Have you ever looked for a song or a movie on your iPhone or iPod and come to find that it’s not there. Well, right now if that happens you have to remember to sync your music or movies to your i-device when you are at your computer, because, as we all know, our library is stored away from our on-the-go devices. There are services out there such as Lala.com as well as other services that connect to your iPhone and will stream your music. Unfortunately, your movies don’t get streamed. Apple plans to change all this by putting your content in the cloud.
CNET’s Greg Sandavol reports that Apple wants to put your digital library in the cloud. What does this mean for the user? In simple terms you can have access to your library when and wherever you are. Consequently, Apple has to get the movie studios and music labels on board. I personally can’t wait for something like this, and I would still want a local copy of my content, but to know that my content will never be accidentally deleted or lost is a load off of my mind. I would also be able to free up my iTunes Library backup drives and use them for other purposes.
With Apple building their own Data Center in North Carolina, they’ll be able to house all of this rich content. As we move into a more connected world, this seems to be the next logical evolutionary step in consuming digital content. Now you might be saying to yourself, this is fine if you have a connected portable device, but I have a Nano or a Classic iPod how will this benefit me? You’re right you probably would not benefit from this in the portable experience; however, you would benefit from your content being protected and available to you on your home computer.
The only negative I can see with having your digital content in the cloud is if there is an outage, be it on Apple’s side, or your Internet Service Provider. Any of us who have Gmail accounts have dealt with temporary outages from Google. This is why Google now offers us the ability to download your mail to your computer for offline browsing. I feel that Apple would have to employ something similar.
If and when this comes to fruition, it will definitely change the way we think about purchasing iPhones and iPods. Right now most of us, me included, will purchase the largest capacity i-device to store our content that we can afford. With our content in the cloud we could purchase a smaller capacity device, and still have access to our content.
These are exciting times we are living in. We’re clearly moving away from an analog world to a digital one. Apple is assisting in this next step. Do you think it’s a good idea to have all your content in the cloud? Or, would you prefer to manage and backup your own content as we currently are doing?
Let me know what you think by commenting in the comments section below.
Photo Credit: apple store and clouds-no edit
Article Via CNET
