iCloud & iPhone 4S: A New Model of Content Distribution

or, “Here, There, Everywhere: Apple’s iCloud and the Impending Content Revolution

Apple announced iCloud earlier this summer, prompting speculation as to what it would mean for multi-device’d Apple customers in particular, and the tech industry as a whole.

Apple may have taken their time to put pieces in place around iOS5, but this couldn’t come at a better time; the rollout of iCloud comes at a particularly salient time: Amazon shook the tech world last week with the announcement of its own tablet, the Kindle Fire and the week before at F8, Facebook’s annual technology conference, Mark Zuckerberg laid out a new tech protocol for Facebook called Open Graph.

These are two technologies that present new challenges and opportunities for the Apple device ecosystem, which is currently in flux.

Apple decided that online file storage was something that they wanted to do a long time ago. Since then, they have made minor tweaks in their device infrastructure, phased out the low-end Macbook and moved the previously-high-end Macbook Air into its predecessor’s price slot: a veritable death-knell for the Macbook in terms of Apple product positioning. The addition of the lighter, solid-state, cloud-centric Macbook Air to the millions of iPads, iPods and now-updated iPhones out in the world puts all the pieces where Apple wants them. Now all they need to do is roll out their unifying strategy, iCloud, and watch the revolution.

In most ways, the Kindle Fire and the iPad are not in direct competition; they are both touch screen tablets, yes, but they are aimed at completely different markets. Where they will compete is in the field of content. Both Amazon and Apple have billions of items (read: songs, movies, books, etc.) available for download from their digital hubs. The Fire is the device to which Amazon will push their content, and Apple has both the iPhone and the iPad.

We learned earlier this year from Google music’s cloud player that while the cloud is good in theory, it has to work well to pay off. Android never seemed to get along with Google’s cloud music player and would crash sporadically while streaming music from the online source. And that was just with music. Imagine other file types.

These problems result from having a semi-open system (though it is crippled by non-removable, redundant applications that come included with the hardware). Apple’s ability to vertically integrate the experience and their acumen with regard to creating good user interface will likely see them through these hardships.

What remains to be seen is the speed of Apple’s cloud technology. Will it be able to deliver the incredible amount of iTunes data through various wireless connections to multiple web-connected devices simultaneously? We all saw what happened when there were suddenly a million iPhones on ATT’s cellular network and service outages were rampant and unchecked causing many to flee the service. Amazon seems very confident that their content delivery (EC2 cloud servers and WhisperSync technology) will be faster than anything we’ve ever seen, and is likely counting that, along with their treasure trove of content and established customer base, as the ace in their hole.

As companies begin to move their operations to the cloud in order to create a new system of content distribution, Facebook toils behind the scenes to invent their own web-based content ecosystem through extensive partnerships and integration.

Open Graph is an exciting new protocol for Facebook which allows for seamless integration of popular web applications (last.fm, turntable.fm, Spotify, Hulu, etc.) into the Facebook structure. At current, if users opt in to connect one of these services with Facebook, they can interact with that application while having all the trimmings of social response we love so much. So, if you connect Facebook to Netflix, you will be able to watch a movie within Netflix, commenting, sharing and rating all the while.

Where does Apple figure in?

Mobile devices are the future and it’s more than likely that this form of content distribution will be available on mobile devices. The Facebook application for iPhone will likely include code to make these things possible, but will a web-based content distribution model step on the toes of what Apple is trying to achieve with their cloud?

This is a unique article written by Thomas Stone and published on SEO Desk with exclusivity.

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