Originally Posted by gcianc (Post 1498543)

I think the definition of "cloud" is creating some miscommunication here. Cloud is not all or none. If you think "cultural" changes are required to allow people to use cloud then you are totally mistaken or have a very different use of the term "cloud" as what it really means to mass-market and phones. Let me explain...

First off, I'm not talking about "cloud" as abandoning traditional PCs & hard drives or having terminals only with all of your personal (and corporate) data in "clouds" managed by an anonymous party. That is fantasy land nowhere close to reality. There is obviously a need now & in the future for local data (and local apps) as well as "cloud" data (as well as web/cloud apps). The need for both will remain distinct for years to come, even if you had worldwide 5G unlimited bandwidth devices.

Cloud data - so to speak - CAN/NEEDS TO BE AVAILABLE LOCALLY. For example your google calendar (in a cloud) sync'd to outlook mobile. The cloud complaints fail to realize this or think it will be a non-option one day. BTW it's also why google docs has an "offline mode".

People have been using "clouds" since ftp and made mass-market by webmail which of course was introduced many years ago. Of course you know of the services like Microsoft Office "cloud", nevermind the huge success of google docs, photoshop online, etc. You might not see that as a "cloud" but it sure is!

Unfortunately MS is just a few years late and not implementing cloud integration which is absolutely necessary and expected for mass market devices (ie. smartphones in 2010+).

People want to gain access to commonly used info wherever they are on all devices. Clouds allow that (even though it's confusing and essentially should be invisible to the customer). Mobile phone bandwidth limits cloud & sync presently to things like calendar, contacts, bookmarks, notes/memos, etc. Even streaming music or media from a "cloud" is not reasonable and will be excessive bandwidth.

Originally Posted by SaltyDawg (Post 1498667)

You are wrong man, lol. Yes, I know that someone has to be notified before they can be in your network. But they don't have to be in your network to be in your contact list. And it's not only network contacts that get synced. All of my hotmail contacts get synced. There may be some sort of option in hotmail to only sync network contacts or something, I don't know. But I do know that all of my hotmail contacts sync when I sync them, and not all of my contacts are in my network.

You may think MyPhone is clumsy and half baked, but that is only your opinion. The fact is, it DOES sync, and you claimed it did not, and then tried to argue the matter when I pointed out that yes it does. My only real beef with MyPhone is the storage limit. Sure, there are a couple of things that could be done better (manually select folders instead of only selecting file types) but all in all it's pretty good. If you only sync contacts, calendar, and tasks (as I do) then it's pretty awesome.

Originally Posted by SaltyDawg (Post 1498672)

As successful as you say Office Cloud and Photoshop Online have been- they are not even close to the success of the offline version. Plenty of people, the vast majority even, prefer the local versions.

Originally Posted by gcianc (Post 1498950)

Of course. But these are not mutually exclusive

1. people needing/preferring/wanting offline files
2. people using clouds for useful tasks, storage & sync

Originally Posted by SaltyDawg (Post 1498985)

I agree with you that there are a lot of people using both. But when you listed the success of the online version of these apps as a proof that most people want to use the cloud, I had to point out that the online users are only a tiny amount when compared to the offline users.

I agree that the cloud can certainly be helpful in a lot of cases. But to make a device that depends on it is foolish. I use the cloud during my day, pretty much every day. But I would never want to be dependant on the cloud. No matter how useful it is, I still want full functionality when I am not connected.