Cloud computing questions...

[roosterjuicer]

Help me understand this.

I get that its all the rage, and i love backing up and collaborating my school and work documents on google docs. But that is really just a backup or an easy way to work on the same document on multiple computers without using a thumb drive or transporting a laptop. I still like having a copy of the document saved on my hard drive and working on word on my computer because I dont always have internet access.

Documents and pictures seem like great things to store online. But now it seems that song storage is all the rage. My question is why? What am i missing.

that seems like it would be a pain to stream songs to listen to them on your iphone or droid or whatever rather than just having them stored on the device itself. First of all, what if you dont have internet access? (like flying, which is when i mostly use portable music/videos) Does that mean you cant listen to your music or watch a movie? What if you have internet access but it is slow, like in the country or when you have bad cell reception? Also, wouldn't this really drive up your data usage rates for people who dont have unlimited data cellular plans? Finally, i have noticed that streaming music via bluetooth to my car stereo is lower quality than just plugging in USB, wouldn't streaming music via at 3G cell speeds be of lower quality than playing it stored on the device itself?

I think it would be great to store music online for occasional use such as if you are on a friend's or office computer and want to listen to your music but i dont think it would be a great full time solution.

[roosterjuicer]

These same questions apply to assertions I've been reading lately about operating systems like Chrome OS replacing Windows or Mac OS.

That makes some sense for a business where you have a pretty stable, fast internet and people can be served well by google docs. But that scares/bothers me when it comes to personal computing. If i get a chrome book, and go on an airplane, will my computer basically be useless since there is very little actually stored on the computer?

[Matra et Alpine]

Well the "cloud computing" for music has existed for years.
But now Apple are jumping on the bandwagon everyoen thnks it's somethign "new" or "innovative"

It's not.

2 things about "cloud" of all forms relate to how much "local sync storage" you keep and how it's managed.

All the Apple ho-ha is about getting iTunes to be sensible and realise that the PERSON owns the tune and should be able to play it on any device they own and that the solution shoudl have the smarts to keep all devices sync'ed. This means for devices with large storage then it knows there is a local copy that has not changed at the "cloud" and so will paly immediately. If NOT locally stored it will seamlessly stream it with the user unaware of the different mode of operation.

So when you've got good internet it will not necessarily store as much locally as it would do when facing "undocked" operation or away from decent internet speeds.

re the quality, again that's a solutino-space decision. There is NO technical reason why thre shoudl be differences EXCEPT when you are needing to stream from the cloud and have slow speeds. In that case it may deliver a lower quality. Again a "smart" solution will stream the lower quality but then later when you're not using it will try to sync the ones used so next time will be hi quality.

This was all resolved in the 80s in computing. So don't think the "cloud" hype is anything technically "new" .. it's all just pricing and marketing I'm loving the Apple-fans having to swallow that it's a me-too product for them

re the OS cloud-wars, I've now walked 3 organisation through some simple usability checks to knock back the BS marketing they had fallen for from a cloud-advocate. ANY decent org already has "cloud" and expansion to worldwide is easy. One of them had all files on the "cloud" and were editing large documents and were unhappy with the performance. Took 30 secs on a white board to show them the math of the internet performance they needed to do what they were trying and that the COST of that negated the so-called "low cost" of cloud solutions !!! I predict 3-5 years for internet costs to drop to make it the obvious choice. It will come though. Just as small businesses use servers and shared drives for the last 10 years.

[pimento]

See also this.

Matra basically said it all, this cloud nonsense is nothing new really, but now that it has a zippy new name people want it. It also helps that fast internet with large data limits is more and more available throughout the world. I've not kept up too much with what this iCloud thing actually does, but it'd have to be the default choice to store all your music on the device, else there'd be no point in an ipod anymore.