Former MobileMe subscribers getting free 20GB iCloud storage until 2050

I wish iCloud was more widely understood. I can only hope it becomes clearer over time.

I suspect many people think they don't use iCloud, when of course in fact they do. The 5GB we all have is used invisibly to sync and back-up documents and settings between multiple devices — and this is independent of photos and music and other iCloud services. In the aggregate, this aspect of iCloud works far and away more effectively and reliably than the MobileMe sync services they build upon.

But then there's the "iCloud" people keep saying should have been replaced by DropBox. This is just the raw files aspect, the old iDisk model, or at least some service by which you can put things in the cloud and open them on your device or vice versa. But honestly, iCloud doesn't actually promise to do all that. Apple's approach is to give Apps their own abstracted, medium-agnostic access to documents and data that could exist /anywhere/, on your device or in the cloud or on your computer, without you having to know or care. This part, owing to the ... erm, novelty of the approach... is difficult to understand at times, is roughly implemented both in iOS and in apps that use it, and is generally baffling.

And THEN there's the "iCloud" that people forget is really called "iTunes Match." THIS iCloud has its own quirks, taking a similar-but-critically-different approach when it comes to making Music magically available on all devices. This has its own bizarre set of foibles.

And Photo Stream? Where to begin?

Apple's message on all this has been hard for people to track, and so there's a widespread sense that things suck more than they do, simply because it's unclear which suckiness goes with which service.

In the end, though, iCloud as a whole is something you /do/ want. This is Apple's answer to Android's ability to sync everything through your Google account. Apple hopes that with iCloud, you won't have to clamor for filesystem access on an iOS device. And, knowing that so many people never ever synced their phones to iTunes, Apple's throwing us a bone by giving us backup and syncing services to minimize the pain of losing or otherwise replacing an iOS device. These things you can have and enjoy without fussing over the parts that are still getting on their feet.

So yes, it sucks, but which part of the elephant are you looking at? Because overall, iCloud solves a lot of problems people may not realize they were having, and it does that well enough that the benefits are difficult to quantify — simply because the benefits don't have a UI or a button to tap, it just happens the way it's supposed to without making a scene.

So that's where Apple needs to keep working on sorting this out: clarifying the iCloud model, so that people know what's what. Too bad glitches like this don't help much on that effort.

Edit: clurity

I wish iCloud was more widely understood. I can only hope it becomes clearer over time.

I suspect many people think they don't use iCloud, when of course in fact they do. The 5GB we all have is used invisibly to sync and back-up documents and settings between multiple devices — and this is independent of photos and music and other iCloud services. In the aggregate, this aspect of iCloud works far and away more effectively and reliably than the MobileMe sync services they build upon.

But then there's the "iCloud" people keep saying should have been replaced by DropBox. This is just the raw files aspect, the old iDisk model, or at least some service by which you can put things in the cloud and open them on your device or vice versa. But honestly, iCloud doesn't actually promise to do all that. Apple's approach is to give Apps their own abstracted, medium-agnostic access to documents and data that could exist /anywhere/, on your device or in the cloud or on your computer, without you having to know or care. This part, owing to the ... erm, novelty of the approach... is difficult to understand at times, is roughly implemented both in iOS and in apps that use it, and is generally baffling.

And THEN there's the "iCloud" that people forget is really called "iTunes Match." THIS iCloud has its own quirks, taking a similar-but-critically-different approach when it comes to making Music magically available on all devices. This has its own bizarre set of foibles.

And Photo Stream? Where to begin?

Apple's message on all this has been hard for people to track, and so there's a widespread sense that things suck more than they do, simply because it's unclear which suckiness goes with which service.

In the end, though, iCloud as a whole is something you /do/ want. This is Apple's answer to Android's ability to sync everything through your Google account. Apple hopes that with iCloud, you won't have to clamor for filesystem access on an iOS device. And, knowing that so many people never ever synced their phones to iTunes, Apple's throwing us a bone by giving us backup and syncing services to minimize the pain of losing or otherwise replacing an iOS device. These things you can have and enjoy without fussing over the parts that are still getting on their feet.

So yes, it sucks, but which part of the elephant are you looking at? Because overall, iCloud solves a lot of problems people may not realize they were having, and it does that well enough that the benefits are difficult to quantify — simply because the benefits don't have a UI or a button to tap, it just happens the way it's supposed to without making a scene.

So that's where Apple needs to keep working on sorting this out: clarifying the iCloud model, so that people know what's what. Too bad glitches like this don't help much on that effort.

Edit: clurity