All future computing power in the cloud? {Groan} let's hope not

[FluJunkie]

This code has never been put on a laptop or box that ventured outside the company to do work local at another site? If it has, there is no material difference.

There is nothing inherent in the cloud that prohibits security. What policies are laid on top of the resources gives security.

There are apps that are disconnected from the entire internet. Or pretty much stationary on single systems ( or LAN cluster of systems). However those are relatively few.

When the FBI seizes a box that has data connected to an investigation on it, and your stuff happens to be on the same physical box there's a difference between the cloud and a laptop.

There are *myriad* security differences, because security does not exist in a "Secure"/"Not Secure" binary.

 

[FluJunkie]

I aknowledged that the initial upload of your data into the cloud will be a tough job with current broadband technology

The problem is not how your data performs once it's to the cloud, its getting it there and, as importantly, getting it back. And "the initial upload" of data isn't necessarily a one time thing - data is created locally all the time.

Beyond that, the notion that I couldn't get work done because Apple was having data center issues (it's happened to AWS-based systems a fair number of times now) on my many thousands of dollars machine is...unacceptable. Cloud based computing is a neat idea, but for me its utility is as a supplement to a dedicated workstation, not a replacement. The bandwidth overhead makes many things far more practical to do locally.

 

[goMac]

Beyond that, the notion that I couldn't get work done because Apple was having data center issues (it's happened to AWS-based systems a fair number of times now) on my many thousands of dollars machine is...unacceptable. Cloud based computing is a neat idea, but for me its utility is as a supplement to a dedicated workstation, not a replacement. The bandwidth overhead makes many things far more practical to do locally.

That's another good point. Do you want your next Mac to have the same reliability as iCloud? Probably not.

 

[Giuly]

The problem is not how your data performs once it's to the cloud, its getting it there and, as importantly, getting it back. And "the initial upload" of data isn't necessarily a one time thing - data is created locally all the time.

"Locally" is in the cloud. All you get is the image of the screen, the rest is off-site. Like AirPlay, just that you have the power of a data center (or rather the portion of it that you're willing to pay for) instead the one of an iPad.

Beyond that, the notion that I couldn't get work done because Apple was having data center issues (it's happened to AWS-based systems a fair number of times now) on my many thousands of dollars machine is...unacceptable. Cloud based computing is a neat idea, but for me its utility is as a supplement to a dedicated workstation, not a replacement. The bandwidth overhead makes many things far more practical to do locally.

There is redundancy, so even if they have data center issues, you wouldn't even know. Also, you don't have a 'many thousand dollar machine' in the cloud, you rent something akin to '20x the computing power of a Mac Pro with 128GB RAM' for $14.99 per day or similar.

 

[goMac]

"Locally" is in the cloud. All you get is the image of the screen, the rest is off-site. Like AirPlay, just that you have the power of a data center (or rather the portion of it that you're willing to pay for) instead the one of an iPad.

Right, but the problem is my camera isn't in the cloud. It's at my desk. When I have multiple terabytes of data I need to get from my desk into my computer, how exactly does that work?

When I have a 4 TB disk I plug in, how does that work?

The whole thing doesn't make any sense.

There is redundancy, so even if they have data center issues, you wouldn't even know. Also, you don't have a 'many thousand dollar machine' in the cloud, you rent something akin to '20x the computing power of a Mac Pro with 128GB RAM' for $14.99 per day or similar.

Huh? How does that work? You can only be as powerful as the machine you're getting served from. Where are these monster 20x more powerful Xeons that I don't have to share with other users?

I have a cloud VPS (which is what you're talking about.) It is not 20x more powerful than my Mac Pro, I'd be lucky if it was 10%. To get a VPS as powerful as my Mac Pro I'd be shelling out at least several hundred a month, if not more.

 

[Giuly]

Yeah, sorry for bothering you. It will be 5-10 years until this trickles down to consumers anyways so we should have this discussion then.

 

[Tesselator]

The only thing futuristic about any of this are the prices being mentioned. There are certainly "monster 20x" and even monster 2,000x virtual computing seats being provided today as we speak. Most are University or corporate systems tho. You could buy such a seat right now if you wanted to but I think it would be slightly more than $14.95/mo

At the same time however the bottleneck of data throughput still exists - and even so for most of the users logging on to those academic and corporate data-centers.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16942904/

Cloud computing works well when the files are small but the processing is big (like say, computing the human genome or solving for pi.) It doesn't work so well when the files are big (like video editing, music editing, image editing.)

 

[bearcatrp]

Not sure about you folks but don't think I'll trust any of my data to the cloud. Way to many breaches. No stiff penalties on comapnies if your personal information/any data you upload gets taken. Good luck taking them to court if your data gets swiped.

 

[FluJunkie]

"Locally" is in the cloud. All you get is the image of the screen, the rest is off-site.

This is only true if everything is created whole cloth on my machine. This simply isn't true. Computers have inputs like USB 3.0, Firewire and Thunderbolt for a reason.

 

[chaosbunny]

Your so wrong on this statement. The big push to cloud computing is rolling full steam ahead. Every month more software vendors are pushing to do everything on THEIR servers, for a fee of course. Looking at the new OS'S, you can tell that's the plan. Plus, looking at the prices of server chips, getting higher every year to keep allot of folks from buying. I build my own ever since selling my 2008 mac pro. Looking at the prices to build the latest systems is outrageously expensive. Soon it will be all subscription based. Just the icon on your desktop to click to log in to whoever.

Sure vendors like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, etc. want to collect more data and get a tighter grip on their customers. But just because they praise their data mining services as the next big thing doesn't mean that customers have to turn their brains off and blindly follow everything just because it is "new".

In my opinion people should be more concerned about what happens to their data once it is uploaded "somewhere". As long as everything works it is always "no there are no problems, you are paranoid" but when the next server breakdown/hacker attack/whatever comes and the service is unavailable for a day the rage is HUGE.

 

[bearcatrp]

Sure vendors like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, etc. want to collect more data and get a tighter grip on their customers. But just because they praise their data mining services as the next big thing doesn't mean that customers have to turn their brains off and blindly follow everything just because it is "new".

In my opinion people should be more concerned about what happens to their data once it is uploaded "somewhere". As long as everything works it is always "no there are no problems, you are paranoid" but when the next server breakdown/hacker attack/whatever comes and the service is unavailable for a day the rage is HUGE.

Agree 100%!

 

[Lil Chillbil]

getting ready for cloud armageddon

I have come to the conclusion that if The new mac pro happens to take all computing power to the cloud I will immediately sell all of my electronics and stuff and buy a current gen 12 core mac pro. And start to take all of the information I can from the internet and save it on its 4 massive hdds. And once those are full I will then invest everything I own into external storage and continue to take in as much information as possible. As well as saving tons of music and movies and tv shows and games like cod and borderlands to those drives. pretty much taking the entire internet and saving it to 50 terabytes of storage leaving me 10 terabytes of space to document my life on video of my endeavor to stick it to the man...


and maybe go out for some Chinese food afterwords