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Apple iphone 4S

Apple announced yesterday the launch of its iPhone 4S. It is not the revolution but an evolution. Basically all you who were waiting for the new iPhone to get one…. well now it is time. I will not talk about the 8MP photo camera, or the HD1080P videos, or even a quite revolutionary Voice control (that makes Android and Blackberry out of order)… no. I will talk about iCloud.

The story started with iTools in 2000. This one only the Apple freaks will still remember. Then, the online synchronization service from Apple became .Mac in 2002 and had finally the good formula for Developers and non-developers. It took them until 2008 and the launch of iPhone to start reviewing their site and came up with MobileMe. MobileMe brought extra fonctionalities like synch your mails, calendar, contacts and pictures + storage + “find your iPhone” application.

Since then, sharing content online became one of the most important things you might do today because computers are getting dematerialized with tablets, hard-disks became flash-memories and CD/DVD readers become USB sticks that become Clouds.

So we are attending to the death of Hardware and to the rise of Software as solution for content management. So soon we will not say: “do you have it on the server”, we will say “put it on my cloud”.

So Apple is trying more and more to fit perfectly to one’s lifestyle. No matter if you are at home with your iPad, or in the train with your iPhone or at work with your macbook… you only have one life and one way you want to manage the content you produce.
apple icloud

This is iCloud. Buy an App here and find it there. Listen to a new song there and synchronize it here. Easy, simple and… “under control”.

Of course we see that the more Apple interconnect all devices and services, the more they control the way you share, listen, watch content. Can and should we have an “Apple life“? From iTools to iCloud there are 11 years. 11 years of getting into people’s hearts, lives and pockets. So right now Apple is “kicking ass” of the PC area. While the personal computer market is by 5% growth, Apple is growing by 23%. While Nokia, or Sony Ericsson, Blackberry or Samsung are fighting for half of percent of market share with their hundreds of mobile phones, Apple is opening the way with a single phone model. Hard to not be tempted.

The iPhone is a great phone, but it is the most intelligent recruitment tool a brand can dream to have. You will see. You first start buying an iPhone. Then, you probably will buy a Macbook, so you can synchronize your iPhone and you end it up with an iCloud account because you want to synchronize your contacts, calendars and emails across all your devices. I started with one iPhone and now I have more than 10 products from Apple at home.

Ok. I will not talk about the iPhone 4S but here is a video explaining it :-).

 

Ok so, Apple life or not? The pity is that there are not so many alternatives. Tried Linux? Great but not on your lifestyle, more for your political opinion. And PC? too much 20th century and we do not want that. Android…. then we might have an alternative but the problem with Android is that only geeks can really appreciate the tools. They focalized on tools and not on lifestyle.

So for now, I think Apple has a great future ahead (even without Steve Jobs). So what will I do? Well, I will migrate my MobileMe account into a iCloud account… For the moment only developers have access to it. This fall iCloud will be available and Apple is really willing to push iCloud on each Apple customer in the world.

LA