There's no iFool like a Freetard

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 09 June 2011 12:51

Opinion and Analysis

Describing Apple's customers as iFools (or iSheep) is about as constructive as referring to members of the open source community as Freetards. All it does is crank up the emotion when what's really needed is some level-headed analysis.

We're all entitled to our opinions, but I think my colleague Sam Varghese was off target yesterday when he wrote iCloud will cater to iFools.

Some of what Sam wrote is well founded, other parts are less accurate and even inflammatory.

The very beginning is said to be a very good place to start, so that's what I'll do. "Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has unveiled a new service, iCloud, inviting Mac users to store all their personal data in the cloud." The first clause is correct, but iCloud isn't about storing all your data in the cloud.

Perhaps most importantly, there's a specific set of APIs that applications must use to store and access documents stored in iCloud. Furthermore, iCloud users only get 5GB for free, and will need to pay if they want more space.

Even where Apple's handling the whole box and dice, not everything stays in the cloud. For example, photos taken on an iPhone will be able to flow through iCloud to the user's other devices and computers, but the images only stay in the cloud for 30 days.

Does using cloud services open your data to everyone - especially governments? Please read on.