Feeling kinda underwhelmed by iCloud...


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Is the best yet to come with iCloud?

I'm feeling a little underwhelmed by the whole thing. Part of it has to do with the fact that they have taken features away from MobileMe such as the iWeb integration, the iPhoto online Gallery, and the iDisk.

Photo stream is probably the best thing about the service, but there is no web interface to get to your photo stream. There is no interface to share photos from your stream. I would be thrilled with a web interface for photo stream. Currently, I cannot use it at work (which is really where it would come in the most handy) because the only option I have is to download all of the photo stream photos to my work computer. Obviously that is not where I want personal photos to go to by default...

The web interface with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote is stellar. I hope that this paradigm can be extended to third party apps as well. The fact that you can download from the web interface to a Word format is good (but is not reliable for transferring Word documents unless you intend to read them on your iOS device).

The rest of iCloud is pretty straight forward and good. Some things, however, already existed and Apple has repackaged them as "new features" in iCloud (for instance re-downloading apps off the app store is now an iCloud thing). The ability to redownload music off iTunes should just be a consumer right not so much a cloud feature. But I digress...

If they, in some way, restore some of the photo sharing functionality and the iDisk functionality before they completely cut off MobileMe in June I'll be happy. But the launch for iCloud has been underwhelming for me.

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I'm a Windows user and I really prefer Google's offerings over Apple's.

+1

iCloud was a HUGE letdown for me once I found out you can't sync its contacts & calenders with non-iOS 5 devices...

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+1

iCloud was a HUGE letdown for me once I found out you can't sync its contacts & calenders with non-iOS 5 devices...

Isn't it up to others to start supporting iCloud?

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Once I take the time to look into a way to sync my Google contacts with iCloud contacts, I'll be a happy camper. My blackberry sync with Google like clockwork, but I need to find a way to get that to move across to Apple as well. Haven't put much thought into it yet, though.

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Once I take the time to look into a way to sync my Google contacts with iCloud contacts, I'll be a happy camper. My blackberry sync with Google like clockwork, but I need to find a way to get that to move across to Apple as well. Haven't put much thought into it yet, though.

Just keep using google for contacts, that's what I'm doing (as well as mail and calendar) because it syncs across anything and google's web apps are much better for mail etc.

I can't wait for more apps to take advantage of storing documents in the cloud, especially when there's mac versions of the apps as well.

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Isn't it up to others to start supporting iCloud?

True, kinda unfair to bash a service less then a month old...

I'm just so used to signing into Windows Live using exchange and getting all my contacts & calenders on everything.

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Might be because of your browser. It works very smoothly in Safari and in Firefox 7.

So basically what he said is true, iCloud's web interface is crap :)

They shouldn't be designing an interface just for Safari and Firefox.

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The email web interface is crap. Very slow and sluggish.

I'll continue to use gmail for now.

So basically what he said is true, iCloud's web interface is crap :)

They shouldn't be designing an interface just for Safari and Firefox.

I think the web interface is awesome, but I'm using Firefox 7. :)

What browsers are you guys using? IE9, Chrome, ...

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+1

iCloud was a HUGE letdown for me once I found out you can't sync its contacts & calenders with non-iOS 5 devices...

I'm not sure why you ever had the expectation that it would offer syncing to non-Apple devices other than Windows...

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+1

iCloud was a HUGE letdown for me once I found out you can't sync its contacts & calenders with non-iOS 5 devices...

I'm not sure why you ever had the expectation that it would offer syncing to non-Apple devices other than Windows...

Did he say non-Apple devices? No. But I'd love to be able to sync my iCloud capable iPad w/ iOS 5 with my APPLE iPod Touch... but NO.... seriously, it's literally Apples to Apples... and I can't sync calendars and contacts between the #$%% devices?!!!!

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Did he say non-Apple devices? No. But I'd love to be able to sync my iCloud capable iPad w/ iOS 5 with my APPLE iPod Touch... but NO.... seriously, it's literally Apples to Apples... and I can't sync calendars and contacts between the #$%% devices?!!!!

Can't you? Doesn't it just use WebDAV?

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iCloud is nice but er it's just like an FTP server to me. If you have a mounted folder on all your computers to an FTP server it's pretty much identical to what iCloud offers. App A uploads a file, it's sent to device B and C for App A on those devices to use. Just like Dropbox just like .Mac just like Mobile Me.

It's not really that special and I don't really understand why they have bothered to devote so much time to what is essentially a behind the scenes service most people won't interact with in any obvious (in that they know about it) way.

Being able to access you @me.com email on iCloud.com is nice but er we've all had hotmail or gmail accounts for years that did the same thing so this isn't really innovative at all. And sure the photo stream from the phone is useful but again not ground breaking as you could upload pictures to flickr from your phone before. Perhaps the consolidation of all these varied services in to one domain is useful but it's underwhelming because it's nothing really new. But that's okay because aslong as it works and is reliable that's all that really matters.

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I'm not sure why you ever had the expectation that it would offer syncing to non-Apple devices other than Windows...

Got my hopes up I guess.

Other then that... I have no idea why...

Did he say non-Apple devices? No. But I'd love to be able to sync my iCloud capable iPad w/ iOS 5 with my APPLE iPod Touch... but NO.... seriously, it's literally Apples to Apples... and I can't sync calendars and contacts between the #$%% devices?!!!!

Sorry, I was somewhat implying non-Apple devices.

I can't sync iCloud's contacts & calender with WP7, webOS 3.0.4, or iOS 4.2.1.

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So basically what he said is true, iCloud's web interface is crap :)

They shouldn't be designing an interface just for Safari and Firefox.

How is in in any way true? The iCloud web interface works smooth as butter on all modern browsers I've tried it on. Including Internet Explorer 9. Do you have a clue or are you randomly posting stuff about a subject you have no real knowledge of?

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How is in in any way true? The iCloud web interface works smooth as butter on all modern browsers I've tried it on. Including Internet Explorer 9. Do you have a clue or are you randomly posting stuff about a subject you have no real knowledge of?

He's just trying to be a smart ass, while failing at it. He figured if one user said it works on two specific browsers and didn't explicitly mention other browsers, then naturally it doesn't work on those other browsers. :p

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He's just trying to be a smart ass, while failing at it. He figured if one user said it works on two specific browsers and didn't explicitly mention other browsers, then naturally it doesn't work on those other browsers. :p

Would be nice if someone just refrained him/herself from posting in that case.

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Sorry, I was somewhat implying non-Apple devices.

I can't sync iCloud's contacts & calender with WP7, webOS 3.0.4, or iOS 4.2.1.

Yeah, that's my annoyance, I should be able to sync to iOS 4.2.1... I could at least semi-understand not syncing with other non-Apple devices, but c'mon, iOS 4.2.1 at least should work. Unless you've got iOS 4.2.1 on a non-Apple device...

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Yeah, that's my annoyance, I should be able to sync to iOS 4.2.1... I could at least semi-understand not syncing with other non-Apple devices, but c'mon, iOS 4.2.1 at least should work. Unless you've got iOS 4.2.1 on a non-Apple device...

My 8GB 3rd Gen iPod Touch can only go up to 4.2.1.

Is it even possible to run iOS on a non-Apple device?

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iCloud is nice but er it's just like an FTP server to me. If you have a mounted folder on all your computers to an FTP server it's pretty much identical to what iCloud offers. App A uploads a file, it's sent to device B and C for App A on those devices to use. Just like Dropbox just like .Mac just like Mobile Me.

It's not really that special and I don't really understand why they have bothered to devote so much time to what is essentially a behind the scenes service most people won't interact with in any obvious (in that they know about it) way.

You got to understand the direction iCloud is going, and that is: API, API, and more API. I think once more 3rd party developers start creating iOS and Mac applications with integrated iCloud services Apple's vision will become more apparent. There have been a whole lot of Apps that connect to Dropbox for "cloud syncing" and they work really well...but have you ever thought about the privacy ramifications of every applications accessing the same data space? With iCloud each applications will have access to an independent set of space much like how current apps on iOS have their own set of space and can only transmit documents between app spaces through the provided API. This is a much better paradigm for privacy than any other cloud service...but it does come with its trade offs (i.e., ease of use when it comes to accessing the same files between multiple programs).

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Apple not supporting all devices is a fair complaint, although I imagine on the back end baking iCloud into OSX and iOS isn't as easy as just installing Dropbox is.

Where it does work, though, it works incredibly well. I always had issues syncing with Google calendars / contacts on my phone, not any more with iCloud. I upgraded to the latest iPhoto just to see how the PhotoStream works, and it works great.

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My 8GB 3rd Gen iPod Touch can only go up to 4.2.1.

Is it even possible to run iOS on a non-Apple device?

Oh wow, I thought the 3rd Gens could do at least iOS 4.3, didn't realize they were stuck at 4.2.1 along with my 2nd Gen.

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