Steve Job's re-entered the spotlight this week at Apple's WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.
It had been speculated about in recent weeks along with the fanfare surrounding the company's new product - the iCloud, which will be its first significant step into the next big frontier for the industry - Cloud computing.
As with the iPad, the announcement has met with some initial pessimism as to whether it can provide the company with its next avenue of growth. But, there does appear to be a consensus by the computer products industry to move into this next stage of "terminal" computing ie. having access to centrally stored files and resources.
The immediate thought is that this will free up your remote device, enabling it to work faster but, like many I have my own reservations about freeing up so much control to a remote operation.
It isn't really a new idea though, in the days of expensive mainframe computing, and before PC's, networks were often used to "rent" time and resource from a third party in order to save the expense of buying a mainframe computer and expensive programming resource.
Similarly today, online back-ups of photo's and other data files is in use.
Like new games consoles with a "killer" game to draw the buyers, the key product here could be iTunes, as put forward in Steve Job's presentation. Using iCloud will enable users to access "their" iTunes media library from all of their internet enabled devices.
Similarly, calenders, contacts etc won't need transferring from phone to phone or other device upon upgrading because it would all be in the "cloud". Jobs also managed a little dig at PC's by referencing the effort and task to keep all of our devices in synch. with each other.
I'm sure that, eventually, there will be a massive take-up of cloud computing, and that the industry will also line the route with lots of incentives. As ever, security will remain the issue.
As to Steve Jobs, well his health will always be speculated about.
Elsewhere, speculation suggests that the next version of the iPhone could be delayed until September.
Related articles:
- www.dailymail.co.uk: Jobs enjoys a day in the sun to unveil his Cloud: Now Apple customers can access their music anywhere, any time
- thescotsman.scotsman.com: Steve Jobs on cloud nine on Apple return
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