With Mountain Lion's iCloud Integration, Apple Strengthens the Garden Wall

snydeq writes "With WWDC around the corner, iOS 6 rumors are taking center stage, but the real action for developers may be around iCloud. Forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion will integrate iCloud into the formal file system, making iCloud usage much easier and thus more common, and thanks to iCloud Documents, which lets apps open and save documents directly in iCloud, developers will be able to better tap iOS-to-OSX document syncing in their apps, a la iWork. But there is a downside to this opportunity: 'For developers, it further enmeshes you in the Apple ecosystem, almost in the way that America Online did in its heyday. Case in point: OS X apps can use the iCloud Documents APIs only if they are sold through the Mac App Store.'"

Comments

Er.. I'm not sure how this is terribly different

[romanval]

the your documents on Google Docs or Office 365 (aside from the apps residing on the host CPU instead of a web app).

Only app store apps can use iCloud?

[grub]

I'm a big Apple fan, but WTF Apple? Not cool.

Re:Only app store apps can use iCloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the perspective of someone developing for iOS but with as much separation between their crap (APIs) and mine as I can get, this doesn't change things a whole lot, really. Apple has always loved getting people enmeshed in their APIs, it's just that in many cases they hadn't had the clout to do it until the past few years. Best as I can do, there's still a bunch of weed roots snuck into more and more of my own classes.
 
It's so bad that when I see they've added new functionality I'm now extremely reluctant to add it if there's any way at all to write it myself, even if I think I should be able to segregate the use of their APIs out from my main code. They have a way of making things that should be easily compartmentalized into terribly messy and ugly APIs that require you integrate them into your basic logic. My guess is this is an overall strategy that comes from the top, because otherwise many of their programmers are cooking-pans-on-the-head-ramming-into-each-other-for-fun level imbeciles. Then again, with the amount of awful bugs I'm experiencing in 10.7, it may well be the latter case.

Native TRIM support for non-Apple SSDs?

[DigiShaman]

With both Snow Leopard and Lion, I had to hack a file just to enabled TRIM on my Intel SSD. I have a feeling I'll have to do that again if I upgrade. Unless they've made attempts to correct that little "exploit".

Apple makes a good product, but only if you buy everything through Apple. I'm quite honestly surprised they even made replacing an HDD with a non-Apple brand even possible. I know some IBM Thinkpads will bitch at POST unless the drive's firmware has been signed by IBM.

Grab Apple

[kawabago]

That wall keeps business out too. The problem with walls is that everything just grows around them and what's contained becomes irrelevant.

A lot about Apple's Directio Bothers Me,

[DrRobert]

But not this. They are providing a free network support service to vendors that sell through their store. Seems obvious, ethical, and fair. Dropbox is better and simpler anyway because all apps can use it with no API; however Dropbox SELLS its service and gives it away for free as a loss leader.

Skydrive?

[JBMcB]

Isn't this pretty much exactly how Skydrive works, and isn't that being integrated into Windows 8? Nobody has been complaining about that...

Re:It is just more of Macs becoming iDevices

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple doesn't want you to have a computer, they want you to have Apple devices where you buy stuff from Apple. They want you to sit around and consume the content they sell. They've been heading that direction for awhile now, this is just a continuation of it. It isn't likely to be too many more years before they lock it down entirely, and Macs are just large stations for accessing the Apple Store/iTunes.

Apple is all about the locked-in ecosystem where everything is their way, everything runs through them, and they get a cut of everything. This is just another step down that road.

Apple wants you to buy hardware. All the content, apps, and the walled garden are a means to this end.

Apple's financial reports illustrate this point. They generate little (as a percentage) in non-hardware sales.

Re:You just dont get it, even after all this time.

[Anonymous Coward]

You buy an apple device and it JUST FUCKING WORKS out of the box. .

No it does not just work! Only Apple integration sometimes works. Little automobile integration. Little TV integration. Poor bluetooth support. Poor Linux support Poor Windows support. iTunes is terrible software for both Windows and Mac. Can only sync with one computer at a time. Very restrictive in terms of getting anything on the device. WHEN WILL ITJUST FUCKING WORKS? Do others do it better? Sometimes. Android is more flexible and it shows by the market share.

Give it time we've been down this road before in the early 80's. Same discussion.

Re:I don't believe in a complete iOS-ization

[m_gol]

It would be really difficult to reliably block terminal access

Why would it be difficult? They can do it in exact same way they did it on iOS, which, after all, is also Darwin-based.

I meant difficult not as in "difficult to implement" but difficult to fit into their whole OS ecosystem. Apple would have to shut down their server flavor, they would have to ditch terminal completely, they'd disable PHP, Apache, X11. They would have to make their OS incompatible with any programming environments as Python, Perl, revision control systems... Finder probably would have to go away (or just be re-implemented so that it can't go into unprotected territories). Their root handling would have to be reimplemented (too easy to hack), etc. It CAN be done but it I doubt they would just ditch it all just in one second (that's why I wrote about 5-6 years which gives about 2 OS X versions; still too small but I'm being cautious). But I may be biased, I have personal interest to believe what I say. ;) Linux GUIs are buggy and I wouldn't like to have to go back.