The iCloud: Changing The Game Posted on June 21, 2011 Post a comment

This fall, Apple will be launching their newest product, the iCloud. iCloud is a proprietary cloud service for Apple users to store data remotely. “Data” (in layman’s terms) could include anything from emails, contacts and calendars to bookmarks, notes and to-do lists. Each iCloud account comes with 5gb of free space, but users may upgrade to larger plans.

In the past, data storage and manipulation has been limited to a physical hard drive. But these new-fangled cloud storage systems ensure that a user’s data is backed up in a safe and secure location, and is accessible from anywhere. Apple has designed the iCloud in such a way that allows flawless, up-to-date integration between all Apple products, which gives the company a huge advantage in the marketplace since PCs do not yet have such a sync tool (although the iTunes aspect of the iCloud will work with PCs).

With that said, non-Apple brands certainly won’t shrivel up and die. They’ll just have to evolve. If this cloud connectivity and sync trend proves effective, you can surely expect to see cloud-based PC sync systems. What’s important to note is that Apple currently holds an advantage because they are the leader in the handheld device market. The whole cloud trend is pushing more and more computing to mobile, handheld and platform devices that you can take anywhere. Of this continues, running advanced applications from something as simple as a mobile phone is not too far off. At that point, desktop personal computers will be shaking in their boots and computing as we know it will be virtually unrecongizable.

Effectively, what the iCloud demonstrates is that now we’ll all be able to do our computing from anywhere with a wide array of devices. The personal computer is quickly becoming the virtual computer and there’s no telling what’s coming next.