you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, that's going to be more
Speaker 1: than an iPod will hold well, depending on size of
Speaker 1: your iPod and your music collection. But you know, people
Speaker 1: with very large music collections, uh may have gigabytes or
Speaker 1: even terabytes worth of music, and you know, there's not
Speaker 1: an iPod yet that will hold a terabyte. Um now,
Speaker 1: granted give it a week. If all of your if
Speaker 1: all of your music, and all of your books, and
Speaker 1: all of your apps were purchased through the iTunes store,
Speaker 1: then the five gigabytes is all you need anyway, because
Speaker 1: it doesn't count against the five gigabytes. It's when you
Speaker 1: start talking about music that is outside of of the
Speaker 1: iTunes library when you start having problems. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you've you've ripped a CD from a local band
Speaker 1: that doesn't that's not on iTunes, and you want that
Speaker 1: music available, Well, then you're gonna have to have you're
Speaker 1: gonna actually have to pay that that yearly fee to
Speaker 1: have the option to upload those files to your Actually,
Speaker 1: I guess not because you've got the five gigabytes, but
Speaker 1: those those songs will count against the five gigabytes and storage.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're particularly prolific band with many many records. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: the iTunes the iTunes Match service is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: that that actually has the limit on it is a
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand song limit. So if you've got now,
Speaker 1: if you've got a whole bunch of CDs that you've
Speaker 1: ripped and then and you may have to start making
Speaker 1: some choices once you're like, oh this is twenty hundred
Speaker 1: seventy five, which one was is gonna be twenty four thousand,
Speaker 1: hundred seventy six. Well make a meatloads songs that way,
Speaker 1: I get more quant to T. So again, we were
Speaker 1: we were talking earlier about the I'm sorry you always
Speaker 1: throw me off with me loo, I'm kind of hungry myself. UM. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing is it's not just gonna be about video
Speaker 1: and audio. I mean there's really not a video option
Speaker 1: here yet, um. But there are other other compelling bits
Speaker 1: to this service. Sorry for the again bits pun UM.
Speaker 1: For example, photo stream UH. Photo stream behaves a little
Speaker 1: similarly to the to the music portion of the service.
Speaker 1: If you have a an iPhone or an iPod, toucher
Speaker 1: an iPad with a camera UM, and you take a
Speaker 1: photo while you're out with it, it should use iCloud
Speaker 1: automatically to sink it. Let's say you have one of
Speaker 1: all of the above plus a a computer UM where
Speaker 1: you have an iTunes account, it should download everything over
Speaker 1: to uh the different machines. So you've been on a
Speaker 1: trip and you took your your phone with you and
Speaker 1: you've taken pictures, it will sink to your home computer
Speaker 1: so that you can show them off there without you
Speaker 1: having to upload them. Likewise, if you take pictures with
Speaker 1: a a UH standalone digital camera and you upload them,
Speaker 1: say through I Photo on a Mac, you would be
Speaker 1: able to share those to your phone and your I
Speaker 1: iPod Touch and your iPad, assuming you have all those
Speaker 1: devices UM, without having to take an extra step to
Speaker 1: do that. It does that automatically. Now, it only will
Speaker 1: save your last UH. It keeps what they call a
Speaker 1: rolling collection of your last thousand photos. So you get
Speaker 1: into a thousand, fifteen, thousand, sixteen, the first fifteen and
Speaker 1: sixteen photos chronologically will start to drop off. They won't
Speaker 1: go any they won't go anywhere, but they won't be
Speaker 1: in your eye cloud anyway. Right, Well, the UM and
Speaker 1: I thought I would go ahead and mention this because
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're gonna get email UH or Facebook comments
Speaker 1: or Twitter comments. So year that's what gives you the
Speaker 1: access to iTunes match so so without even though as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, the the music that would
Speaker 1: be matched through iTunes, I don't think that would be
Speaker 1: counted against your five gigabytes, but I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 1: I know that any music you've purchased through iTunes will
Speaker 1: not count against the five gigabytes of storage. The music
Speaker 1: that's been matched through iTunes that might actually count against
Speaker 1: your five gigabytes. So this is the music that you
Speaker 1: own that is also on iTunes, but you did not
Speaker 1: purchase it through iTunes. UM, so I know you. There
Speaker 1: is the yearly fee, which is uh, and I based
Speaker 1: upon this, I'm guessing that does count against your your
Speaker 1: storage space, which might be why they said the song limit. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain of that. Like I said, a
Speaker 1: lot of this is vague right now, and and I
Speaker 1: have I just got back for a vacation and I
Speaker 1: haven't had a chance to to play with this yet. UM,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's uh. The it is interesting. They do
Speaker 1: a a UM comparison of Apple's I Cloud service against
Speaker 1: Amazon Service and Google Service on Apple, so you can
Speaker 1: guess how it shapes up. But they talk about how
Speaker 1: the methods, like the fact that you do not need
Speaker 1: to scan your music collection to start off an iCloud.
Speaker 1: Anything that you've purchased through iTunes will automatically be put
Speaker 1: up there. So you don't have to upload it, and
Speaker 1: then of course the iTunes match if you go with
Speaker 1: that method, again, you don't need to upload that music.
Speaker 1: It just has to be matched to iTunes library and
Speaker 1: then that will be put into your eye Cloud as well,
Speaker 1: whereas with Amazon and Google you both have to upload
Speaker 1: those files to that system in order to use those
Speaker 1: um and then that there is a specific app from
Speaker 1: for the desktop computers and laptops which is called iTunes.
Speaker 1: You may have heard of it that you use to
Speaker 1: access the eye Cloud, whereas Amazon and Google you access
Speaker 1: through a web brow are uh them that talks about that.
Speaker 1: You know it has the upgrade option to the two
Speaker 1: fifty six k UH rate for the songs um and
Speaker 1: that the price to have access to five thousand or
Speaker 1: twenty thousand songs is the same. It's twenty ninety nine
Speaker 1: a year. You can have up to twenty thousand songs
Speaker 1: that way, But if you wanted to do that with Amazon, uh,
Speaker 1: the price for five thousand songs would be fifty dollars
Speaker 1: a year and for twenty thousand songs two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a year. And then for Google, it's question mark, question
Speaker 1: mark question mark because it hasn't been mentioned yet, so
Speaker 1: we're still hashing that out. And we should also mention that,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked a lot about music because obviously
Speaker 1: the the tie in with iTunes means that that's where
Speaker 1: a lot of the focus is going. Uh. And we've
Speaker 1: also talked about you know, any books you purchased through
Speaker 1: iTunes or any apps you purchased through iTunes will live
Speaker 1: in the eye cloud as well, but you can also
Speaker 1: have other kinds of files and documents stored your eye cloud. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Before before we get away from that, I wanted to
Speaker 1: point out that UM iTunes match is scheduled to hit
Speaker 1: this fall. Yeah. I believe that's supposed to be concurrent
Speaker 1: with the iOS five UM. But you can get your
Speaker 1: your new and past purchases SINCD now via beta and
Speaker 1: I had I had forgotten to mention that. So if
Speaker 1: you've UM, if you've bought music on on your home
Speaker 1: computer and you want to get it on uh, say
Speaker 1: you forgot to sink your the music over. You should
Speaker 1: be able to see it in iTunes on an iPhone
Speaker 1: or an I pad for example, sitting in front of
Speaker 1: me where my notes are UM, and I should be
Speaker 1: able to Uh, if I wanted to turn off my
Speaker 1: notes and go look, I should theoretically be able to
Speaker 1: see that past stuff and download it if I want
Speaker 1: to do that device, which is again in beta already now.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and you can set the download feature to
Speaker 1: automatic if you wanted to, which means that every time
Speaker 1: you purchased a song through iTunes or an app or
Speaker 1: a book through iTunes, anytime you purchased one, it would
Speaker 1: automatically download to all devices that were set to automatic.
Speaker 1: I don't think I would want to do that. You
Speaker 1: can also do it manually, so because I have, I
Speaker 1: used my devices separately for separate reasons, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people do. Write like some people might have a
Speaker 1: specific iOS device that they use when they're working out,
Speaker 1: and they have a workout song list, and they don't
Speaker 1: want their Broadway musical list to being mixed up with
Speaker 1: their workout song list because you know, put on a
Speaker 1: Happy Face is not the song they want to hear
Speaker 1: while they're on the elliptical. So uh, yeah, there there
Speaker 1: are reasons why you might want to have some of
Speaker 1: your devices set to manual. Especially let's say that you
Speaker 1: have an enormous music collection and you don't want your
Speaker 1: smartphone to be completely bogged down with music, um when
Speaker 1: you have other stuff you want to put on there,
Speaker 1: or you don't want the same apps to go to
Speaker 1: all of your eye devices across the entire spectrum. There
Speaker 1: are reasons why you might want to set it to
Speaker 1: manu well instead of automatic. And then there are other
Speaker 1: people who just want to have the same experience across
Speaker 1: all their platforms. They want everything to be accessed everywhere.
Speaker 1: But then moving back to the the other kind of
Speaker 1: files that you can store in a way, iCloud is
Speaker 1: replacing mobile me yes, and so ultimately once it's in
Speaker 1: full version, once it debuts and I'm assuming it's going
Speaker 1: to do that around the time of iOS five as well,
Speaker 1: then you'll be able to access things like calendar and documents,
Speaker 1: things like that across your various devices and it's all
Speaker 1: automatically um synchronized. So just like if you have if
Speaker 1: you're in the in the Google environment, the Google ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and you're using Google Calendar, you know, if you're using
Speaker 1: that to access if you're accessing that would like say
Speaker 1: an Android smartphone, and then you switch over and you
Speaker 1: access it through your desktop, it's already synchronized properly that way,
Speaker 1: same kind of thing, except this is with Apple's approach
Speaker 1: as opposed to Google's approach. So there's more functionality there
Speaker 1: that's gonna appear as the uh we get closer to
Speaker 1: the official launch um and it's you know, it's it.
Speaker 1: I like the the approach Apple's done here. I like
Speaker 1: the fact that i Cloud access an online backup system
Speaker 1: for your music. So let's say that your computer suffers
Speaker 1: a catastrophic failure, uh, and you can't recover stuff off
Speaker 1: your hard drive, Well, then you still know that all
Speaker 1: of those purchases are still there. You know, it used
Speaker 1: to be back in the day that you could contact
Speaker 1: Apple and get uh, recover songs that you had lost
Speaker 1: through some you know, other catastrophe, but it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: easy to do. And now they've really streamlined that through
Speaker 1: i Cloud. So it's it's a fairly large shift in
Speaker 1: that respect, and another respect, it's Apple's business as usual
Speaker 1: and that this approach again really stresses that the system
Speaker 1: works great if you a lot of Apple devices. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So again they're trying to you know, it's not completely
Speaker 1: closed off. You can use it with the PC but
Speaker 1: whether or not you're eventually gonna be able to use
Speaker 1: this with other kinds of mobile devices, that's less likely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, you know, we've we've we've had this discussion,
Speaker 1: and uh, most of our listeners I think are up
Speaker 1: on where we are on the benefits and detriments of
Speaker 1: the open versus the closed system. This is um. People
Speaker 1: complain about Apple's closed system, but it enables much tighter
Speaker 1: integration than you would have because Apple's got the control
Speaker 1: over it, but you would have with other, um, other systems,
Speaker 1: although you know, there is a benefit to being open
Speaker 1: as well. So UM, it's you know, and that's why
Speaker 1: it's so seamless for these systems, is that Apple's got
Speaker 1: so much control over it. That's why you say that
Speaker 1: Apple stuff just works because it's designed to work in
Speaker 1: a very specific way. And the problem is that not
Speaker 1: necessarily problem. But the flip side of that coin is
Speaker 1: that it's going to work the way they intended to work,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the way you would like it to work.
Speaker 1: And so you may not have as much control over that.
Speaker 1: But if you like the way it works, it may
Speaker 1: be such an issue exactly. Yeah, if if you're like this,
Speaker 1: is totally the way I want it to work. Well,
Speaker 1: then there's no issue, right, it's the people who like
Speaker 1: to hack and fiddle with things that can get a
Speaker 1: little frustrated with Apple. And it's not saying that their
Speaker 1: approach is right or wrong. It's just a specific approach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I and I can see both sides of that.
Speaker 1: Artist can do. Um one of the things that I
Speaker 1: do like. Then this is not what I would consider
Speaker 1: a very glamorous feature, but I think it's really cool. Um.
Speaker 1: And it threatens people, not necessarily Amazon or Google with
Speaker 1: their services because um, you know, although Google has Google Docs,
Speaker 1: UM is the what they're calling documents in the cloud
Speaker 1: on the website where uh, there is an a p
Speaker 1: I or there are APIs bill into iCloud where developers
Speaker 1: and then again this was announced that WWDC developers can
Speaker 1: embed these a p I s into their software so
Speaker 1: that it will enable people who are using Apple devices
Speaker 1: to save their documents directly into the eye Cloud. So um,
Speaker 1: theoretically you would be able to use third party applications
Speaker 1: and have them seamlessly access your information you know, read
Speaker 1: to read from and store to your eye Cloud account. Um,
Speaker 1: which would enable again more integration with multiple devices. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty cool. It does sort of, uh
Speaker 1: make it more challenging for people like uh Dropbox. UM.
Speaker 1: I use, I have accounts on multiple cloud storage companies too,
Speaker 1: so I don't think I don't mean to single them
Speaker 1: out specifically. I do like people like box, dot Net
Speaker 1: and and Sugar Sinc. But UM, Dropbox has been really
Speaker 1: good about in particular about making UM their API is
Speaker 1: available so that the I, the UM other applications that
Speaker 1: I use can read from and store to my drop Box.
Speaker 1: Now the eye cloud is bigger, the amount of storage
Speaker 1: is bigger, so it may force drop Box, which is
Speaker 1: a much smaller company to uh upgrade the amount of
Speaker 1: storage has or you know, hopefully in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't compromise their password system. Right right. That's a different story. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is a different story, but it's you know the
Speaker 1: same kind of idea where you you can use different
Speaker 1: applications from other people and you know, still get access
Speaker 1: to your cloud storage seamlessly without having to worry about it. UM.
Speaker 1: They're also talking about the possibility, or they're also talking
Speaker 1: about it's not a possibility, they're gonna do it. UM.
Speaker 1: Thinking things like your your address book and your email
Speaker 1: and contacts between multiple devices including Outlook for the PC UM,
Speaker 1: which is going to be very handy for people who
Speaker 1: use uh their mobile Apple devices on for work as
Speaker 1: well as you know, your personal stuff, because then you'll
Speaker 1: have assuming again you'll you'll have a lot more information.
Speaker 1: They're a lot more email, maybe maybe multiple accounts, shore accounts,
Speaker 1: multiple calendars, lots and lots of contacts. Um. That would
Speaker 1: be very useful for these kinds of things. And I
Speaker 1: think that's one of those things that made people go,
Speaker 1: That's not what I was really hoping for, but I
Speaker 1: think it's something that would be extremely useful for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. And um, it's kind of funny. Uh.
Speaker 1: I read on c net uh an article by Josh
Speaker 1: Lewinson that was published um um just yesterday when at
Speaker 1: the time of recording this podcast anyway, that um that
Speaker 1: there's an analyst, Gene Munster, who believes that iCloud might
Speaker 1: be an indication that Apple is developing an Apple television,
Speaker 1: not not Apple TV, but an actual television set that
Speaker 1: incorporates Apple technology in it, kind of like the Google
Speaker 1: televisions that we've seen, um, and that the I cloud
Speaker 1: would be the place where you know, if you were
Speaker 1: to purchase television shows or movies or rent them, that
Speaker 1: they would go into your i Cloud account and then
Speaker 1: you would be able to access them through something like
Speaker 1: an Apple television. And that that that is something that
Speaker 1: that he expects to see incorporated in iCloud in the
Speaker 1: in the somewhat near future. It might be a year
Speaker 1: from now, but that that would be something that we
Speaker 1: would see pop up later. Yeah, it's um. The Apple
Speaker 1: television itself has been again sort of like the iPad before,
Speaker 1: it has been rumored for I would say probably at
Speaker 1: least a year now as again as at the time
Speaker 1: we've recorded this, maybe longer than that. So, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there is a possibility. Of course, they do have Apple TV,
Speaker 1: and the i Cloud will allow you to sync with
Speaker 1: an Apple TV too, at least on a limited basis.
Speaker 1: They mentioned it specifically with the photos the photo stream,
Speaker 1: you should be able to pull up your photos and
Speaker 1: show them on your TV if you have an Apple
Speaker 1: TV as well. So it seems like that that's not
Speaker 1: even remotely out of the realm of possibility. It's just
Speaker 1: whether or not they're ready to gear up and launch that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the biggest the biggest question I've heard remains, will there
Speaker 1: ever be a streaming element to this so that you
Speaker 1: can access the music that there's that's in your eye
Speaker 1: cloud without having to download it. So let's say you
Speaker 1: want to use your UM iPhone and you you want
Speaker 1: to listen to the music that you have, but you
Speaker 1: don't want to to take up the memory space like
Speaker 1: you know that that would be for someone who let's
Speaker 1: say they want an iPhone, but they don't want to
Speaker 1: shell out the money to get the top of the line,
Speaker 1: you know, iPhone with the most storage. They would rather
Speaker 1: go with the more basic model and then use streaming
Speaker 1: in order to access their music. Now, streaming comes with
Speaker 1: its own problems. Usually you have to have a really
Speaker 1: fast connection in order to do it, so it might
Speaker 1: have to be over WiFi, or it might have to
Speaker 1: be over some sort of four g um network. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there, I know that there's a there are
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about that. Especially people are saying, well,
Speaker 1: why did you buy Lala if you're not using a
Speaker 1: streaming service? And again, we just don't know yet if
Speaker 1: I Cloud will ultimately uh allow for some sort of
Speaker 1: streaming element. UM just right now. It just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like that's the case. Well, companies that are as big
Speaker 1: as Amazon, Google and Apple who are offering these services
Speaker 1: in similar services, um, you know, they have an enormous
Speaker 1: installed customer base. Um. If it was a new a
Speaker 1: brand new company with a growing customer base and you
Speaker 1: could roll roll out the beta in a general slower
Speaker 1: fashion and give you know, a couple of thousand people
Speaker 1: access at a time, you would be able to have
Speaker 1: a lot more control over that. Rolling out a streaming
Speaker 1: service to all the iTunes customers, you know, say just
Speaker 1: in the United States and you just need to upgrade
Speaker 1: your iTunes iTunes ten point three and then you can
Speaker 1: access the e cloud stuff. Yeah, it just seems like
Speaker 1: it would be something of an enormous task. And they
Speaker 1: they Apples famous for holding off until they feel they've
Speaker 1: done it right, and not only the case that they have,
Speaker 1: but but but you know, they would rather wait. In fact,
Speaker 1: they let you know, we knew that this something along
Speaker 1: these lines was coming, and Amazon and Google both released
Speaker 1: their music services first. Um. And of course they they
Speaker 1: did so without securing agreements with all the music companies
Speaker 1: as Apple did. UM, so you know, and it remains
Speaker 1: to be seen to whether they've they will take offense
Speaker 1: to that. That's been rumored that they will um well,
Speaker 1: and there's there's even been talk about the twenty four fee.
Speaker 1: Some people have called that a piracy amnesty fee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the music that you ripped from your CDs. That's
Speaker 1: that's the general idea of the iTunes match service. But
Speaker 1: we all know there are plenty of people out there
Speaker 1: who have songs that are in their iTunes library that
Speaker 1: they got through either I mean friends ripping the Friends
Speaker 1: CD is probably the least the most the most quote
Speaker 1: unquote innocent of the little the little uh piracy of attempts.
Speaker 1: Or they may have gone to some peer to peer
Speaker 1: network in the past and and they downloaded, you know, albums,
Speaker 1: several albums and uh, and they never bought them. So
Speaker 1: some people have suggested that that annual fee, which a
Speaker 1: portion of which is going to these music labels, that
Speaker 1: that annual fee is actually essentially the music labels seeing
Speaker 1: a way to finally recoup some money on music that
Speaker 1: was otherwise stolen um and that that was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why these agreements finally went through, was because
Speaker 1: they were actually gonna you know, Otherwise, these companies are
Speaker 1: never getting money for those songs that were stolen, right,
Speaker 1: And this way they get a little money for it,
Speaker 1: which is better than no money at all, or so
Speaker 1: I'm told. And I mean, if you've got a hundred
Speaker 1: million people logging onto your service, and even only if
Speaker 1: even only half of them use iTunes match, that's fifty
Speaker 1: million people at twenty four nine a year. Um, you
Speaker 1: know that's that that that totals up pretty quickly to
Speaker 1: an impressive amount. I'm pretty sure it's more than seven dollars.
Speaker 1: It might be as much as ten could be. Wow.
Speaker 1: And you know what, actually, dollars don't mean as much
Speaker 1: to me anymore, because I just got back from Europe,
Speaker 1: and once you started making that conversion from euros to
Speaker 1: dollars in your head over and over, you're thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: I am so poor. Alright, this hot dog is costing
Speaker 1: me a fortune. All right. Yeah, it's kind of opposite
Speaker 1: of when I went to Canada anyway, So let's wrap
Speaker 1: this up. Uh, that Canada joke was from many years ago. Actually,
Speaker 1: because of course, now the Canadian dollars dollar very close.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna let somebody right in and correct you.
Speaker 1: But Okay, well, no, no, they need to know I
Speaker 1: went to Canada many years ago. Okay, that's why I'm
Speaker 1: referencing anyway, So we're wrapping up this conversation, and uh,
Speaker 1: we'll keep an eye out. You know. The Eye cloud
Speaker 1: service will officially debut in the fall of twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: so we will keep our eyes open and see what
Speaker 1: other things develop as we get closer to launch. And
Speaker 1: we'll play around with the cloud service in the meantime
Speaker 1: and see what kind of nifty things we can do
Speaker 1: with the beta features. And uh, then we'll probably bemoan
Speaker 1: the things that we can't do because because we're tech
Speaker 1: people and we like to we like to complain. Plus, um,
Speaker 1: you know, both Jonathan and I have gotten invites to
Speaker 1: be uh participants in the Google Music program, which I
Speaker 1: need to play with that in the Amazon I've uploaded
Speaker 1: I've uploaded music to Google, and I also I'm a
Speaker 1: customer with Amazon, so I've already got that as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: but I've just barely scratched the surface because uh, I
Speaker 1: just haven't had the time to devote to really play
Speaker 1: with them. So yeah, we will. We will definitely do
Speaker 1: more pair and contrast amongst them, especially once we book
Speaker 1: and in that month long time span we have to
Speaker 1: upload all of our music to to Google and Amazon.
Speaker 1: That's gonna take a while. Um, so we'll we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about this in the future. And of course cloud
Speaker 1: service is not going away. Even with all the recent
Speaker 1: stories about hacking and there's concerns about security and stability
Speaker 1: and privacy. Even with all that, it's clear that cloud
Speaker 1: services are are gonna be around for a while. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've got some major backing behind them, so we're not
Speaker 1: gonna see them disappear overnight, probably unless there's some sort
Speaker 1: of cast traffic failure, in which case we have other
Speaker 1: things to worry about. Well, maybe the sun will come
Speaker 1: and burn off the cloud. So anyway, we're gonna sign
Speaker 1: off now. If you guys have any topics you would
Speaker 1: like us to talk about, let us know on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter are handled. There is tech Stuff h s
Speaker 1: W or you can send us an email and that
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
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