A topic I’ve considered a fair amount over the last 18 months is where ‘the cloud’ ends and the personal computing device begins.
It was first triggered in my mind by frustration at the amount of time needed to download large podcasts. It’s a simple scheduled task which can’t happen when my laptop is off, but when I get up in the morning I want to quickly get any new podcasts to sync to my iPod, not wait for a 100MB download. There is, however, a wireless router with a processor capable of http downloading sitting connected to the internet 24/7, and if it downloaded the podcast, it would be very quick to copy the file across when the laptop reappears on the network.
I considered scratching that itch with a Slug, but that approach would have missed the point - I want to continue using iTunes in the normal way. I want iTunes to automatically hand off that work when my laptop isn’t on.
More recently, I’ve been considering power consumption and the kinds of tasks that really don’t warrant the 60 watts the MacBook can pull, or even the lower power levels it pulls, simply for having the screen on. I want these tasks to happen somewhere, when and where is appropriate.
After 3 failing hard disks in the last 2 years, backups are a topic close to my heart. Ever since the Time Capsule was announced I’ve wanted one, and last Saturday was the day I caved and spent the money. I’m happy with it so far - though it does run pretty hot and I’ve not taken that extra step of trying a restore from backup.
The list of things it can do is pretty impressive, and made me reconsider these cloud thoughts. If there’s a company that can pull off linking home devices in a seamless, usable manner, and if there’s a company looking to leverage it’s software to sell consumer hardware, it’s Apple. They are also a company which has shied away from building a ‘home server’ - a product category that I can’t imagine resonates with more than 0.5% of consumers. A cloud of routers, home entertainment devices, capsules, and more all of which can communicate, and interface well with software is far more up their street and something I’d be willing to shell yet more money into.
Of course, I’d also like such a home cloud to extend to the ‘big cloud’ for appropriate tasks, but I’m guessing that’s yet further years away.
[I did start this post last week before the Forrester report]
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