Apple iCloud

113 points by acrum 14 years ago | 43 comments

Honestly, this is attractive enough for me to consider reinstalling iTunes. I've ranted a number of times on the numerous issues I've had with it, but this service is amazing, especially as someone who doesn't buy their music from iTunes.

Why's that? Because for $25, all those older CD rips and music which was certainly acquired legally can now be obtained easily in 256 Apple lossless (edit: not lossless, duh). I don't know if I'd keep using the service, but that alone is, to put it bluntly, fucking awesome. I wonder if there will be some sort of limit on this to prevent abuse.

Edit: Any of the downvoters care to explain why I was downvoted for this post? Tone, mentioning piracy/abuse, hating iTunes? I'm genuinely curious here.

dmix 14 years ago | |

> Honestly, this is attractive enough for me to consider reinstalling iTunes.

Windows user?

I haven't found a worthy alternative on OSX.

jokermatt999 14 years ago | | |

Windows user. iTunes on Windows is almost painfully bad, and pretty much everything else I tried worked better for me, from performance, to customization, to simply working the way I'd prefer. I can expand on the various issues I've had with iTunes in the past if you'd like, but whenever I do so, it tends to become a bit of a rant.

wtallis 14 years ago | |

AAC, even at 256kbps, is not lossless. (Nor is it Apple-specific in any way.)

chrisbolt 14 years ago | |

I think the only limit is 25,000 songs.

Bottom of http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/: Limit 25,000 songs. iTunes purchases do not count against limit.

mishmash 14 years ago | | |

Thanks for the link. Taking songs legit for 1,000/$1.00 is incredible. Even with Apple's large downpayment(s), I still can't believe the record companies agreed to this.

BusinessType 14 years ago | |

Who cares if internet jokers down-vote you?

It really doesn't matter. It's best to be mature, take the high road, and ignore it.

jokermatt999 14 years ago | | |

Typically I don't, but HN seems to have less random downvote. I'd gotten -3 in a short time, so I was honestly wondering why people thought it worth downvoting.

teilo 14 years ago | |

Your rips will not help you. The iCloud music service does not work with rips. You need to have the actual CD. iTunes will scan, it, identify it, and identify the individual tracks.

joeguilmette 14 years ago | | |

Do you have a source for this? The blogging community seems to disagree with you...

alanthonyc 14 years ago | | |

Source please.

I don't remember this, but it may have been in some fine print I missed.

dreamdu5t 14 years ago |

I want more control over my music with the cloud, not less.

* iCloud will not offer the ability to access content outside of Apple's devices: No web-based access has been announced or hinted at.

* Locked into music formats only Apple wants to support: No lossless format, no advanced tagging, no support for open audio standards, the list goes on.

* Forced to use iTunes: Forcing everybody to use iTunes prevents alternatives from being developed or brought to market. iTunes sucks but there's no alternative not because they don't exist, but because Apple's vertical integration prevents alternatives from gaining any ground.

The iTunes Store is great. The iTunes application is horrible. Media lock-in is bad for consumers.

tptacek 14 years ago | |

The world before iTMS involved me going to tiny record stores and thumbing through physical CDs. In today's world, within 4 minutes of reading a review of a new artist, I can have the track on my phone.

Over the long term, maybe iTMS lock-in is bad for consumers. But when you say that, I personally (just me) think you have to account for the fact that over the short term, it's been a huge win.

telemachos 14 years ago | | |

This is tangential. I'm not really agreeing or disagreeing with your main point(s).

I miss browsing. I miss (good) record stores. I miss (good) used bookstores. Some of my favorite memories are of browsing used bookstores in the five boroughs of NYC. Nearly all of them are closed now. The Strand sells mostly new remainders - though I go there anyhow, because I miss browsing. You can sort of browse online, but it's really not the same at all.

I grant that I can search online and get books from all over the world. I do it all the time. So, it's not all bad - not at all. (Nowadays searches for a specific target go much better than in the past at those random used bookstores.) The future is amazing. But I miss browsing.

dreamdu5t 14 years ago | | |

False dichotomy. You can have an online music store without waging a format war and trying to control how people use their music.

TomOfTTB 14 years ago |

On the music I have to give Apple credit. At first glance I was kind of annoyed at "download again" being their solution. But the more I think about it the more I think it's better than streaming. You get unlimited downloads so you can adjust for device storage space as needed and being able to download the track means you aren't subject to connection problems.

Add that to the fact that all your songs purchased in iTunes are available for free and I think you have a pretty stellar service.

Plus from their perspective it actually saves bandwidth. Since the number of downloads most people make will be limited to the number of devices they have (as opposed to streaming where you have to serve the song up every time it's played)

siglesias 14 years ago | |

I think it's as simple as, consumers don't want to deal with the latency. I pick a song, it plays instantly, within half a second. Online players for now seem naive.

erikstarck 14 years ago | | |

You obviously haven't tried Spotify. It's instantaneous.

hussam 14 years ago |

It seems to me that as far as photos go iCloud is only a temporary home while you sync your devices up (the so-called Photo Stream http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/photo-stream.html ) . So it is still a very device-centric view of the world, with the cloud as a backend assistant. Did I misinterpret what they said?

Obviously it is too early to know now, and we'll only know for sure when it comes out, but still, thoughts?

HaloZero 14 years ago |

I am honestly curious how they are going to prevent pirated music from appearing unless by "ripped from CD" they ripped by iTunes from CD. But they mention support songs purchased elsewhere in their blurb.

Maybe they just don't give a shit.

jasonlotito 14 years ago | |

This is all just a guess, but... You aren't seeing this the right way. That money? Part of that is going to the labels. That pirate stuff you are adding? Apple will keep track of it, and the labels will get a cut. So yes, the labels know people are going to upload pirate music. At least now, they get some money from it.

brosephius 14 years ago | | |

which is a pretty progressive decision by music companies. it's like they're accepting that people will pirate music no matter what drm scheme or lawsuit wave they throw out there, so they're trying to find a way to live profitably with it.

brosephius 14 years ago |

would be awesome if there were an android client :) but seriously, I think I need to see more details on how this works. can I choose to download just one song at a time? can I create a playlist of my cloud'ed music, play it, and delete it?

currently with itunes you have to manually select which artists/albums you want to sync if you don't want to sync everything. this would be laborious to manage with multiple devices, especially if you've got 100gb of music on your macbook, and a 32gb iphone and a 16gb ipad. I'd much rather be able to selectively stream my music.

spullara 14 years ago | |

You don't need to manually select them, since the shuffle was released you could always have iTunes select them for you to fill the remaining space on your device.

nextparadigms 14 years ago |

This is not cloud music. It's a file locker.

BusinessType 14 years ago | |

Sounds like both to me! As well as a data locker for my own apps!

joebadmo 14 years ago |

So, is there no web access to iCloud content? No way to share, for example, photos or documents publicly (or in the case of docs, between apps)?

These seem like remarkably device-centric solutions for an increasingly web-centric world. Which is not surprising, I guess, for what is essentially a hardware company.

cubicle67 14 years ago | |

I didn't see any web access mentioned, but mobile me has always had web access for photos/email and the ability to make photo albums public or to password protect them (for group access). I don't see why they'd remove this

we'll know soon though

pistacchio 14 years ago |

wandering what they'll do with those who paid (recently) for mobile.me

mishmash 14 years ago | |

My MobileMe renewed... yesterday afternoon. Chatted the support up and he offered a full refund, however it would take 4-6 weeks to post, a partial refund in the next week or two, and no guidance beyond that because the MobileMe team didn't actually learn that they had been discontinued UNTIL THE KEYNOTE.

He was cool, and only made a few comments, but in the few he did, you could absolutely feel the repressed steverage.

jacquesgt 14 years ago | |

They've refunded some people and moved other people's expiration dates to today. It was on macrumors, but their server looks like it's down right now.

vault_ 14 years ago | |

They're extending existing users time until June 2012, at which point it will be shut down as all of its features are in iCloud.