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Another Death in the Cloud As Apple Kills Off iWork

Posted by timothy on from the ways-of-knowing dept.

Google is retiring the iGoogle page, but on a much shorter time scale, Apple is shutting down an iService of its own: the cloud-storage site iWork.com (linked to Apple's office apps suite iWork) is slated to go offline at the end of this month. Says the article, over at SlashCloud: "As of that date, 'you will no longer be able to access your documents on the iWork.com site or view them on the Web,' reads Apple’s note on the matter, followed by a recommendation that anyone with documents on iWork download them to the desktop." Both of these announcements remind me why I covet local storage for documents and the ability to set my own GUI prefs.

6 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Apple products don't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Makes sense as they are a consumer brand and not targeting the workplace.

    1. Re:Apple products don't work by kelemvor4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Makes sense as they are a consumer brand and not targeting the workplace.

      I guess the -1 means apple fanboys thought you were trying to slander the company. Funny thing is, Apple will be the first to tell you this. Just as they told me that very thing when we were trying to bring in servers to support ipads and macbooks that some folks in the company had purchased.

    2. Re:Apple products don't work by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Makes sense as they are a consumer brand and not targeting the workplace.

      And we all know consumers never work.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Apple products don't work by macs4all · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apple has been doing in the pro line I have a feeling Cook will just wash his hands of X86 completely instead.

      First, you really aren't seeing much of Cook's influence yet. Apple is a big-ass battleship which takes some time to maneuver, and the "turns" you are seeing now were plotted out and called down from the bridge by Admiral Jobs, not Captain Cook.

      Also, I can't remember where I heard it (Tim Cook, actually, IIRC); but "Apple" has stated that the Mac Pro is going to get some serious love in 2013.

  2. Re:Is this really a "death"? by egranlund · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except that they are retiring "real" cloud storage like iDisk and only allowing documents... going in the exact opposite direction of Google which moved from only allowing Google Office documents to allowing real cloud storage of all types of files.

    It's a weird direction they are going... by getting rid of iDisk they are doing the exact opposite of Google, dropbox, and everyone else.

    I think their overall strategy is to move away from the filesystem model since the iPad doesn't expose it to you at all for simplicity, etc. Retiring a service like this makes sense if you keep that in mind.

    Doesn't make me want to use it, but that's not the only reason :P

  3. Don't sign up for iCloud by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't sign up for iCloud. They'll probably drop that, too.

    "Cloud" services have short lifespans. About two to four years from startup to shutdown seems typical. Google and Microsoft have both dumped many of their online services already. Telco "cloud" services, like Sprint's PictureMail, have been dumped. Many online music services from PlaysForSure to WalMart Music collapsed. Cloud APIs don't last too long, either; Yahoo Search, Yahoo Boss, Google SOAP search, and Hoover's business search are all gone or on the way out.

    The shutdowns are getting faster, too. Now, 30 days from announcement to "all your data is gone" is apparently acceptable. Don't put something in the "cloud" and go on a long trip.