Orrin Edenfield

Numerous articles discuss the recent security failure of Dropbox (like this one).  The linked article even mentions that this may cause users to question the security of the company used to store all of their files in the cloud.  I think the greater concern is:  do users trust any service or product provider to store all of their files?

Most consumers trust Apple or Dell or HP to store their files on the hard drives of computers they buy.  Likewise the same question should be asked when it comes to email services, to web-sites that store credit card numbers, to services that sell music and videos, etc.  Everything a computer user has that generates or uses some kind of data needs to have a security context.  For most users security is never thought of and maybe the Dropbox incident will get them to think about it but I doubt it.

Likewise in the enterprise the servers processes run on, the arrays of disks that store corporate data, the network that allows software and services (and SaaS) to function all need to have a security context.  Security doesn't all of the sudden become an issue when there is a cloud provider.

All computer systems have a level of trust between the provider of the system (hardware, software, service, etc.) and the user even if clouds are not involved.

Another new announcement/feature of iOS 5 today is the Reader view in Mobile Safari.  I find this to be an interesting feature, not because it is anything new (it has been possible to do this with Mozilla Firefox for a number of years) but because it bites the hand that feeds, it seems to hide advertisements.  I wonder how many ad-supported websites will like this (especially the little guys) considering the number of them that now insert advertisements into RSS feeds (or have cut their RSS feed back to only give the first 2 sentences of an article).

While I agree that displaying a website how you want to display it on the user's device should be up to the user, I think there could be some backlash to this from those want to make money via the ads on their website.

Why invent another proprietary message service?  Apple could have easily expanded Jabber-protocol support in a revamped instant messaging client and provided the following:

• Clients on Mac and iOS with the ability to message many millions of more people using Jabber-protocol servers and clients.
• Integrated FaceTime with a real presense service like Jabber and opened the spec on FaceTime to allow non-Apple products into the game.  Sure Apple couldn't guarantee the quality of the video, but they could easily have a watermark on all non-Apple products as a reminder "this video/audio looks like junk because someone isn't using an Apple lens."  This would also solidify Apple's "standard" as an actual real-world standard and invite others to build on it rather that build to compete against it.
• Combined messaging clients on all devices.  Maybe you want to leave email in it's own application (maybe not.. ?) but you could easily have transports for SMS, MMS, FaceTime and IM communication in 1 application.  All non-email messaging to and from contacts would be streamlined and in 1 place.  On second thought I wouldn't mind all of that being in the email client as well.  Then when you go to lookup a contact in your address book you could easily see all email, SMS, MMS, and IM messages in one spot.
• Kill off many add-on IM clients.  If iMessage was actually a Jabber client then you could easily connect to Google's Talk service & Facebook's chat service.

In summary, I am disappointed by the announcement of iMessage.  Apple has created another service that could have been much better for everyone (including Apple).

After reviewing the features of Apple's iCloud service it strikes me that Apple and Google have very different ideas about what a cloud is and what you can do with it.  Apple basically likes to use the cloud for storage and a small amount of file management (remind me to come back to file management and how Apple and Google both make it irrelevant) to make sure some items (looks like music and other items may require some manual downloading) are synced across all of your Apple devices.  Google actually sees the cloud as a platform.

One thing I see as missing from Apple's approach to cloud computing is the lack of any web-based applications with iCloud.  In fact I think Apple's greatest fear is the web-based application because it is usually hardware agnostic.  Apple has historically made consessions to the PC world when it benifited them (iTunes on PC, photos coming down from the iCloud to a PC).  I believe Apple is still trying to use the iCloud to sell you an iMac/iPhone/iPad/iPod, etc.  That is what happens when you are a hardware company and you've invested into over 300 retail locations, you sell hardware that many people buy religiously and you sell a lot of that hardware (200 million iOS devices, 54 million Mac users).  Apple may say they are all about soul (software), but their soul only works on their brain (hardware), Apple's software and hardware are one in the same.

Google on the other hand sells a service (neither brain or soul, more like a mutant offspring of both).  Just like Apple has now realized that all Macs are devices just like iPads, Google is still one step ahead because to them all devices are the same, Apple, Android, Mac or Windows PC (I would venture to say that Google's iOS applications would be identical in look and feature if Apple would let them).  This is why you don't see native applications running on Chrome OS.  Many have said this for years, the web is the most portable and cross-device platfrom available.  If I were a mobile app developer I wouldn't be wasting my time developing for Android or iOS, I'd be developing for the WEB!  Once you make sure it runs the same on iOS, Android, Chrome and Firefox it will run on nearly everything out there.

While Apple talked about some cool things today, it would be nice to see what those cool things looked like if they weren't behind the scenes being tied to increaseing sales of Apple hardware.  Until Apple actually drinks their own medicine and realize what a "Post-PC" world also means a "Post-Mac" world and a "Post-device" world, I'll stick to my real cloud computing platform, Google.