What does Apples future hold for us?

[lucidmedia]

Apple is empowering both users and developers.

I respectfully disagree. Apple empowers developers who submit to its control. Apple's "walled garden" distribution model, and practice of withholding access to certain technologies to developers who are outside of infinite loop means that in the long run this will have a chilling effect on outside innovation.

I came to Mac almost 20 years ago because it was the platform that empowered, enabled and supported users to make things. Today it is shifting to a consumer/content delivery platform, and apple no longer seems to support (and at times is openly antagonistic to) those who create content for others to consume.

 

[BigQid]

I think Apple's next big 'thing' will be some sort of cloud based / partly cloud based OS for the iDevices. Think Citrix on a iPhone. All your app's will be stored in the cloud, music will be served from their servers and streamed.

either this or a google type service of mail / ilife / iwork in the cloud.

They've got to be doing something with those big data centres.

Either way I can't see it being good for the consumer but more of a control thing.

I'm all for cloud integration, but the internet isn't always on. The ideal situation is to have apps on your phone that update based on the cloud. They would do better to integrate with services that already exist like Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. I would rather see Apple focus on making computers and electronics the best that they can be rather than trying to take over every piece of computing. Google does a great job with the cloud. I don't see Apple doing it better.

When I think about what Apple should do, I think about what I want my day to be like. I want my ipad, iphone, and macbook to act in concert from the moment I wake up. I should be able to set an alarm on my iphone and use the ipad as an alarm clock that displays the weather, news, and sports scores. My phone should tell me how much time I have to leave the house before the next bus comes and if there are any delays. I should be able to toss some songs on my iphone and have them downloading while I walk out the door. When my girlfriend sends me a text message, I should see it on my ipod nano watch. I should be able to press a button and pull the earpiece from some convenient storage place (clipped to my shirt or in the wrist band) to call her. On the way, I should be able to pay for a cup of coffee by holding my watch, which is linked to my phone and entering a pin number. My phone should remind me I have 2 minutes to get to the bus and that the next bus is 15 minutes behind that, but there is an open seat in a car pooling car that is headed in my direction 4 minutes away who will take me for $4. I should be able to see his ride share ratings and he mine. In my ride in the car, if he tells me about a cooking show he's been watching from France, I should be able to direct my Macbook at home to download the bit torrent. I would like to see iphone/ipad thought of as a simplified or even mobile interface for lots of apps. If I lose any of my Apple products, they should help me find the others not just on a map, but by triggering sounds and pointing.

All macs should have a space for programs on SSD in the motherboard that they automatically download to, but we don't need SSD to store music, video, or other documents.

 

[BigQid]

To be honest, they could put some thought in providing better organization of documents and files. Oh, and I hate the way podcasts are organized. I'd like to be able to collect podcasts by subject and have them automatically download as collections. Why is that complicated?
What would be huge is if there was a way built in to interact with certain Mac apps from the phone the way you can program your Tivo now from work. I see the iOS as a simplified, streamlined experience. I'd like to use that streamlined experience to get my Mac to do things too large for my phone.