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Another Death in the Cloud As Apple Kills Off iWork
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.
Makes sense as they are a consumer brand and not targeting the workplace.
...where your important business data is as misty amd vaporous as its namesake. very eponymous if you ask me, and just as likely to evaporate.
Silence is a state of mime.
Just as it's not a good idea to have a single copy of your files on a single disk it's not a good idea to have a single copy of your data in "the cloud" either. Cloud storage is useful, especially when using multiple computers but it's not a substitute for local storage and backups (but does make a good off-site backup). But you have to be prepared to switch storage providers and go through all the hassle of uploading your data again if you rely on someone else to store it. If it comes to that at least having a local copy of your files means you don't have to download them first before you can upload them again.
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.
Give all your data to them! You can *always* trust a multinational corporation to do the right thing!
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
I got in an argument with essentially my whole class by saying that we never going to fully get rid of system in the home and probably at work. Everyone was "Keep the data in the cloud, we can stream anything all the time, all I need is my smartphone." They brushed off my security arguments, the fact that communications can go down, and you're really going to compose spreadsheets and reports on your smartphone? It was an MBA class, by the way.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
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.
Seriously, Apple abandoning iWork is the fundamental equivalent of dropping floppy drives.
If new computers are not going to use floppy drives then you will have to transfer them to a different storage medium if you want to access the content after the fact.
Dropping an iService is equivalent to moving your content to another form of storage, whether its physical or virtual.
What would be "nice" is for Apple to provide some kind of utility or tool to make conversion easier. iWork.com should now have a button on it to zip up and download one large file of all your content rather then having to manually move individual files to your desktop. Of, zip it up and move it to Apple's new cloud storage, or convert to new Numbers/Pages/Keynote files stored in the cloud, etc. There are about a dozen ways Apple could make this easier for people rather then just cutting the power a month from now.
Its good for old services that are not used to die and allow companies to focus on providing better services people actually use. The opposite is Windows which supports every freaking hardware and software standard on the planet even if only .1% of the people use any of it. I am sure there is still code buried deep in the Windows kernel to support 8" floppy drives.
In the long run, everybody hates change, but they always seem to love the results.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
but what the heck are they going to replace it with?
You go into an app, and see the list of documents that go with that app.
Or you receive a type of document in email (or by a dropbox app) and select an application that can open a document of that type.
The file system is horribly, horribly confusing to non-technical people. If you really want to bring computing to the masses, the file system must go. I'm not sure if what Apple is doing is the best approach but the computer industry HAS to try something else.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley