The Silver Lining

 

Apple's new MobileMe service has had a tough reception. Not entirely unsurprising. After all, when you are heralding the second coming of the 'Jesus Phone', its inevitable that expectations might be running unfairly high.

Yet when the furor over the buggy release dies down, I think people will realise that in some ways MobileMe is more significant than the new iPhone itself. Here's why - cloud storage is the future. We have been building to this point for a while. The real impact of Web2.0 was not new interface designs or crazy social networking site valuations - but the idea that websites should be platforms, and that your data should live on the web not on your PC. Contacts, photos, articles, comments, videos - when data lives in the cloud it is not only accessible from wherever you are, it is able to interact with other bits of data as well.

New services like MobileMe will do for your data what Facebook did with your contact book. It will become a bridge between your devices and the rest of the world. Ray Ozzie at Microsoft had planned a similar strategy with Mesh, but like any release of Windows - that too seems to have been lost in translation. Of course, eventually I believe it won't just be your own data that will live in the cloud - the world's entertainment and media content will also migrate from your devices and be available streaming on demand.

However for any of this to be remotely useful, one big thing has to change - cheap, global, data roaming. There is no point having all the content in the world at your fingertips when you are getting done over a barrel on international data roaming charges. If Bill Gates in the eighties dreamed of a computer on every desktop, I'd like to imagine a world with a fixed price, all you can eat, global mobile broadband data contract.

Now that will be the start of the real revolution.

Comments

[Thomas S]

For "Cloud Storage" to perform this task, it will be necessary to open it up, so it work with "all" applications and "all" devices. If you are locked in to use only a specific device, or platform/application the service provider has created a "plugin" for, it will fail.
I think Google (and other) is more likely to create a service that uses open standards, than MS or Apple, as the later cannot be truly device/platform independent.
(As for data roaming, who would disagree with you, except MSP/ISP's? ;-) )

[Carl Panczak]

Absolutely agree, but I'm not convinced MobileMe is going to be the platform that delivers it.

Gmail is one reason why I probably wouldn't switch to MobileMe, and if Google has my mail, they can get more of my data.

[chris simon]

I tend to believe it will be Google that comes to the rescue on this. You have always been a bit of an Apple Mac snob Mike, which is fine. But high expectations unfair, I do not think so. I for one, always thought the i-Phone walked on water, but it let down at least one of its Apostles through not shooting video. With a service called MobileMe, part of the cloud storage equation would surely be the ability to shoot, edit, upload and sync clips. Not everyone, even some of the really potential cloud data freaks, are as into Apple ‘status’ as yourself. When you deal in mass online and mobile populations, a lot still browse via Explorer and certainly not all on the latest Firefox or Safari. It’s Apple and you, on their behalf, that position themselves as modern saviours of Web2 to 3.0, but the truth remains that Apple has not always been the simple way to keep everything in sync. But the truth is out there and I’m sure Mike’s World has the answer! I started out as a MacMan, then had to become PC in line with mass activities, then had to become hybrid as all good multimedia maniacs should. But even with my suite of MacBook solutions, I still find the Apple ‘status’ and MobileMe ‘status’ unfairly difficult and unuser friendly at times. I agree with you entirely about a cloud storage future and data living in open, accessible and interactive cross-data formats, BUT! The Bridge. I’m not convinced who is building the right one and a lot of people have been trying to leave their Facebook contact lists for awhile. If every single person in the universe thought iPod and iPod Touch was the real revolution, I think I would be a bit more tuned into MobileMe. I think you should be able to point your phone at their site and watch the demo, and that is not so much of a revolution, but more what is already happening now. Your fixed price utopia would be so wonderful, but it’s a bit bluesky or head in the clouds just at this moment, sadly! Try discussing it with ‘3’ or Telstra or anyone turning water into i-Phones at the moment. I do, however, think the increase to mass Mobile base via i-Phone marketing is brilliant.