Reid Dossinger

There's a lot to process on Apple's iCloud Super Fun Happy Jamboree kEyNoT_E™ from yesterday. It all happened with Apple's usual boasts that they're doing something totally new (they so aren't) and with the excitement that only Apple can generate in not doing something new: they almost always seem to do it better. Here's a bunch of poorly thought-out thoughts on it all: A pretty good chunk of iCloud seems just like Mobile Me with a different name and a little cleaned up and optimized. But with the weird restrictions (photos are stored for 30 days?) and the 5 GB of space, I'm not really sure this is the service that's going to move the average user to device independence and "change the way we use computers". The part I'm most interested in is the iTunes in the cloud, and their "one more thing" of iTunes Match. Basically, this service is what Lala did: recreates your library in the cloud. iTunes Match promises that if it will only ...

After thinking a little more about  the post I wrote on Saturday  about how Apple's deals with the major labels aren't really that much of an advantage, I started thinking about what Apple could do with their cloud music offering that would truly make it immediately and obviously superior to what Google and Amazon have to offer. Any conversation I have with like-minded music geeks about music in the cloud always ends up the same way: that the products so far are interesting, but aren't really worth our while. Too slow, too inaccessible, not enough storage, not worth the cost.  But what features could Apple offer that would trump Amazon and Google, and just as importantly, actually make it worth spending money on? Make it sync exactly with iTunes Deals with the major labels will only do so much. Apple needs to figure out a way that your cloud iTunes library looks exactly like your desktop iTunes library. I'm one of those music/Apple geeks that The Onion  made ...