What Will iCloud Be?

June 2nd, 2011 · 7 notes · #icloud #wwdc #2011 #steve #jobs #mobile #me #mac #iphone #ipad #ios #lion

My friend Josh Helfferich made an interesting prediction about this year’s WWDC in San Francisco.

Helfferich doesn’t see iCloud as an extension or rebranding of MobileMe. Instead, Josh Helfferich beleives that iCloud will be all about app syncing - something Mac and iOS users have been asking for from third party developers for years.

Another friend of Josh and I, Andrew Harwood, asked what app syncing really is. My understanding of app syncing is the transfer of data between platforms. For example, users of Culture Code’s popular task management application, Things, have been begging for the addition of cloud sync of their to-dos for a little over a year.

If Helfferich is right and Apple implements this proposed iCloud in the way we’d imagine - through APIs available to developers - it would be one of Apple’s greatest moves yet.

What has been holding back iOS is that it is so close to being a desktop platform, but it’s not. In this case, the run blocker, if you will, is apps on different platforms. There hasn’t been an easy way for users to transfer data from their computer to their mobile devices, except by plugging it in.

If iCloud brings APIs that wirelessly allow users to store app data in the cloud, owners of iDevices will be able to work and manage their data much easier and more fluently than ever before.

For example, let’s say I’m working on a Keynote presentation for a meeting I have later this afternoon. I have overslept and have managed to only finish half of the presentation on my iMac since I have to catch the train downtown to the office. I shut down my computer, grab my bag, and depart for the train. Once on the train, I pull out my iPad 2, open Keynote, and the unfinished presentation, just as I had left it on my iMac, is right there. I’m able to finish the presentation, lock my iPad, open my office MacBook Pro, open Keynote, and begin my presentation in front of my peers.

Brilliant, right?

Here’s another example. Developers have been asking for a version of Xcode for iOS since the iPad came out. Say Apple does release Xcode for iOS and builds Helfferich’s rendition of iCloud into it. Steve Streza, another friend and well known iOS and Mac developer, is working on a break through Twitter client game for iOS. Steve is working at ngmoco:)’s offices into the late afternoon. The guys in the office decide to go out an celebrate after their newest game which broke 1,000,000 copies sold. Steve Streza passes out at Smuggler’s Cove and his friends take him back to his place and leave him on the couch. He wakes up in the morning and realizes he was supposed to finish a portion of the game he was working on that night. No worries though, all Steve has to do is fire up his home Mac, open Xcode, and continue coding until he’s finished.

What’s interesting about this example is that Xcode has obviously not been developed for iOS, but if iCloud was to turn out the way Josh Helfferich predicts it will, many desktops apps like Xcode could come to iOS. I could easily see the rest of iLife suite and even some desktop games on iOS.

Let’s hope Josh Helfferich is right.