It will be interesting to watch this "cloud market" unravel over the next few months. With Amazon unveiling their 'Cloud Drive' today, it is setting a precedent that Apple and Google will have to match to in order to gain users to their service. I love Apple and the products that they put out so I will definitely be using their service over the others when in comes out, but this competition in the market place is certainly going to benefit us, the consumers.
I don't think there is a person out there that doesn't want the new MobileMe to be free. Of course that would just be the most basic of services which would be enhanced for a price, but for the average consumer, basic gets the job done. At first I though Amazon was being very generous with a free 5 GBs, but in reality, they need every edge they can get to compete, and that is not to say that Apple or Google won't come out with a service with a greater storage capacity. I believe that all of these services will have to stay competitive by raising capacities. In reality, these services are not each companies "bread and butter." To steal from an analogy I heard the other day, this cloud service is solely a moat that is there to protect the castle, or the companies main service. Each company wants to gain users through this rather than make a killing on money, so they will have to offer the best services (why do you think Amazon is offering 15 more GBs if you buy from their MP3 store?).
Forget Amazon, because they will fall out of relevance rather quickly once Apple and Google unveil their clouds. Plus, Amazon lacks functionality with their newborn product... the Dropbox way of doing things is not present, which will certainly be available in Apple's new service. By that I mean the ability to add files straight to a folder on your computer that will automatically put the file into the cloud. I love this about Dropbox; it is so convenient and simple. Of course, Dropbox will be affected by these new emerging clouds. They might want to boost their GB limit to compete with the big boys, although, their multiplatform functionality is to be desired since that is probably not a feature that Apple will implement.
Well, I'm just pretty much rambling now. I am just very excited for Apple's upcoming service. What do you guys want to see from Apple's new service and how would you use it? I think for me, I would like a very simple, intuitive Dropbox-like cloud with a decent amount of storage. For files, I pretty much would only put documents of extreme importance into it as well as a few photos so I wouldn't need too much space (Dropbox's 2 GBs has always been perfect for me). But for streaming music, it would be nice if they gave ample space. Right at the moment, my iTunes library has 6.07 GBs of music in it so it would be cool if I could fit all of that into it.
I don't think there is a person out there that doesn't want the new MobileMe to be free. Of course that would just be the most basic of services which would be enhanced for a price, but for the average consumer, basic gets the job done. At first I though Amazon was being very generous with a free 5 GBs, but in reality, they need every edge they can get to compete, and that is not to say that Apple or Google won't come out with a service with a greater storage capacity. I believe that all of these services will have to stay competitive by raising capacities. In reality, these services are not each companies "bread and butter." To steal from an analogy I heard the other day, this cloud service is solely a moat that is there to protect the castle, or the companies main service. Each company wants to gain users through this rather than make a killing on money, so they will have to offer the best services (why do you think Amazon is offering 15 more GBs if you buy from their MP3 store?).
Forget Amazon, because they will fall out of relevance rather quickly once Apple and Google unveil their clouds. Plus, Amazon lacks functionality with their newborn product... the Dropbox way of doing things is not present, which will certainly be available in Apple's new service. By that I mean the ability to add files straight to a folder on your computer that will automatically put the file into the cloud. I love this about Dropbox; it is so convenient and simple. Of course, Dropbox will be affected by these new emerging clouds. They might want to boost their GB limit to compete with the big boys, although, their multiplatform functionality is to be desired since that is probably not a feature that Apple will implement.
Well, I'm just pretty much rambling now. I am just very excited for Apple's upcoming service. What do you guys want to see from Apple's new service and how would you use it? I think for me, I would like a very simple, intuitive Dropbox-like cloud with a decent amount of storage. For files, I pretty much would only put documents of extreme importance into it as well as a few photos so I wouldn't need too much space (Dropbox's 2 GBs has always been perfect for me). But for streaming music, it would be nice if they gave ample space. Right at the moment, my iTunes library has 6.07 GBs of music in it so it would be cool if I could fit all of that into it.
), because my expectations from cloud is really different. When I move/copy some files to dropbox folder, I want it to keep that file only on cloud, not on my computer. At least there should be an option like that since I know there are a lot of people who loves current way.