Inside iCloud: Apple's new Documents & Data cloud service
In place of the simple cloud storage and web hosting services in today's MobileMe, including iDisk, iWeb and Gallery, Apple is preparing an innovative new cloud-based Documents & Data service. Here's how it works.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Documents & Data service is the payoff of a months-long reveal arc: sources reported in April 2011 that Apple was running 'iCloud' internally as far more than a music service, and Patently Apple's February look at a cloud-based safe deposit box patent sketched the same idea of app data living server-side. What is new in this piece is the mechanism — per-app automatic syncing of documents rather than a user-managed file system.
That mechanism has direct casualties: MobileMe's iDisk, iWeb and Gallery, the simple storage and web-hosting staples of Apple's $99-a-year service, are confirmed for replacement. With 9to5Mac reporting that Apple has already let developer MobileMe accounts migrate to iCloud alongside the iOS 5 beta 5 push, the switchover from paid web suite to free OS-level sync is visibly underway.
First-order effects
- MobileMe subscribers lose their manual tools — iDisk files, iWeb sites and Gallery photos give way to a service where each app syncs its own documents automatically, removing the explicit file-management layer users paid for.
- Developers get the real work item: with beta 5 seeded and account migration open, they must rebuild apps around per-document cloud APIs before iCloud ships publicly.
Second-order effects
- Standalone storage vendors face an uncomfortable benchmark: Apple bundling document sync free into iOS and OS X undercuts paid tiers built on the same basic job, pressuring rivals like Dropbox to differentiate on cross-platform reach rather than raw storage.
- Web-hosting and photo-sharing incumbents lose a distribution channel as iWeb and Gallery retire — small-site publishers who leaned on MobileMe must find new homes, feeding demand for third-party hosts.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, cloud sync stops being a product customers buy and becomes a feature platforms give away — shifting competition from storage capacity to which ecosystem's devices and APIs make syncing invisible, a structural threat to any vendor whose business is selling storage by the gigabyte.
The trend: Platform owners are absorbing standalone cloud-storage products into free, OS-level document sync, turning sync infrastructure into a device-selling moat.