After Apple had unveiled iCloud, I had a conversation with the participants in our live chat in which I explained that Apple’s cloud was a “store and forward” cloud as opposed to an “All your base are belong to us” cloud. Goofy Internet memes and technical jargon aside, that’s a pretty good description of the difference between the Apple cloud and the Google cloud — even though I was half-joking at the time.
The Apple cloud
Apple’s approach is not on the cloud as the computer-in-the-sky is all the cool stuff to use. There is no need or want anything to happen in the cloud. Instead, it considers the cloud as conductor of the Grand Central Station, which ensures all the trains on time and that they correct the targets.
With icloud announced on Monday at WWDC 2011, Apple used the cloud data streams to control rather than orchestrate. This is the cloud as a central repository for applications, music, media, documents, messages, photos, backups, settings and more. Ten years ago, Apple and Microsoft said on idea of the Mac and PC or as a central hub of our digital life and work, with a variety of devices relying on them to coordinate content. On Monday, Apple clearly stated that this is not the case anymore. For them icloud is now the hub.
“We are going to demote the PC to just be a device,” Steve Jobs said.
In this way, Apple is an approach in contrast to Google (which mimic the old mainframe approach). Instead, Apple will do something similar to what the popular startup Dropbox. It allows users to synchronize their personal data and media purchases from their computers and mobile devices to a central repository personalized. Then, that central repository synchronized over the Internet, all data and media files back to all devices of the user so that all of them have the same data.
Users no longer have to constantly keep worrying about the management of their files and music libraries to up-to-date on a number of different machines and equipment – a computer, a blackboard and a smartphone, for example. Geeks, technology enthusiasts and IT professionals tend to love this approach because they still control their own data and local copies of everything. However, synchronization can also be a bit complicated, especially if you choose not automatically synchronize all your devices (up to performance and save bandwidth).
It remains to be seen whether mainstream users and business professionals, the synchronization concept to grasp and easy to make it work. Even Apple’s approach is probably more convenient for the Internet as it exists today. But in a world with ubiquitous ultra-fast broadband, nor matter synchronize in 5-10 years? That depends on whether the users prefer local copies of their data for performance, security and peace of mind are dependent.
Of course there were heated arguments about Apple icloud been since WWDC in social media. The most poignant comment I saw was from Lessien on Twitter, who said: “In Apple’s vision, the cloud native applications do better Others see the cloud as a substitute for native applications..”
The Google cloud
Google entire strategy and approach to the cloud is on the future and not on the Internet as it is today. Google is betting that the world’s low-cost, ubiquitous Internet access in the not too distant future, and fiber optic connections in offices and homes and high-speed mobile broadband services in virtually every corner of the planet have.
It is expanding its cloud for the world and it is hoped that refined by the time of his application stack and runs like clockwork, that broadband will be everywhere. This is absolutely necessary, since all stored by Google Apps and all the data connection depends on Google’s servers in the cloud. You have to be online to take advantage of many of the best features, such as the simultaneous processing is done on Google Docs, where you see your employees’ edits in real time.
I love Google optimism about the future of broadband, but it will not happen magically by itself on a purely free market forces are based. There are too many supply places where it simply is not financially viable access to high speed – and probably never will. In order for Google’s vision, brought to light, it will need more competition in large markets and much more public-private partnerships in the smaller markets. Google has therefore critical applications available offline, speak mainly for Chrome Books began.
The company has already taken some small steps in that direction with Google Gears. However, the fact that offline access is an afterthought and not an essential part of the Google solution to find out where offline synchronization and local rank of the company’s priority list.
Conclusion
All that said, let me try to boil this down into two sentences that shouldn’t surprise you. For Google, the Web is the center of the universe. For Apple, your device is the center of the universe.
Can they both be right?
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