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Apple Wants To Store Your History In the Cloud

Posted by samzenpus on from the putting-ideas-in-thin-air dept.

bizwriter writes "Most online backup is about keeping the latest and greatest version of what resides on a device, whether a PC, tablet, or smartphone. Three recent patent filings suggest that Apple has a super version of backup on its mind. Someone would be able to go into an application (like iTunes or the App Store), find what material was available at a previous time, and recover any or all of what once was there without having to use a separate recovery program."

11 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Google (Chrome) and Firefox can do this already by alostpacket · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nonsense, Apple clearly invented the cloud. And backup. And turtlenecks.

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    PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
  2. So it's just Time Machine in the cloud? by Gavin+Scott · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well duh, Time Machine already does this for local or NAS storage, so any extension of this into the "cloud" would obviously include the same functionality.

    Inflammatory summary is inflammatory.

    G.

  3. Cool patents, bro. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know that "in the cloud" is the hip thing these days; but I'm a bit fuzzy on how this differs in any patentable way from versioning file systems that go back at least as far as VMS, and almost any network backup product that provides differential backups(which is virtually all of them).

    Even more specifically, precisely this sort of 'network-accessed version/time view' of documents is what pretty much any IDE does when you point it at a supported revision control system. Complete history of your project, all in 'app', delivered locally or over the network, or clustered, or what have you. Similar, albeit expensive and somewhat niche, stuff can be had for word processing among legal types.

    Now, from a user experience perspective, more power to Apple if they can bring the benefits of a revision control model to other applications in a way intuitive enough for people who wouldn't know a revision control system if it bit them. That is the sort of thing that they are good at, and the sort of thing that they can charge a premium for.

    Patent worthy, though? Srsly?

  4. Re:Your entire life is in the 'cloud' already by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Funny

    I only get my Facebook account with a small selection of what interests me and who I have befriended publicly. Hardly my "entire life." :S

    The sad thing is that for the rest of us that is our entire life.

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    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  5. Wait... by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So first, any normal business practice becomes patentable if you add the words "on a computer" to it. Now this: anything you do on a computer (e.g. backup) becomes patentable if you and the words "in the cloud" to it??? WTF is wrong with our patent system?

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    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Wait... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Here's a drinking game that will(briefly, before it kills you) make you feel better about the state of the software/business method patent system:

      1. When you see a bullshit 'on the internet' or 'in the cloud' patent, ask yourself "Could I have done exactly the same thing over a leased line somewhere between 1970 and 1985, if I'd had a checkbook big enough for IBM?".

      2. If yes, take a shot.

    2. Re:Wait... by gig · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apple is not a patent troll. They have sued over patents only a few times even though they've been widely copied. They obviously have to patent this before they ship to protect themselves against patent trolls.

  6. Re:Different from Dropbox? by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative

    Completely different from Dropbox, in that it doesn't have anything to do with the cloud. The article is nonsense, the patent quotes say nothing about the cloud. They very clearly relate to the local document versioning system that Apple is putting in in the next version on OSX (Lion), and has already announced.

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/

  7. Re:Apple? The same Apple that sells you ONE mp3 co by foniksonik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Uh that's what this is supposed to fix. The labels dictate the terms. Not Apple. So Apple needs something big enough to justify paying the labels giant surcharges to let us all do it the sensible way. Google is working on the exact same thing BTW.

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    A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  8. Re:And this is a new idea how? by gig · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They didn't claim to invent the cloud or versioning. They claim to have an invention that uses the cloud and versioning in a new way, enabling even a non-technical consumer to apply it to all of their documents without training. No, nobody has done that before.

    Steam engine also did not claim to have invented steam.

  9. Re:Different from Dropbox? by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative

    Completely different. GoBack worked at the disk drive level. If I wanted to revert back to my spreadsheet of last week, I'd revert every other file back to last week too.

    Lions "Versions" works at the application level, so that individual document files have a history.

    And the patents themselves regard the user interface, and as you can see, they could not be more different.
    http://soswindowsfr.free.fr/olivier/goback_fichiers/goback-historique.gif
    http://images.apple.com/macosx/lion/images/overview_versions20110127.jpg