Apple's cloud service not fully baked
A story about how Apple planned to “soon” launch a cloud service featuring music and movies stirred a great deal of speculation on Thursday. — The blog Boy Genius Report, citing an anonymous source, wrote that Apple will offer …
Context & Ripple Effects
Media Maverick flagged this arc back in March, reporting that Apple was trying to store user video in the cloud. Today's story extends that thread: Boy Genius Report, citing an anonymous source, claims a "soon" launch covering both music and movies — a rumor by status, unconfirmed by Apple, but one that lands while the company is riding the iPhone 4 launch and pushing to re-enter the living room with Apple TV.
First-order effects
- If the rumored service ships, iTunes users' libraries move from computer-and-cable syncing toward remote storage, changing how iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV owners get their media day to day.
- Apple's living-room push depends on this plumbing: an Apple TV box that can stream from Apple's cloud instead of a synced home computer becomes a far easier sell.
Second-order effects
- Music labels and movie studios become the real gatekeepers — cloud delivery at scale requires their licenses, so negotiation progress, not engineering, sets the timeline.
- Google and other device rivals, already competing in apps and mobile usage share against the iPad's fast-rising OS footprint, face added pressure to answer with comparable hosted-media offerings of their own.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, consumer media shifts structurally from files people own and sync to access licensed across devices — turning storage and licensing agreements between device makers and rights holders into core competitive infrastructure.
The trend: Consumer media is migrating from device-synced ownership to cloud-hosted access, with Apple's entry making rights-holder licensing the currency that decides who can compete.