iCloud - iDisk, Gallery, Multiply iTunes accounts
Hi there,
So after removing myself from the hype of the iCloud I realized there are several key factors and features of the new iCloud that I am going to miss.
Lets start with iDisk.
I believe that iDisk is going to be scrapped in iCloud. (If I am wrong please tell me and I will edit this.) But I was hoping if a developer has had a chance to look at the APIs yet and see if it was possible that a 3rd party could introduce something. (I know there is dropbox, but I am hoping if there is support, it might mean Apple might add it later. Assuming apple updates it's iCloud service annually like it does with it's other products)
Now the big one for me, Gallery
I love the gallery and how it plugs into iPhoto and aperture and how it is very easy to share galleries with people. Now I believe it has been "replaced by photo stream", which I have to say is a clever idea. But at the same time I don't want all my photos from my iPhone on my laptop as most photos are just one off snaps of something. But my biggest issue with photo stream is the fact you cannot share it by sending a link (or at least I read it that way).
And finally, people with multiply accounts will get this. I have a family account, the master one is the one my family buys all the apps on, so that way updating the apps is easy, and since we have 4 iPhones, 2 iPads and 2 iPods in my family, we only buy apps once and use that account. Apart from that the master's account only has one shared calendar that my family uses. Now I have two separate iTunes accounts, one is old and has all my music I purchased pre-drm-free and mobileme, the other is my mobileme account which I use to buy all my music.
So my question is does, anyone know if I can consolidate my two iTunes account down to one?
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=125840
And how will the iCloud thing work, as I want all my emails from my mobileme, but at the same time want to be able to get my apps from the master account. Will it require signing in and out or will it try and sync everything again.
If anyone has any answers, it would be great to hear them. Or if anyone has any similar issues or problems it would also be great to hear them and if you have thought of a work around.
So after removing myself from the hype of the iCloud I realized there are several key factors and features of the new iCloud that I am going to miss.
Lets start with iDisk.
I believe that iDisk is going to be scrapped in iCloud. (If I am wrong please tell me and I will edit this.) But I was hoping if a developer has had a chance to look at the APIs yet and see if it was possible that a 3rd party could introduce something. (I know there is dropbox, but I am hoping if there is support, it might mean Apple might add it later. Assuming apple updates it's iCloud service annually like it does with it's other products)
Now the big one for me, Gallery
I love the gallery and how it plugs into iPhoto and aperture and how it is very easy to share galleries with people. Now I believe it has been "replaced by photo stream", which I have to say is a clever idea. But at the same time I don't want all my photos from my iPhone on my laptop as most photos are just one off snaps of something. But my biggest issue with photo stream is the fact you cannot share it by sending a link (or at least I read it that way). And finally, people with multiply accounts will get this. I have a family account, the master one is the one my family buys all the apps on, so that way updating the apps is easy, and since we have 4 iPhones, 2 iPads and 2 iPods in my family, we only buy apps once and use that account. Apart from that the master's account only has one shared calendar that my family uses. Now I have two separate iTunes accounts, one is old and has all my music I purchased pre-drm-free and mobileme, the other is my mobileme account which I use to buy all my music.
So my question is does, anyone know if I can consolidate my two iTunes account down to one?
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=125840
And how will the iCloud thing work, as I want all my emails from my mobileme, but at the same time want to be able to get my apps from the master account. Will it require signing in and out or will it try and sync everything again.
If anyone has any answers, it would be great to hear them. Or if anyone has any similar issues or problems it would also be great to hear them and if you have thought of a work around.
Comments
However, music is a different story. We share all our purchased music by putting it in a shared directory and adding it to our respective libraries. This way we have access to the same music that we've purchased, but we have our own playlists.
We also share our photos, but for iPhoto we actually use the exact same iPhoto library file so that we can have all the same albums and pictures and both work on them. I have no idea how iPhoto/iCould will handle a setup like this.
I hope apple has thought about these issues. What they really need to do is have family permissions. Unfortunately, they've never tried to do this properly for iTunes and iPhoto in the past, so I doubt they would have done it now for iCloud.
kman
If you turn on Automatic Downloads with your Apple ID, you cannot auto-download or download past purchases with a different Apple ID for 90 days.
I also emailed Apple and got the same half wit reply back. The thing is after thinking about it, I really don't get why is such a big deal iCloud especially for people with Macs or PCs. (I know Steve said it is for the post-PC era but hell only a year ago I needed a PC to set everything up, and it is not like I am going to get rid of my PC/Mac just because of iCloud.)
Yes it is convenient to have everything syncing over the air, but really if I buy a song on my iTunes account that is not synced with my iPhone by the iCloud it will take me all of 30 secs to sync it with my mac. Second, I am hoping that it will be possible to sign into a second iTunes account on your iPhone and not have everything start syncing over, should be easy, one toggle switch saying auto sync on/off.
Where the iCloud would be amazing is with music "streaming" not storage. I reckon I have an average music library, with about 42GBs of music. And the fact is all that music fits on my 64GB iPod so life is great, I plug it once and it works forever more (or at least until I buy more music). But for people with libraries larger than 64GB, they have a problem of buying the aging iPod Classic or choosing their music, (not that it hard as my 42GB is 16 days of music so even if I did a random fill on my shuffle I will get something I want, also that is why we have playlists.) But and this is the big one, the current iPhone has 32GB max, but it also has WiFi and 3G. Personally, rather than downloading my music into my iPhone from the iCloud, I would rather it streamed it so I didn't have to take up space on my iPhone. Also with the lack of an option to delete songs from the iPhone, it would become annoying when you buy songs for presentations/work and they are on your iPhone and you cannot delete them till you do a manual sync.
The same deal goes with Apps, I can survive long enough to re-download an app onto my iPad rather than have iCloud do it for me automatically.
So in my case I have decided to let my iDevices be synced with my personal MobileMe account, so I get email, calendar, doc sync, photo stream etc. And just stick with a local sync (not even wired sync anymore as it does WiFi sync now) for all my new apps and music.
I do realize Steve wants this for a post-PC era, but we are not there yet, nor are we getting there soon as laptops continually getting cheaper and iOs devices lacking any kind of file transfer system other than by WiFi. And there are still fundamental flaws with iCloud for family users or "power" users (I use power cautiously as I only mean, people who want a little control over what is synced and where it is synced). But I would be interested to here people's view on what I talked about. Maybe it is just cause I am slightly vexed with Apple for their half wit reply.
"I was wondering if I sign up for iTunes Match with my personal MobileMe account, will all my songs on my computer be "scanned/matched" in the cloud, then allowing me to download them automatically from my iPhone or iPod. Even the songs that were purchased by another families iTunes account that are on my computer.
And finally I do not get how iTunes Match will improve the quality of my music. Will it re-download those songs to a higher quality or will it just allow me to download the higher quality songs to my iPod/iPhone. If the later is true, then what will happen when I do a local sync with my computer, will the higher quality ones sync or will nothing happen."
Part one will hopefully sort out the multiply accounts issue. Part Two, I am really stumped on, since it doesn't stream the music, just re-downloads it, will it mean if we want the higher quality music we must listen to it on our iDevices? Also if we want to get the higher quality music, does it mean we need to reset our iDevice and let it download all the higher quality music from the iCloud, if so that is a huge amount of wasted bandwidth and server support on Apple's part.
But again what do you guys think?
http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/08/ap...ontent=Twitter
Here's the warning I got when trying to switch to my wife's itunes account and turn on auto-download:
If you turn on Automatic Downloads with your Apple ID, you cannot auto-download or download past purchases with a different Apple ID for 90 days.
They REALLY need to get this sorted now.