Apple Officially Enters Clouds

Officially, at least, Steve Jobs beat Apple into the clouds by a week. But looking at it from a different angle it shows how his presence lives on.

This week’s the company’s servers were catching up as it replaced its Mobileme with iCloud. So many users were making the switch that some met delays.

In reality, Mobileme was a cloud-based product. Amazon, Google, Netflix and others also have been effectively offering storage space and streaming for some time.

Apple released IOS5 on Wednesday to replace its paid Mobileme  mail and other offerings on the iPhone, iPad and Macs. And its basic service will be free via iTunes.

The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that by the end of the year consumers will be able to pay to watch movies, making it a competitor of Netflix and Ultraviolet. They will have a choice of renting the films for a specific period or paying a higher price and downloading them as a purchase.

 

America Loses Its Leonardo

 The only thing I regret about Steve Jobs is that I came to know his products too late. He truly was America’s Leonardo da Vinci.

   My first Apple product was an iMac. To say it was aesthetically pleasing is an understatement. I was curious. Where was the rest of it?

   Then came the iPod, laptops, a new iMac, an iPad.

   And the Apple stores. Instead of driving myself nuts trying to make my other computers work I would make an appointment at the Genius bar.

   Yes, their hardware was expensive. But their software was cheap.

   Even with all the newfangled things this baby boomer saw in his life nothing was so grand.

   He was Mr. MacIntosh.