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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."

6 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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?

    --
    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.

  3. 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/

  4. 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