The term cloud is bandied about
with gay abandon without much definition. Specifically it can mean many
things but in general terms it means putting thins to other than your
local PC or device. This means that someone somewhere has computers that
can perform tasks remotely for you which you can access via the
internet. This may be as simple as storing things for you, take Dropbox
for instance. In other cases it may be a suite of applications, such as
Google Drive which includes apps such as editing and spreadsheets.
Google is an excellent example since it encompasses a suite of useful
functions such as mail, calendar, Apps and storage.
The
"cloud" is now so ubiquitous that every major IT company now offers some
form of cloud to their customers/users, some more accessible to your
regular Joe such as us and others aimed higher at the small to medium
business and others more suited to large companies.
So the
advantages of cloud are that your data is accessible everywhere, no
need to back up your data, you don't need to buy a new HDD when you run
out of space, all of the processing power for the application is in "the
cloud" which can be easily reconfigured to cater for changing loads.
The
disadvantages are that someone else has your data, good solutions can
be expensive, you are relying in the viability of the company hosting
your data and applications, you are relying on theis stability and
security to no have your data compromised or lost. There have been a lot
of instances of data lost, services failing and passwords compromised
so this is a serious consideration.
Sorry, this has been
rather long winded but I really wanted to get a good definition of cloud
since it is the subject of a lot of confusion.
Apple has a
cloud solution and has had for some time. I the usual Apple way they
have obfuscated their cloud to supposedly make it easy for Apple
customers to use but in fact it just makes it more confusion IMHO. You
can use the Apple cloud to store the settings of your apps and store
device backups. If you wish to pay extra then you get the ability to
store your music to the Apple cloud. Lets look at each of these.
Whenever
you use an app which has stored settings, take my TV episode watching
app, ITV Shows. When I have watched an episode I mark it as watched in
the app. Now whatever device I go to this episode is marked as watched.
The details are stored in the Apple cloud. And so with many apps which
store data across devices. Of course many apps such as Dropbox, have
their own cloud.
Device backups can either be stored on
your local computer or to the Apple cloud. On iOS 8 go to
Settings->iCloud->Backup to store backups to the cloud. It will
back up your device to the Apple cloud. The first time it will take a
while but thereafter it will automatically sync to the cloud on WiFi
whenever your device has a long idle period. The advantages are that it
not be lost if your computer dies or you use the data on your local HDD
and you can restore immediately when you purchase a new device. The
disadvantage is that a restore will take a lot longer depending on your
internet speed, you are dependent on the Apple cloud service being
available and it is one more thing to loose if your account is hacked.
You may recall that there was one occasion where I was locked out of my
account by Apple (trust me, it was not me it was them) for about three
months and I could not buy apps, login to my cloud from my devices or
access my Apple cloud storage in any way and it was all on Apples side.
My only option was to go to an Apple store and the closest store at that
time was Melbourne. It was a complete debacle on Apple's part and their
only compensation was 5 free movie rentals (which I am yet to use).
The
last significant service is what Apple calls iTunes match. This is
where your non-Apple purchased music can be stored in the Apple cloud.
For this you need to pay Apple AU39.99 per year. We bought it for a year
and it was useful but not really worth it for us. One of the nicer
features was that Apple replaced any lower quality songs with Apple
lossless quality which was nice but even so, it was not really worth it
for us.
In the future you will find that more and more
services will migrate to the cloud as universal internet access becomes
the norm and cloud services will drop in price and ease of use. Even
Microsoft Office has a standard cloud service now. Get used to hearing
the term "cloud service" and I hope that this missive has cleared the
fog surrounding the cloud a little.
