Apple's iCloud music service to scan, mirror iTunes libraries

24

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 63
    habermashabermas Posts: 37member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    3) If you have no interest in what Apple is doing and have already concluded that you won’t like it then why post at all? Just to complain about that? Seriously?!



    If you're talking about me in the above I'd be curious to learn how you arrived at the assumption highlighted. Was it perhaps convenient to assume for the sake of the argument?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Your setup sounds great. How does that work when you’re using your phone away from home? How does the integrate with your iPod app?



    It works well on 3G and WAN. And it doesn't work at all on GPRS. As will be the case with the iCloud. It doesn't integrate with the playlist viewer but rather launches the "Quicktime player" to play the individual songs chosen by me in the Dropbox app. I'll admit that the iCloud service gives you the benefit of better integration with iTunes but as I see it there's not much that Dropbox would need to do to achieve a similar high level of integration - that is if they are not prevented from doing so by some Apple employees filing a trivial patent application in order to receive their christmas bonuses.
  • Reply 22 of 63
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by habermas View Post


    If you're talking about me in the above I'd be curious to learn how you arrived at the assumption highlighted. Was it perhaps convenient to assume for the sake of the argument?



    You can?t tell what poster that was directed toward? I thought the quoting just above where I responded was a clue.
  • Reply 23 of 63
    futuristicfuturistic Posts: 599member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by habermas View Post


    Also I don't see what's so special or innovative about the iCloud. I've been doing what it purports to offer for more than a year having placed my iTunes library in Dropbox on a NAS. It comes with the added benefit of not having to pay taxes to the record companies for listening to my music.



    I'd be willing to pay Apple for the convenience of mirroring my library or whatever. What I'm not willing to do is rent my music from the record labels. If Apple keeps all the money and uses it for maintenance & upkeep of the cloud, then that's cool with me. But, if iCloud becomes a pay service, a percentage of which goes to the record labels, I have serious concerns about how much of that will actually go to the artists.



    Then again, I think giant record labels are lumbering closer and closer to extinction. Good riddance, I say. The evil of record labels is alluded to perfectly in the CD sleeve for Radiohead's "OK Computer"?on the back page, it says, "Lyrics reprinted with permission, even though we wrote them."

    We're already seeing more and more artists self-producing and self-publishing their music (I have several friends who have done just that)?thanks in part to iTunes.
  • Reply 24 of 63
    magicjmagicj Posts: 406member
    Interesting feature set.



    ● I can continue to pay and pay and pay, forever, for music I already own.

    ● I can search for a slow-as-heck public wi-fi and then wait to download songs as an alternative to quickly and easily loading all my songs on all my devices like I do now.

    ● I can upload personal contact and calendar information to Apple's servers and when those servers get hacked and my data gets stolen, Apple won't tell me it happened.



    Modern technology is certainly a marvel.
  • Reply 25 of 63
    I had a friend who purchased a new MacBook pro some time ago and it was a fine experience save for the fact that they kept pushing MobileMe. The selling point was that she could upload her iTunes to the site and sleep the sleep of angels.



    The problem, as most already know, is that it would only upload items purchased from iTunes, which in her case was a dozen or so.



    People in the know would just say no thanks, but how many consumers DID know.



    I know that 80% of my collection consists of legal but unauthorized concerts. If no one is going to make money from those, will the Cloud just ignore them?
  • Reply 26 of 63
    meh 2meh 2 Posts: 149member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by habermas View Post


    PATENT application? Give me a f***ing break. This is called local caching and has been used for decades, Allen P. Haughay and Benjamin Rottler.. There's nothing particularly innovative about applying the caching to the beginning of songs only. It's a basic trick that any clown could think of and it certainly does not deserve the lifetime protection that a patent grant would offer.



    I wonder how long a patent actually protects a variation on a theme and, as a consequence of making plain by publicly publishing the better way of doing something, prevents others from simply copying and using it?



    Quote:

    Also I don't see what's so special or innovative about the iCloud. I've been doing what it purports to offer for more than a year having placed my iTunes library in Dropbox on a NAS. It comes with the added benefit of not having to pay taxes to the record companies for listening to my music.



    I wonder, by the time a patented idea is viewable and hence recognizable by the general public, how long it must have been "in the works" before its public introduction?
  • Reply 27 of 63
    magicjmagicj Posts: 406member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kingharvest View Post


    I had a friend who purchased a new MacBook pro some time ago and it was a fine experience save for the fact that they kept pushing MobileMe. The selling point was that she could upload her iTunes to the site and sleep the sleep of angels.



    The problem, as most already know, is that it would only upload items purchased from iTunes, which in her case was a dozen or so.



    Well, that's one problem. Another is you can already backup you stuff to Dropbox for free. All your stuff, not just certain songs from iTunes. Apple has been pushing the cloud junk for years. It's never caught on. It doesn't look to me like this iteration will catch on. It's a solution looking for a problem.



    Personally, I think they could have taken the billion dollars they spent on that data center and just given people free Macs and it would have done more to help Apple than this iCloud thing will do.
  • Reply 28 of 63
    firefly7475firefly7475 Posts: 1,502member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by magicj View Post


    Apple has been pushing the cloud junk for years. It's never caught on. It doesn't look to me like this iteration will catch on. It's a solution looking for a problem.



    Personally, I think they could have taken the billion dollars they spent on that data center and just given people free Macs and it would have done more to help Apple than this iCloud thing will do.



    You really don't like the cloud do you?



    Is it the idea of all you stuff, anywhere, anytime that you don't like, or all you stuff... on Apple's servers that you have a problem with?



    What about the "private cloud" facilitated by something like an iHub/iCenter/iHome/iCentral/iMesh?
  • Reply 29 of 63
    magicjmagicj Posts: 406member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Firefly7475 View Post


    Is it the idea of all you stuff, anywhere, anytime that you don't like, or all you stuff... on Apple's servers that you have a problem with?



    I already have all my stuff with me, anywhere, anytime. And it works better and faster than that iCloud will work. Paying to do things via iCloud would be a downgrade to how I do it now for free. Why would I want to use public wi-fi or suck up minutes on a data plan to download my music when having all my music on all my devices is trivial? It takes significantly less time to sync than it does to recharge the battery, which you have to do anyway.



    And yeah, I'm not thrilled with the idea of putting my personal data on the servers of a company that doesn't tell you when your data gets stolen. As I said on a previous thread, if Apple forces you to use iCloud on the Mac (I don't think they will, but if they do) I'll switch back to Windows as quickly as I can.



    Edit:

    Anyway, the whole "cloud" thing is a red herring. I don't look at something and ask "Is this cloud or is it not". I ask "Is it useful to me or is it not". I'm not seeing anything in iCloud that's useful. I am seeing features I don't like due to Apple's poor privacy practices.



    Also, I can't answer your question on whether or not the TV syncing for your "private cloud" is a good idea. I haven't watched TV in over 7 years. So you'll want to ask someone who actually uses that tech.
  • Reply 30 of 63
    pxtpxt Posts: 683member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by habermas View Post


    PATENT application? Give me a f***ing break. This is called local caching and has been used for decades, Allen P. Haughay and Benjamin Rottler.. There's nothing particularly innovative about applying the caching to the beginning of songs only. It's a basic trick that any clown could think of and it certainly does not deserve the lifetime protection that a patent grant would offer.



    ---




    I am sure that Apple is fully aware of what you say and probably agrees, but in the current system if you don't patent the obvious, someone else will and then they make you pay.
  • Reply 31 of 63
    pxtpxt Posts: 683member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by habermas View Post




    ---



    Also I don't see what's so special or innovative about the iCloud. I've been doing what it purports to offer for more than a year having placed my iTunes library in Dropbox on a NAS. It comes with the added benefit of not having to pay taxes to the record companies for listening to my music.



    Speaking of Apple in the cloud, if they spent the R&D money on learning to sync, we could use the iDisk we've already paid for.

    I'd happily upgrade my iDisk to 60GB and pay Apple for the privilege at their current going rate, if only it worked as reliably and fast as Dropbox.
  • Reply 32 of 63
    futuristicfuturistic Posts: 599member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kingharvest View Post


    I know that 80% of my collection consists of legal but unauthorized concerts. If no one is going to make money from those, will the Cloud just ignore them?



    What does that mean???
  • Reply 33 of 63
    shaun, ukshaun, uk Posts: 1,050member
    Why would you need to stream the music? iCloud will be a backup service. That's all.



    Keep your iTunes library on your Mac/PC/iPod/etc and play it from there. Use iCloud to mirror (not store) your iTunes library so if anything happens to your Mac/PC/iPod and you loose your iTunes library you can simply retore it from the cloud.



    If iCloud does this automatically in the background so much the better. Beats having to backup to external hard drive all the time.
  • Reply 34 of 63
    magicjmagicj Posts: 406member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shaun, UK View Post


    Why would you need to stream the music? iCloud will be a backup service. That's all.



    That makes even less sense than streaming to me. You can already back up all your data for free with dropbox. Why pay to be able to backup only music with iCloud?
  • Reply 35 of 63
    shaun, ukshaun, uk Posts: 1,050member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by magicj View Post


    That makes even less sense than streaming to me. You can already back up all your data for free with dropbox. Why pay to be able to backup only music with iCloud?



    2 reasons:



    1. Dropbox only goes up to 100Gb for $20/mth. My iTunes library is already 120Gb and growing by the day.



    2. If iCloud mirrors your iTunes library it would automatically backup new content as it was added to your iTunes library so you don't have to remember to backup your library. If you did this with dropbox you would have to backup the entire iTunes library each time which would be time consuming. With iCloud it knows which songs you have added and just adds those to your iCloud in the background. Very simple solution.
  • Reply 36 of 63
    firefly7475firefly7475 Posts: 1,502member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by magicj View Post


    I don't look at something and ask "Is this cloud or is it not". I ask "Is it useful to me or is it not".



    I haven't watched TV in over 7 years.



    Most people will need access to some form of cloud services, but I'll happily concede that "everything in the cloud" isn't for everyone.



    If you haven't watched tv for 7 years you wouldn't be someone I would label as a typical consumer



    I've seen an alternative idea to "everything in the cloud" where your phone is the center of your digital life, syncing settings and files via wire (for PC/notebook) or WiFi (for tablets) or actually becoming your notebook (i.e. the motorola atrix).



    I have a feeling this is the direction Google will head. I'll be surprised if they don't start embedding ChromeOS into Android at some point in the near future.
  • Reply 37 of 63
    AirPlay has allowed me to remove all music from my iPad, thus freeing up a massive amount of space for more stuff. The iCloud service will free up space on my iPhone and my MacBook. I am so looking forward to this...
  • Reply 38 of 63
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    What if I have music in my library for which Apple doesn't have an iTunes license (Pro tip: I do.)? If they still plan to mirror it, there was no sense in Apple allegedly getting these new deals with the music companies for streaming.



    Which means this service won't be mirroring ANYTHING that iTunes doesn't already offer.



    Firstly, The App Store can tell me what apps I need to update even though I have hundreds of other Apps from other sources. Apple only looks for what it supplied. No one gets reported for having bootlegs of Microsoft Office or whatever do they?



    Secondly I don't think for one second anything is 'backed up' or 'copied in background' or any of the other scenarios many are envisaging. A simple database of what tunes a client has purchased from Apple will be stored taking almost no space. To play the song the system will utilize the exact same play facility now used on the iTunes store to preview a song, only in this case it will play the entire song. The twist seems to be the way the system can start off from the tune locally to avoid buffering delays but my bet that is optional since there is no reason a simple database couldn't be stored on an iPhone too thus negating the need to actually load up an iPhone or iPod with the real data for a legally owned song, limited obviously to those purchased from Apple. So a reference file on an iPhone is verified on the cloud and iTunes streams the real data to the device.



    If my hunch above is true, the brilliance is the added incentive to buy through the iTunes store to gain the freedom to not have to load devices with the actual data, just the 'proof' as it were.



    The time to sync an iPhone, iPad or iPod will be seconds (wirelessly I hope) even for a thousand song play list since only verification keys are being transferred. This will no doubt be optional, allowing for actual data to be synced if required, for such situations as a movie, book or album for a plane trip.



    This is why the CloudMe is such a big deal, it means iDevices don't need massive internal storage for media. This is only one of the many innovative used for Apple's cloud I am sure. Once all is clear every one else will of course try to copy Apple as the usual situation plays out. Apple will have yet again taken a common concept and made it work a million times better than anyone else.
  • Reply 39 of 63
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    Firstly, The App Store can tell me what apps I need to update even though I have hundreds of other Apps from other sources. Apple only looks for what it supplied. No one gets reported for having bootlegs of Microsoft Office or whatever do they?



    No, but that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.



    Quote:

    Entire rest of the post, stating absolutely nothing new from what I had said



    Yes, that's what I said. None of my music that isn't available in the iTunes Store will be available through this service.
  • Reply 40 of 63
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    No, but that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.







    Yes, that's what I said. None of my music that isn't available in the iTunes Store will be available through this service.



    Sorry I should perhaps of simply posted my thought not replied to you, I wasn't really replying to you.
Sign In or Register to comment.