Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener’s latest Digital Minute newsletter says we’re experiencing the calm before the cloud computing storm.
Where Google sees devices as the gateway and the cloud as the destination where everything happens, Apple sees the cloud as a way to connect and unify its bundled software/hardware experience. It’s no surprise that the two companies approach the cloud differently, as they operate on different business models. Google sells advertising, while Apple sells devices.
Microsoft is the third major player in this battle, and it sells software, so it has the most to lose from the moves Google and Apple are making. As a result, it has created its own cloud-based service offering, Microsoft Office 365, which launches June 28. It will be a monthly subscription service with a tiered payment plan, and will reportedly offer desktop software, email, voicemail, instant messaging, and most of the other offerings supplied by its traditional office software bundle.
I already use Google Docs and Dropbox, but I’m intrigued by Apple’s iCloud announcement. How about you? Is your data in the cloud?
Both Google and Apples clouds have their pro’s and con’s. I use Google extensively since they supply a lot of free space not only for email but also photos and videos and at a price I can afford, where as Apple on the other hand will be asking for $25 a year and I’m trying to justify to myself that it’s worth it since all I own of Apples is MacBooks and a iMac. No iPods,Pads or Phones. I won’t be subscribing through iTunes since they have to come out and tell the truth about DRM, which they have’nt and who’s screwing who.
I won’t touch Microsoft since they ripped off the PC community over the past 26 years with the garbage software they sold and continue to sell and spawned a whole virus writing community that now rips us off.