SteveJ-restore-test

Two new things appeared in my world recently: A friend showed me Google 'Jump Desktop' , connecting his iPad to his Desktop. [Apple have their own 'Remote Desktop' product which I haven't researched. Not sure if it works over the wider Internet as well.] Joe Wilcox's piece (Jan-2011) on Apple dumping desktops sometime (soon) as they become less relevant. Wilcox wonders what will happen to "Power Users" if Apple move on Desktops, as they've moved on from the rack-mount X-serve line. Customers needing servers now have the choice of a Mac Mini Server or a "Mac Pro" (tower). Can Apple afford to cut-adrift and ignore the needs of good folk who rely on their product for their business/livelihood, some of whom may have used Macs for 20+ years?? Would seem a Bad Idea to alienate such core and influential users. Clearly Apple look to the future, and like the floppy drive they expunged long ago in favour of Optical drives (now also obsolete), Des...

Summary : "last to market" worked as a strategy in the past for Microsoft. But "everything is a PC" is probably false and theyll be sidelined in the new Mobile Devices world. A response from a friend, this page by John Gruber on Daring Firebal l, is worth reading. Gruber points out that Apple and Microsoft have radically different marketing strategies. Apple shows The Real Deal when it's ready, Microsoft pre-announces a long way out. Neither is "better" in itself, they're just different. I'm wondering if Microsoft's "Windows 8" is too little, too late. Yep, they've finally got an Apps Store, Cloud Storage and are trying to engage App Developers. With Smartphones, people buy Apps, not O/S features. This works against Microsoft. Win-7 didn't take off, why should this latest attempt? Remember that launch parade by MS with a coffin, 'cause they were going to bury the iPhone... How did that go for them? If I was a rusted-on...

The sister post to this speculates that Apple could add peer-peer protocols/functionality to its iCloud service, and the benefits that would flow. I'm firmly of the opinion that Apple won't go there, not soon, not in-a-while, not ever. They have too firmly entrenched attitudes about constructing and maintaining "full-control" over the euphemistically named, "User Experience". Apple don't do "collaboration", sharing their technology or allowing the mere User to tinker with its Gorgeous Stuff. It'd no longer be "their Design" and they anathema to Apple. Apple are into "control", which in itself is not a bad thing, but severely limits their software and system design decisions and implementations. This isn't some simple "we know best" thing, but much deeper, intimately tied to their focus on High Concept Design and a finely crafted "User Experience". Which also means controlled experience. Apple cou...

Will Apple add a torrent like ability to its iCloud offering?? iCloud is a remote filesystem with a lot of metadata and does 4 things: provides "second copy of my precious data" (for files I've generated) allows synchronisation of those files across the multiple devices/platforms a user connects. This is the aspect Apple 'sells': email, contact and calendar sync and restore/recover. mediates the enforcement of copyright and content distribution does Internet-Scale data de-duplication. By data volume, the Internet is a 'Viewing Platform'. 1 upload == zillions downloads [write once, download ~infinite] Apple could create an Internet-Scale "Content Delivery Network" with iCloud if ran a peer-peer network, something like the hugely successful bit-torrent protocol/service. Because you've got authorised content and validated entities/logins in a vendor controlled environment, there isn't a direct copyright or leakage problem, just the ever-p...