Want iCloud With Windows? Ditch the XP 393
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by
timothy
from the what-about-linux dept.
from the what-about-linux dept.
halfEvilTech writes "Microsoft isn't the only company denying equal online footing to Windows XP users. Apple will not give PC users access to iCloud – its great digital locker in the sky – if their machines are running Microsoft's aging but still popular Windows XP. Tucked at the bottom of the iCloud announcement, Apple says you'll need a PC running Windows Vista or Windows 7 to jump into Steve Jobs' version of the interwebs."
Lack of XP support isn't news anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
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Heck. Apple does not support their own OS after about two days. Why not XP too?
But the point is, would windows user ditch their still working fine enough desktop/laptop to buy new shiny windows 7 just to get icloud? I think non-Apple land is little different, and people tend not to buy toys just because the master asked them to.
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Do you really think that? I seem to recall people standing in lines the night before Windows 95 release. I think the main reason people haven't jumped to upgrade since XP is the simple fact that there hasn't been a compelling reason too. That's starting to change. XP is coming out of security update coverage in a couple of years, it can't use the latest Internet Explorer, and other software is starting to require at least Vista. Adoption is going to start to pick up as it becomes more and more a matter
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XP - Will be supported weather MS like it or not - It will run on machines Win7 cannot hope to run on
IE9 is not a good reason to upgrade, Firefox, Opera, Chrome all run on XP
iCloud and similar are not a good reason to upgrade, most people do not give a damn about this ...
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I'd rather not give money to MS just because Apple wants me to.
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I *still* have OS 9 plugins running in Photoshop on OS X 10.6 that still work - my scanner
Have you looked at VueScan [hamrick.com]? It has a Photoshop plug-in now.
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Some scanners are a bit more expensive than a $50 USB one though. Once you get in the real document processing your most simple scanners jump up to $3000 but can easily go up to $30,000.
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>>>"ditching support after about 2 days" (obvious hyperbole, but not even remotely rooted in even a thin shred of truth).
My G5 Mac won't run the latest versions of Safari or iTunes or iWork. And it's not that old... 3 years? So yes two days is an exaggeration, but not hyperbole. Apple is quick to dump old OSes, because they want users to buy new Macs or upgrades. Planned obsolescence. - Now compare that 3-year-old G5 to my 8 year old XP which still operates and runs everything I throw at it.
Re:Lack of XP support isn't news anymore (Score:4, Informative)
3 years? Sorry buddy, the PowerPC G5 was phased out in August 2006: that makes it 5 years in my book.
And if you really want to the latest stuff, why don't you sell your Mac every 3 to 4 years like I do! This way, i have an actual Cost of Ownership (hardware only) of around 390€ per year!
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It's a 10-year old operating system. It was all Windows users had for a long time, and Vista was a flop, but Windows 7 is really good and has a strong adoption rate.
Agreed, but will these small nudges to get users away from XP be enough to get them to change their OS? There are other options available to XP users that provide similar functionality to the applications and/or services that are starting to exclude XP.
Re:Lack of XP support isn't news anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Agreed, but will these small nudges to get users away from XP be enough to get them to change their OS?
No. Rather than spend $200 or whatever upgrading to Windows 6.1, my operating system will remain stagnant until my P4 machine dies (which should be soon). In the meantime I'm perfectly happy to use older programs (Office97) or free alternatives for my software addons. Most of it is better than what MS or Apple offers anyway - like VLC or Winamp or Utorrent - and supports stuff as old as 98.
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On the one hand, what you say sound perfectly reasonably from a corporate perspective.
However, the actual reality of the situation is a little more subtle. There are still plenty of XP machines out there. There are even new machines being sold with it. It wasn't discontinued that long ago and it's intermediary Vista went down in history with Microsoft Bob as one of the most notorious Microsoft products ever.
Although all of this ultimately just hurts Apple. It drives people to buy newer PCs and newer copies
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Although all of this ultimately just hurts Apple. It drives people to buy newer PCs and newer copies of Windows. It drives sales to "the enemy".
Or people iBuy a shiny new iMac or iBook. Or iSomething, to go with the iCloud.
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Yeah. This is what happens when you surround yourself with too many sychophants.
You start believing your own propaganda a little bit too much.
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Re:Lack of XP support isn't news anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it really? If it pushes people to buy a newer PC, it also opens the option of switching to a Mac while they're at it.
If they need iCloud for their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, then it means they're already familiar with how Apple software works, switching to Mac OS X isn't a big leap to do and using VMWare Fusion or Parallels they'll be able to keep using their Windows software.
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Does it really? If it pushes people to buy a newer PC, it also opens the option of switching to a Mac while they're at it.
That's a bit like saying red-light cameras are a ploy to sell more underwear. And, no, having an iPhone doesn't mean you automatically know how a Mac works. If anything, it'll show you that you'll need all new software and it might even imply (even though it's inccorect) that doing things like attaching files to emails is hair-rippingly obnoxious on a Mac.
The reality of the scenario you just painted is this: "well, you can spend $200 to upgrade to Windows 7, or you can buy a whole new machine and your g
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What do you mean? You think that a simple drag and drop is too complicated?
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You're also taking for granted that the current computer will be capable of running Windows 7 in the first place. It's not always going to be the case.
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When people go to buy a new computer in order to get iCloud support, they just might choose a Mac. Remember, the people are already interested in an Apple product.
Also, they simplify the development and support of the Windows client, by only supporting the most recent major release. Windows XP has 3 service packs out, some of which might be a nightmare to code workarounds for.
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They seem to be doing fine with the iDevices and iTunes store. Mac sales are pretty much a "halo effect" from those things these days.
If Apple considers MS an enemy, I'd think it's in the same way that the Road Runner considers Wile E Coyote an enemy. He might have a lot of resources at his disposal, but he's a complete bungling idiot when it comes to actually executing any new plans. Zune and WP7 have completely failed to compete with iTunes and iOS..
Re:Vista went down in history with Microsoft Bob (Score:3)
See, that's exactly the problem.
When you switch off an OS you have to examine the entire ecosystem effect. Because XP was the only sane choice for EIGHT YEARS that's what Windows computing grew up with.
Suddenly Win7 hasn't really been out that long, and the early reports of Windows 8 are dubious, so it does suddenly seem like they're trying to make continued use of XP painful like a Pavlov experiment.
I won't switch off XP until the upgrade path through *Windows 9* has shaken out. MS is thrashing pretty badl
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You are very right in what you say, but you don't address what most "... but XP will not be supported..." articles take issue with: that the computer companies are still being run like they're part of a high-turn-over consumption-based industry.
The annoyance with not supporting XP is that systems that were shipped with XP towards the end of its support cycle are still "good enough". A then-modern 2009 computer with 3GB of RAM, 500GB of HDD space, and just about any $40 PCI-e video card is enough for a famil
Re:Lack of XP support isn't news anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
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With iCloud and iOS5, Grannie can buy an iPad and toss the PC she never learned how to use or manage. iOS5 will use iCloud instead of depending on an iTunes client running on a Mac or Windows PC.
I recognized this as a good idea for Apple the day I first used an iPad about a year ago. The vast majority of computer users use their computer for one thing, surfing. Adding email, light word processing, cute games, pictures and video... and you've damn near covered the needs of well over 90% of typical home computer users. Macs won't kill the home Windows market... iPads will. And hardcore gamers who haven't switched to dedicated gaming consoles (the only reason left to have a Windows machine for home u
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You somehow missed what I said about not buying more gear. How is buying an iPad going to help someone NOT spend money?
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It's a 10-year old operating system.
This isn't Windows 95 we're talking about: you could still buy PCs with XP last year.
And I don't get the Windows 7 love myself; I don't see what it gives me other than more pointless eye candy and the poorly designed UAC nonsense.
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I'd say you haven't tried it then. Honestly it's a much better operating system (feel free to check my comment history, I'm not a shill for any OS vendor and own computers that use all three of the majors). I resisted upgrading to 7 for quite a while too, but now that I have done so on my home machine I'm just waiting for license purchase to upgrade the work box (No, my company doesn't have volume licensing. Why, when we have a ton of Windows machines? I have no idea. At least we're going that route fo
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I have a shiny new Win 7 machine - and honestly, beyond the prettyness, it does nothing I could not do quicker and less annoyingly on XP ..
It's slower, and uses more RAM than XP - my old XP machine was only slower due to it's lack of RAM, my Win 7 machine does not seem significantly faster for most tasks, even though it has a faster processor .... Where it excels is when I am running many tasks, the memory management and process management seem to be significantly better
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Eye candy isn't pointless. There's research out there that indicates things that look better, work better. Don Norman has done a lot of work on this.
This [alistapart.com] is a decent article about the phenomenon.
BTW, the UAC nonsense is pretty much working as it should now. The only thing missing is the ability to sudo from the command line. Powershell may have this feature, but I haven't looked into it yet. Far too many XP users were running as administrator all the time.
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just 1 year ago I bought an xp netbook. you'd be nuts to run win7 of them if you were stuck at 1gb of the 'maxed out' (forced by MS) ram on the netbooks.
if this was now+7 I'd agree with you, but I'm going to demand that I get my use out of that xp that was forced on me at time of netbook purchase. and no, it was impossible to buy it 'naked' as MS used to refer to unbundled hardware platforms.
unless there is a FREE upgrade to win7, I'm not paying a MS tax twice.
the custom is for large companies to support
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But..but..but jumping into Steve's version of the interwebs sounds bad!
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Windows 7 ... has a strong adoption rate.
Yeah, but that's only because Microsoft has such a solid reputation for providing such a stable and secure operating system.
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but this is a NETWORKED thing; tell me, oh wise one; what has to be in the o/s in order for a thin client to access a network? clouds are just servers to thin clients, renamed for popular effect.
xp had all the chops needed (and many of us finally feel ok with xp as a system) to do any kind of network access that anyone would normally need.
shit, even linux 1.2.x kernel and its ancient collection of utils back 10 or so years ago also had all it needed to 'access the cloud'.
wtf? what has apple up their sleev
Probably requires iTunes (Score:2)
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Let's answer some of these:
Will iCloud not work with a normal browser?
Of course not. This is Apple
Will it not have an open API?
Hmm, perhaps you missed that this is Apple. Of course it won't. It has to lock you in.
Will it only work with proprietary Apple software?
Doesn't everything new that Apple makes have that requirement? Sure they have a log of some open source things like WebKit and CUPS that they still maintain and are forced to keep open due to GPL, but otherwise everything Apple does is proprietary and locked to their software.
If so, then what is the entire point?
They paid the lables $150 million and must conform to their demands, which seem to directly li
You probably ought to read up on iCloud (Score:3)
Because it's fairly clear that you don't understand what it is. Among other things, it syncs mail, contacts, calendars (Outlook/Exchange or Apple apps), music (if it's in iTunes), and photographs (probably only from iPhoto) with "the Cloud", and from there to your mobile devices. How is it even conceptually possible for a browser to do all that? Open API? Seems doubtful. Only work with proprietary Apple software? Mostly, but again, understand what the thing is before asking these questions. Clearly, if you
Re:Lack of XP support isn't news anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
No it isn't. The point is not to support any operating systems, but to support an API.
One of the dependencies of an API is the OS. Did Java or Perl automatically run on every OS when conceived? No someone had to put in the effort to ensure that APIs work on different computer configurations. In the case of Windows programs one of the problems is the plethora of hardware and software differences. Heck there is a large set of Windows API frameworks over the years. Should Apple only write .NET 4.0? Do all users have it installed? What if they don't? Apple has to decide the minimum they will support. Going forward, it won't be XP.
Good (Score:3)
We need to start getting away from XP anyway. It's ancient and insecure compared to other, not-ten-years-old OSs. It annoys me every time I have to work on an XP machine for someone, since I haven't used XP myself in four years, and it's damn near impossible to walk someone through OS related tasks over the phone at this point.
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Nah. I still use XP on my home machine, and I prefer its interface to that of Windows 7. It's fast and snappy. I have a firewall and no virus protection. I don't install untrusted EXEs and I use secure software. Haven't had a virus/trojan problem... ever. Screw paying MS a ton of money to upgrade; I'm more likely to more to Debian full-time.
Stupid Decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bad decision on their part.
Granted XP is ancient and not very supported, but its still heavily used. If we're talking about end-users, its more likely to go:
"Aww, not supported. I guess I'll use something else"
instead of
"Aww, not supported. Let me pay a few hundred euros to upgrade my OS (and maybe need to improve my hardware) to use this product/service."
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This is a bad decision on their part.
Granted XP is ancient and not very supported, but its still heavily used. If we're talking about end-users, its more likely to go:
"Aww, not supported. I guess I'll use something else"
instead of
"Aww, not supported. Let me pay a few hundred euros to upgrade my OS (and maybe need to improve my hardware) to use this product/service."
And when confronted with the choice of paying those hundreds of euros/dollars for a silly OS license on their non-compliant box as opposed to a few hundred more shekels for shiny new Mac...
I don't think it's a bad idea at all. Not only is supporting a 10 year old OS more costly, forcing the upgrade could net Apple some new Mac owners (perhaps they'll choose a PC for upgrading, that's ok too)
Again, Apple doesn't lose if Microsoft somehow gains by their actions.
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Either way it goes the most likely set of choices will be:
a) Not bother with iCloud at all.
b) Buy a new Dell with Windows 7 on it.
Neither is really in Apple's interest.
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*Is* it a bad decision on their part? Have you done some sort of cost vs benefits analysis? There are hard costs associated with developing, testing, and supporting each version of each OS.
It doesn't take a ton of imagination to come up with scenarios where it makes sense to drop XP support. Some factors they might take into consideration:
- How much of their focus is on Mac users
- How much of their Windows user base will be in corporate envrionments
- The creator
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Of course, I note you said "euros", so I assume you're in Europe. The general attitude may be different from here in the US.
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Supporting older OSes is not free. If iCloud's was Apple's only product this might be a problem but it's a follow on product. People with Windows XP can still spend money on iPods, iPhones, and the iTunes Store. Their iOS devices will get to use iCloud services and when they decide to upgrade their computer (to a PC or Mac) they'll get to use iCloud on there as well.
I think I'm fine (Score:5, Funny)
Is this "Windows 7 or above"? Because I'm 91 versions ahead.
No surprise - it's Apple's modus operandi (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only do they not support 98, or 2000, or XP, they also don't support any OS X older than 10.5 (example: Safari and iTunes).
It is simply part of Apple culture not to supply software to older OSes. It forces the user to upgrade (i.e. spend money), and I'm not surprised Apple applies the same tactic to PCs that has worked so well for Macs.
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It is simply part of Apple culture not to supply software to older OSes. It forces the user to upgrade (i.e. spend money), and I'm not surprised Apple applies the same tactic to PCs that has worked so well for Macs.
That "i.e. spend money" part is misleading, IMHO. Apple does not make a ton of money on OS upgrades. 10.6 was incredibly cheap and 10.7 is looking to be even cheaper.
That said, the reason I said "misleading" instead of "wrong" is that it does force hardware upgrades. My old Macintosh that's got a Core Duo CPU instead of a Core 2 Duo CPU will not be able to run Lion at all -- it's going to be 64-bit-only with no 32-bit CPU support. If I could upgrade the OS on it, doing so would be cheap, but I cannot, s
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>>>Macintosh that's got a Core Duo CPU instead of a Core 2 Duo CPU will not be able to run Lion at all
Precisely. Apple makes money the same way Atari and Commodore used to make their money: Off the hardware. By obsoleting hardware after only 3-4 years time ("Sorry this won't run Safari 5 or OS 10.6 - you need to upgrade your machine"), Apple forces users to trash perfectly good hardware and jump to the next ~$2000 product.
And managers smile.
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Actually, considering the current version of OS X is 10.6 (Snow Leopard),, it means they should've dropped 10.5 support a long while ago - 2009 or so when 10.6 was releas
Re:No surprise - it's Apple's modus operandi (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it doesn't force anybody to do anything. It's actually more of an exchange - *if* you want latest features (and, granted, bug fixes and the like), *then* you have to be willing to move forward.
I'm surprised more software developers aren't chiming in here because it is really, really hard to support older and older versions of stuff /and/ still try to keep adding new features. You can end up spending very large percentages of your time not really innovating at all, just trying to work around old bugs that have long since been fixed, or in aging hardware that just really isn't up to snuff anymore. That stuff kills innovation - from a developer's perspective, it's just not fun. It sucks your creativity.
People want to have their cake and eat it too, but really there's a tradeoff - if you want a device and a feature set then buy it and stick with it. If you want to be always up to date, latest fixes and latest features, then be prepared for some instability and also for change. If you want to ride the wave of innovation and always get all the latest bells and whistles, then you have to keep buying the latest and greatest hardware because the hardware and the software are interconnected - newer hardware enables more bells and whistles in the software.
The fact that there are *any* upgrades at all by any device vendor is remarkable to me. I think we're actually pretty spoiled. Back in the olden days you'd buy an appliance or a device and that was it - it never changed. If it had quirks, that was part of what you got. As newer features came out, they were available only in the newer models of the device or appliance. Nowadays you can buy e.g. a phone or a TV and even after you buy it, the manufacturer can come along and add new value and fix problems. That's incredible! But it's also incredible how much complaining people do when this value adding doesn't happen indefinitely, especially in the realm of computers where the life spans are traditionally very short.
iWhat? (Score:2)
Oh darn, I guess I won't be jumping on the cloud bandwagon since 50% of my computers (lappy Core 2 Duo [woe unto him who does not get the lappy reference]) are still on XP. I was looking forward to... well, I'm not really sure what iCloud does, but I'm sure it must be exciting since I see mention of it (but very little explanation) all over the place. Maybe it involves BitCoins?
Let's give Apple some credit (Score:3)
I love how little credit The Register gives Apple when they say "According to the latest stats, this means that almost half of all PC users will not be able to access iCloud." Given that Apple has usage statistics of the people who use iTunes, I am willing to bet they know exactly how many of their customers with iCloud compatible devices are running on XP and made a very educated decision that dropping XP support wouldn't alienate that many users.
As others have already pointed out, XP is a decade old OS now, and two versions back. It is OK to start phasing our support. First for apps that run primarily in peoples homes, and then eventually to what runs in business environments.
Specific technical reason its not supported? (Score:2)
And I mean specific -- "In order to interact with iCloud, we need OS function calls DoFooBarian and MangleDataButGood and built-in networking service XMLSmell" and not some generic "its older and less secure".
Whatever Apple is doing with iCloud probably is more in their code and less in Windows and probably has no real dependency on Windows 7.
My gut instinct is this is less about some technical need of iCloud on Windows but more about Apple making a cost benefit decision that providing the broader support (
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I suspect that this is just a broader general support policy. They drop support for older versions of Windows. They may or may not even put any serious thought into the process. They simply might not bother with the finer points since they will gladly leave their own users out in the cold. Once they think they are doing something "for your own good", there's probably nothing that's going to stop them.
Why use iCloud ? (Score:2)
Why use such services as iCloud when you can buy a good synology with a few HDD and get ultra fast speed on your LAN and good support through the internet (including smartphones... My android has he official Synology audio application installed for easy and secure access to music streaming)
No big brother to watch what you're storing on your system, shared folders which work under PC, Mac and unix systems, dlna server, ...
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Dear lord, because the vast majority of people are not nerds, man.
I mean, I'm a nerd. I got me my NAS with many many terabytes of storage and nice control and features.
Most people would like to just buy something and just use it and not bother thinking about it.
Also, iCloud is FREE -- for up to 5gb, which when you consider does NOT include apps, music, photos, etc, but only your personal data you and your apps upload, is actually quite a bit more then most people will need (Yes, I know, not all)
Are you real
Steve Jobs = Dogbert? (Score:3)
Some reason this story also makes me think of this:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-05-04/ [dilbert.com]
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So your argument is that you don't care if it meets your needs, or is the best tool for the job, the fact it's made by Apple means you refuse to use it? You sound every bit as bad as those kids that type Micro$oft.
Re:I have Windows 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not rewarding companies that do things that people don't like is more important to some than having the latest toys.
Yes, that certainly sounds a lot more noble than: "I don't really know what's going on in Apple land, but the word Insightful pops up when people use the term 'walled-garden'. The people I've decided to agree with are my friends!"
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The best tool for the job? What is iClouds job? Media access or consumer control?
Bullshit Sales Pitch
Q: What does iCloud do?
A: It gives me easy access to my media.
Wait! If you think that Apple cares about easy of access to your media more than promoting their DRM scheme and locking you into their ecosystem where they take 30% off the top, you need to take those blinders off.
No Bullshit Reality
Q: What does iCloud really do?
A: It gives Apple more control over your media than they do already. You give up mo
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Seamless wireless synching across mobile devices and pcs. If you don't have an iPhone you probably don't have a use for it.
I do have an iPhone, and it is going to be awesome.
Re:I have Windows 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.apple.com/apple-events/wwdc-2011/ [apple.com]
It's not "cloud computing", it's automatic online synching done right. It's called iCloud simply because "cloud" is today's buzzword.
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Re:I have Windows 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
From the demos done on stage, it syncs everything in real time. Photos taken on an iPhone were sent immediately to the iPad and the Mac, documents edited on one device were pushed to the other devices, etc.
"It just works" comes to mind.
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Agreed, there really is no "cloud" in the original sense of the word (a virtual machine that is actually hosted on a bunch of servers that can ramp up capacity as needed - thus cloud to mean amourphous). Well, maybe there is, but here "the cloud" is reinterpreted to mean "on a big server somewhere on the internet and not connected to your device".
Re:I have Windows 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is a vertically integrated company. Its products work with each other pretty well as long as you follow the Apple way of things. Apple has a vested interest in making sure that has equivalents to compelling new products, like Amazon's music and books service. By controlling it themselves, they can focus on making sure that it works together with other Apple products.
Compare that with the Microsoft way, where they write a big part of it, but rely on partners to fill in the blanks. You have all these independent companies running around doing their own thing without a cohesive vision of what the whole system should be doing.
For people who don't want to mess with their computers and music players and websites etc., Mac is a natural choice. Windows offers a fractured broken system, and Linux is great for those who do like to mess with their computers and music players and websites, etc.
I use all three systems, and the Mac seems to have the fewest problems with Mac stuff working together, as long as you are adhering to the "Mac Way of Doing Things".
Easy to use, consumer stuff - Mac
Can do what you want - Linux
Corporate or Engineering software - Windows
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Fuck, redundant instead of insightful. There goes my modding for this article...
Why doesn't Slashdot have an "Undo Moderation" button?
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If Wine worked perfectly, I'd switch to Linux in a second.
If that's all that's holding you back, look into KVM or VirtualBox - you can run your Windows-only apps natively in a box and the things that run on both you can run on Linux.
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Or a $33 copy of Windows, but if you want to pay MS 6x as much for no reason, feel free.
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Even an OEM copy of Windows 7 Ultimate doesn't cost that much.
You can buy an entire nettop for not that much more than that and get Windows "for free".
Microsoft on OEM copy sale to end users (Score:2)
Even an OEM copy of Windows 7 Ultimate doesn't cost that much.
According to this page [microsoft.com], an OEM copy of Windows isn't intended to be sold to people who build their own PC for themselves to use. OEM copies are only for people who build PCs to sell.
You can buy an entire nettop for not that much more than that
I mentioned this once to a Mac salesman at Best Buy, and he told me that running Windows in a virtual machine on any current Mac would be far faster than running it on the bare hardware of a nettop.
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If its anything like the copy of windows which I 'own' its in a hidden partition on my laptop which I can't access unless I want to format everything.
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I love virtualbox, but I wouldn't say it works perfectly. Things requiring DirectX don't always work, and I've also had some trouble with certain USB devices.
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Does it do proper hardware acceleration? That's usually the problem with VMs.
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There is also currently this loophole - http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/07/apple-offers-music-pirates-permanent-amnesty-for-24-99/ [cnn.com]
now granted no one really knows how well this will work yet. But I am sure some people will be more than willing to take advantage of this. Not to mention a free upgrade for all those old drm laden itunes downloads of years pass, since the match comes in the form of the drm free versions.
Re:I have Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't use anything else from Apple, then you wouldn't want to use iCloud. It's a supplement to their other products and services, and doesn't really have any value if you don't otherwise use any of those products or services.
That help?
Now, if you use their other products or services... let's say you have an iPhone. If you set up iCloud on your Windows box, the photos you snap on the iPhone will automatically appear in a folder on your computer without an explicit sync step or USB connection, and you can sync the bookmarks in Safari on the iPhone to IE on the Windows machine. Similarly, there are benefits for iPad users, iTunes users, people who switch between Windows and MacOS sometimes...
Heck, there are even benefits for people who want to use an iPhone but don't want to load iTunes or any other Apple software on their PC. You can set up the iPhone so that iCloud is the thing it backs up to and syncs with, instead of any PC. So you'd be able to use an iPhone without buying into iTunes or QuickTime and without installing anything on your PC at all. (This is true even if you're an XP user. Or a Linux user, for that matter.)
But the service has no value on its own in isolation. If you don't touch anything else in the Apple ecosystem, best just ignore it completely.
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You should have seen the carnage in the restaurant franchise wars, where the only survivor was Taco Bell.
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>>>Your choice isn't wrong, neither is the "other side's."
I chose Commodore=Amiga which went bankrupt.
;-)
Want to revise your comment?
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well if you figure that a good number of folks have yet to bother "upgrading" to Vista or 7 and have computers than are 6 or 8 years old the big question is how many folks have these computers and are online enough to actually want an iCloud??
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Speaking as a Mac user, are there really that many people who (1) Are still using WinXP and (2) Are at all interested in iCloud?
Speaking as a Windows user, no and no. I know a lot of Mac people and I haven't even heard anybody use the term 'iCloud' yet.
The *only* feature of the iCloud service that actually piqued my attention was that if you pay something like $25, all of the music you've ripped from CD's will get an accompanying 256k encoding of the songs they have in their library. If I had a bigger collection that could potentially be interesting, but I have a hard time imagining it being a 'whoop-de-doo' to a lot of people.
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Now, I find myself with a windows 7 mach
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Well, being that Win7 has been the best selling OS ever and has been averaging 297,600 copies sold per day for the past 2 years, I would say they haven't been hurt much.
46% of businesses polled in the past few months are planning on upgrading to Win7 in the next year and 88% say "eventually". Sales should go up really soon.
BTW, MSFT has nothing to fear from AAPL in the enterprise because AAPL is one of the worst platforms to manage. I would sooner manage Linux than Apple in a large enterprise. And since peo
There is nothing wrong with running XP now (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're still on Windows XP (and you're a home user) than you are an idiot. Update and move on for the love of god. The majority of Windows XP users will be corporate sheep anyway -- and they don't need to be using iTunes/iCloud anyway.
Times like these I wish I was more active here and had the points to spend to send your post into troll/flamebait oblivion.
People like you are the embodiment of that "your laptop/phone/tv is already outdated" tv commercial.
We don't need to ditch perfectly working computers simply to be on the latest-and-greatest side of things. I have XP at home, I play some older games on it, some stuff from Steam, and stream Netflix. It does what I want it to do, and I'm quite certain many others would say the same. Why should people spend money that they don't need to, just to appease some twitchy teenager on the internet who does the "OMG OLD" shtick?
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Update to what? And how? I don't think there's a free XP -> something else update available anywhere. Except to linux, obviously, but that doesn't meet my main requirement. XP, crappy though it may be, does meet my main requirement.
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Speaking of "holes/bugs patched", why don't you upgrade to SP3?
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I have WinXP at home. I use it to play games, and I refuse to give money to Microsoft just because the best games happen to be only released for their platform.
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that must have sucked. as soon as you agreed to "yes i want you to stop asking stupid questions", it rolled back all of the changes, and you had to start from scratch. adobe software ONLY stops asking you stupid questions when you uninstall it. but first you have to agree to "yes, i want to remo
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Is anyone else getting sick of iEverything? I mean, I hate Apple regardless, but this crap is just annoying.
Yeah, K is a much better letter!
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... he typed, just as his Gnash plugin crashed and Gnome put up a warning. So he launched The Gimp and balanced his checkbook with Gnucash, because he'd just gotten a check back from some GnuStep implementation work he did -- he'd be sure to thank the client with a gnupg-encrypted email. He didn't have the client's address handly so he launched GNOME-find to find the invoice.