TechStuff Looks at the iCloud

That was a particularly good one for our topic too. Yes, we're talking about iCloud, which is a new service, a new as the recording of this podcast anyway, service from Apple, and it's facts in fact, so new that it's just in beta right now, which we're like, hey, Apple, who do you think you are? Google? Sometimes? Um, yeah, well not not all of it's in Vada. Some of it

is still slated to come out. We had a lot of requests from people After Apple Worldwide Developers Conference Keynote, which was an early which was in early June, they announced basically they gave updates on three major things, two of which were one of which was no secret at all. That was the new Apple OS ten Lion that's the next version, which, um, then people were really expecting to hear about the new iOS that's the operating system for iPod, Touch,

iPhone and iPad, so it'd be iOS five. Yeah. Yeah, people were pretty sure that they were going to hear and they did well of course as the developer's conference, so you would expect them to talk about the software available for the platform the platforms. But the third and the one that we're going to talk about today is is iCloud. And that's UM again something that people really expected. In fact, uh, people actually identified the logo before it's

where it got announced. People called it the most poorly kept secret uh for this particular conference, which I mean, everyone was pretty sure that Apple was going to come out with some sort of cloud based service because of uh movements from Amazon and Google and the fact that Apple had purchased some other companies that were related to cloud services. Uh. Everything pointed towards that the the giant data center they were building in North Carolina, right, but

the details behind the service were still pretty fuzzy. And then actually, to tell you the truth, even almost a month later, the details are still a little scarce. Uh. You know, there's there's some stuff we know, and then there's some stuff we suspect and there's some stuff that just hasn't been answered yet. Yeah. And um, it's it's funny because with the building of this data center, which has been going on for what probably a couple of years now, I mean, people knew that Apple was building

a very very large building in North Carolina. Um. When you see other companies doing this, people like Google and Facebook, you realize that there's, uh, they're probably gonna be quite a few employees in there, there's probably gonna be a whole lot of hardware in there. Um, especially if they're looking for giant sources of power like Google, you know, building along the Columbia River for hydro electricity. You know, there's there's gonna be so you can you can take

some inferences from from the way they're behaving. Um. And a lot of the speculation revolved around the possibility that there would be a cloud based iTunes service and or a streaming video service to rival you know, someone like uh Netflix or Amazon Prime, um, you know, something where where Apple would or Hulu they would you know, you would subscribe to or I guess in this case, Hulu Plus, where you would pay a subscription fee and you'd get

your music and your uh, your video on download. That's and I think that's why people have been sort of nonplussed about what actually came out by a little perplexed or a little perplexed and um, and I think there are some of that is sort of in there, and I don't know that you can rule out those things showing up in the service later. It's just that the wording has been very careful to avoid that kind of

stuff recently. Yeah. Yeah, And what what rolled out is actually, I think, compared to some of the other services that we've been talking about recently, sort of compelling, you know, they're they're definitely some advantages and some disadvantages of I Cloud if you compare it to similar services. So let's kind of talk about what I cloud is and what it is not. I'll start off with what it is not in the sense that, as far as we know right now, it is not going to be any sort

of streaming service. So, in other words, you will not be streaming content from a cloud storage system to a device in order to enjoy it on the fly. Um. So, unlike some of the other services like the Amazon Music Player service, where you can store music in an Amazon count and then access a streaming file version of that song and listen to it. Uh. You will not necessarily be able to do that on iCloud, at least according

to the way they've worded things so far. In the way the system works right now, Well, that's that's sort of pardon the pun, seriously hazy. Um, there is one feature that sort of suggests that there is something like that. Um, should we should we get into the futures that maybe we can we can touch on that way, get closer. Um, Yeah, they're the iCloud website is actually a great place to look for information if you want to learn more about it. Um.

And it's where I what I use for my primary source. UM. Basically, what they want to try to do over overall is to give you the ability to sink your information will will was use it in a general sense here different kinds of files to multiple devices, your iOS devices and your computers, and not just MAX but PCs as well. Hey how about Lennox. Well no, sorry at yes, that that would be a bunto one. UM and I have account there to actually, But anyway, h so for one thing,

and where where should we start? Should we start with the music things. Let's start with storage. Okay, we're just okay. So so basically, your eye Cloud account would be a storage account where you could store uh. Now, primarily in the beta version, you're storing things like apps, books, and music, right, and UH you get by signing up, you get five gigabytes of storage for free. Now here's the Here are

two things that make this really compelling. Uh. It will go through your iTunes library and we'll match uh any song that you've purchased through iTunes since you since you're registering it through your iTunes account. UH, any song that you purchased through iTunes automatically becomes part of your eye Cloud storage locker we'll call it, but does not count

against your five gigabytes of storage. So if you've purchased, you know, five thousand songs through iTunes over the history of your iTunes account, all those songs are going to show up in your eye Cloud UH locker without you having to uh to have that kind of gainst your five gigabytes of storage. And you can share that information with any other device that's hooked up through your iTunes account, up to ten devices, which is another big move. Right.

Five used to be the magic number for things like that, and you can do it wirelessly, which is the beautiful thing. So you could say, let's say that you have a desktop computer at home and that's like your media computer. You have a we'll call it. We'll say it's a Mac because this happens to be me. I've got a Mac media computer at home and that has my iTunes library on it, and then I sink my iPod to my iTunes library. So whenever I buy a new song, I have to sink my iPod in order to get it.

Now I've got an older iPod. But let's say that I get a newer iPod. And then let's say we I buy some music on my uh, my iPod Touch or my iPhone. Then I have to sync my device to my computer. I have to, you know, it's it's a whole lot of steps in order to make sure that your music collection is is equal across multiple devices. Yes, and it's a pain in the neck to to uh to have to restore your music player, especially if it's

got if you've got a large music collection. It even on a faster connection on the USB two for example, UM, which is you know, I know, not necessarily the fastest. There are other standards like USB three and Thunderbolt that are technically faster, but I mean reasonably fast by today's standards. Um, it's still gonna take you a while to upload you know,

gigs of data these songs to your your iPod again. Right, So with iCloud, using your iTunes library to start with, you know, the purchase history you have to start with, uh it uh. The means that you don't have to upload those songs. That that's a huge advantage over things like the Amazon and Google approaches, where you do have to upload your files to that cloud storage in order

to store them there. Right, So if I have five thousand songs on my computer and I want to use Google's approach, I have to actually upload those songs first to my Google account. So that's gonna take a while because upload speeds tend to be slower than download speeds because you know, people download more than they upload, so upstream is a slower data transfer rate. So if you're uploading a lot of content, depending on your Internet connection, it can take a long long time. So iTunes approach

there saves you all that time. Right, Your purchase history becomes your library immediately in the iCloud. On top of that, if you have songs in your iTunes library that you did not purchase through iTunes. Let's say that you had a collection of cd s that you ripped from using iTunes and you've got them in your library, but you didn't purchase them through iTunes. Well, if iTunes has those albums and those songs in its library, that's got like

eighteen million songs in the iTunes library. So if those songs appear in the iTunes library, what will happen is the the service will identify those songs and match it to the song that's in the iTunes library. Yeah, so basically, um, you know, say you have, um, I don't know, a cold Play album and your I'm just picking cold Play. It's a band that I don't particularly like. I you know, Sorry, I just picked something. I was gonna say, you too. I don't know why either of them. So sorry, Okay.

So you know, let's say you have a record that's in your collection and you want to add it to your you know, your cloud storage. Um, as soon as it recognizes that you have that in there, it says, oh, well, we've already got that. Well we'll just give you. You don't have to uploaded, we'll put it in here for you. And the files that they're using are two fifty six

K iTunes plus level files. So so it might even be like, let's say that you when you ripped the CD, you ripped it at a lower a lower rate than technically the higher rates one it essentially equates to as a higher rate in general means better sound or more accurate to the original version sound. So the more compression you use, the smaller bit rate that you encode the file ad basically means that you're leaving out more information in the music file. So it's not going to have

his high fidelity. Depending upon your the sensitivity of your hearing, you may or may not be able to detect that with certain songs. Uh, my hearing has been to the point where I really don't tend to notice unless it's really, really really bad transfer. So yeah, so for me, it's not as big a deal. But it's a nice thing to know that that iTunes is going to match your songs and probably match them to a quality that is

superior to whatever it was you were you were using before. Yeah, and and this is where this is where I'm a little fuzzy, because it suggests that those files are in our stored in the cloud, and therefore that's how you would access the access them, um, rather than having it,

you know, download back to your music player. I think it's yeah, it's it's worded in a very vague way, but based upon what I've been reading, it sounds to me that you would then, uh, let's say again, We'll use the example of my my desktop computer at home and I've got my master music collection on there, and

then I've got several eye devices. Um, it sounds to me that even the iTunes match part would just mean that if my brand new iPhone, I brought my brand new iPhone home and registered it and connected it to my iTunes account, it would then download all those songs that wouldn't stream them, it would download them and store them locally on the uh the iPhone. Uh So that's my interpretation based upon the wording. And again, like we said, it's pretty vague. Uh there there. Maybe it's vague because

they plan to open up streaming later. It maybe that streaming is still a sensitive topic with the music labels that iTunes has partnered with. UM, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I think they went with the download method is because you know, they actually had to partner with these music labels, as opposed to Amazon's approach where they're like, this is just another way of accessing

content you already own. iTunes wanted this to be uh more of a widespread data management system where you could have that you can have access to the same data across multiple devices. So uh, I think it's still download, upload and download, it's not streaming. That's that's based upon

my interpretation of what they've written, and I understand that. Um. The other piece being that, uh what we've talked about basically the free option here because basically anyone with an account, um, an iTunes account should be able to get iCloud just as part of the service. But you can. They're offering an option for ninety nine a year where you can

hold your entire collection. So that would be you know, for a lot of people, that's going to be more than an iPod will hold well, depending on size of your iPod and your music collection. But you know, people with very large music collections, uh may have gigabytes or even terabytes worth of music, and you know, there's not an iPod yet that will hold a terabyte. Um now,

granted give it a week. If all of your if all of your music, and all of your books, and all of your apps were purchased through the iTunes store, then the five gigabytes is all you need anyway, because it doesn't count against the five gigabytes. It's when you start talking about music that is outside of of the

iTunes library when you start having problems. So let's say that you've you've ripped a CD from a local band that doesn't that's not on iTunes, and you want that music available, Well, then you're gonna have to have you're gonna actually have to pay that that yearly fee to have the option to upload those files to your Actually, I guess not because you've got the five gigabytes, but those those songs will count against the five gigabytes and storage.

Maybe they're particularly prolific band with many many records. Um yeah, the iTunes the iTunes Match service is kind of interesting that that actually has the limit on it is a twenty five thousand song limit. So if you've got now, if you've got a whole bunch of CDs that you've ripped and then and you may have to start making some choices once you're like, oh this is twenty hundred seventy five, which one was is gonna be twenty four thousand,

hundred seventy six. Well make a meatloads songs that way, I get more quant to T. So again, we were we were talking earlier about the I'm sorry you always throw me off with me loo, I'm kind of hungry myself. UM. Yeah. The thing is it's not just gonna be about video and audio. I mean there's really not a video option here yet, um. But there are other other compelling bits to this service. Sorry for the again bits pun UM.

For example, photo stream UH. Photo stream behaves a little similarly to the to the music portion of the service. If you have a an iPhone or an iPod, toucher an iPad with a camera UM, and you take a photo while you're out with it, it should use iCloud automatically to sink it. Let's say you have one of all of the above plus a a computer UM where you have an iTunes account, it should download everything over

to uh the different machines. So you've been on a trip and you took your your phone with you and you've taken pictures, it will sink to your home computer so that you can show them off there without you

having to upload them. Likewise, if you take pictures with a a UH standalone digital camera and you upload them, say through I Photo on a Mac, you would be able to share those to your phone and your I iPod Touch and your iPad, assuming you have all those devices UM, without having to take an extra step to do that. It does that automatically. Now, it only will save your last UH. It keeps what they call a

rolling collection of your last thousand photos. So you get into a thousand, fifteen, thousand, sixteen, the first fifteen and sixteen photos chronologically will start to drop off. They won't go any they won't go anywhere, but they won't be in your eye cloud anyway. Right, Well, the UM and I thought I would go ahead and mention this because I'm sure we're gonna get email UH or Facebook comments

or Twitter comments. So year that's what gives you the access to iTunes match so so without even though as far as I can tell, the the music that would be matched through iTunes, I don't think that would be counted against your five gigabytes, but I'm not entirely sure. I know that any music you've purchased through iTunes will not count against the five gigabytes of storage. The music that's been matched through iTunes that might actually count against

your five gigabytes. So this is the music that you own that is also on iTunes, but you did not purchase it through iTunes. UM, so I know you. There is the yearly fee, which is uh, and I based upon this, I'm guessing that does count against your your storage space, which might be why they said the song limit. Um, I'm not entirely certain of that. Like I said, a lot of this is vague right now, and and I have I just got back for a vacation and I haven't had a chance to to play with this yet. UM,

but yeah, it's uh. The it is interesting. They do a a UM comparison of Apple's I Cloud service against Amazon Service and Google Service on Apple, so you can guess how it shapes up. But they talk about how the methods, like the fact that you do not need to scan your music collection to start off an iCloud. Anything that you've purchased through iTunes will automatically be put

up there. So you don't have to upload it, and then of course the iTunes match if you go with that method, again, you don't need to upload that music. It just has to be matched to iTunes library and then that will be put into your eye Cloud as well, whereas with Amazon and Google you both have to upload those files to that system in order to use those um and then that there is a specific app from for the desktop computers and laptops which is called iTunes.

You may have heard of it that you use to access the eye Cloud, whereas Amazon and Google you access through a web brow are uh them that talks about that. You know it has the upgrade option to the two fifty six k UH rate for the songs um and that the price to have access to five thousand or twenty thousand songs is the same. It's twenty ninety nine

a year. You can have up to twenty thousand songs that way, But if you wanted to do that with Amazon, uh, the price for five thousand songs would be fifty dollars a year and for twenty thousand songs two hundred dollars a year. And then for Google, it's question mark, question mark question mark because it hasn't been mentioned yet, so

we're still hashing that out. And we should also mention that, you know, we've talked a lot about music because obviously the the tie in with iTunes means that that's where a lot of the focus is going. Uh. And we've also talked about you know, any books you purchased through iTunes or any apps you purchased through iTunes will live in the eye cloud as well, but you can also

have other kinds of files and documents stored your eye cloud. Yeah. Yeah, Before before we get away from that, I wanted to point out that UM iTunes match is scheduled to hit this fall. Yeah. I believe that's supposed to be concurrent with the iOS five UM. But you can get your your new and past purchases SINCD now via beta and I had I had forgotten to mention that. So if you've UM, if you've bought music on on your home computer and you want to get it on uh, say

you forgot to sink your the music over. You should be able to see it in iTunes on an iPhone or an I pad for example, sitting in front of me where my notes are UM, and I should be able to Uh, if I wanted to turn off my notes and go look, I should theoretically be able to see that past stuff and download it if I want to do that device, which is again in beta already now.

But yeah, and you can set the download feature to automatic if you wanted to, which means that every time you purchased a song through iTunes or an app or a book through iTunes, anytime you purchased one, it would automatically download to all devices that were set to automatic. I don't think I would want to do that. You can also do it manually, so because I have, I used my devices separately for separate reasons, and a lot

of people do. Write like some people might have a specific iOS device that they use when they're working out, and they have a workout song list, and they don't want their Broadway musical list to being mixed up with their workout song list because you know, put on a Happy Face is not the song they want to hear while they're on the elliptical. So uh, yeah, there there are reasons why you might want to have some of

your devices set to manual. Especially let's say that you have an enormous music collection and you don't want your smartphone to be completely bogged down with music, um when you have other stuff you want to put on there, or you don't want the same apps to go to all of your eye devices across the entire spectrum. There are reasons why you might want to set it to manu well instead of automatic. And then there are other people who just want to have the same experience across

all their platforms. They want everything to be accessed everywhere. But then moving back to the the other kind of files that you can store in a way, iCloud is replacing mobile me yes, and so ultimately once it's in full version, once it debuts and I'm assuming it's going to do that around the time of iOS five as well, then you'll be able to access things like calendar and documents, things like that across your various devices and it's all

automatically um synchronized. So just like if you have if you're in the in the Google environment, the Google ecosystem, and you're using Google Calendar, you know, if you're using that to access if you're accessing that would like say an Android smartphone, and then you switch over and you access it through your desktop, it's already synchronized properly that way, same kind of thing, except this is with Apple's approach

as opposed to Google's approach. So there's more functionality there that's gonna appear as the uh we get closer to the official launch um and it's you know, it's it. I like the the approach Apple's done here. I like the fact that i Cloud access an online backup system for your music. So let's say that your computer suffers a catastrophic failure, uh, and you can't recover stuff off your hard drive, Well, then you still know that all

of those purchases are still there. You know, it used to be back in the day that you could contact Apple and get uh, recover songs that you had lost through some you know, other catastrophe, but it wasn't necessarily easy to do. And now they've really streamlined that through i Cloud. So it's it's a fairly large shift in that respect, and another respect, it's Apple's business as usual and that this approach again really stresses that the system

works great if you a lot of Apple devices. Yeah, yeah, So again they're trying to you know, it's not completely closed off. You can use it with the PC but whether or not you're eventually gonna be able to use this with other kinds of mobile devices, that's less likely. Yeah, it's um, you know, we've we've we've had this discussion, and uh, most of our listeners I think are up on where we are on the benefits and detriments of

the open versus the closed system. This is um. People complain about Apple's closed system, but it enables much tighter integration than you would have because Apple's got the control over it, but you would have with other, um, other systems, although you know, there is a benefit to being open as well. So UM, it's you know, and that's why it's so seamless for these systems, is that Apple's got

so much control over it. That's why you say that Apple stuff just works because it's designed to work in a very specific way. And the problem is that not necessarily problem. But the flip side of that coin is that it's going to work the way they intended to work, not necessarily the way you would like it to work. And so you may not have as much control over that. But if you like the way it works, it may be such an issue exactly. Yeah, if if you're like this,

is totally the way I want it to work. Well, then there's no issue, right, it's the people who like to hack and fiddle with things that can get a little frustrated with Apple. And it's not saying that their approach is right or wrong. It's just a specific approach. Yeah, and I and I can see both sides of that. Artist can do. Um one of the things that I do like. Then this is not what I would consider

a very glamorous feature, but I think it's really cool. Um. And it threatens people, not necessarily Amazon or Google with their services because um, you know, although Google has Google Docs, UM is the what they're calling documents in the cloud on the website where uh, there is an a p I or there are APIs bill into iCloud where developers and then again this was announced that WWDC developers can embed these a p I s into their software so that it will enable people who are using Apple devices

to save their documents directly into the eye Cloud. So um, theoretically you would be able to use third party applications and have them seamlessly access your information you know, read to read from and store to your eye Cloud account. Um, which would enable again more integration with multiple devices. UM. I think that's pretty cool. It does sort of, uh

make it more challenging for people like uh Dropbox. UM. I use, I have accounts on multiple cloud storage companies too, so I don't think I don't mean to single them out specifically. I do like people like box, dot Net and and Sugar Sinc. But UM, Dropbox has been really good about in particular about making UM their API is available so that the I, the UM other applications that I use can read from and store to my drop Box.

Now the eye cloud is bigger, the amount of storage is bigger, so it may force drop Box, which is a much smaller company to uh upgrade the amount of storage has or you know, hopefully in a way that doesn't compromise their password system. Right right. That's a different story. Yes, that is a different story, but it's you know the same kind of idea where you you can use different applications from other people and you know, still get access

to your cloud storage seamlessly without having to worry about it. UM. They're also talking about the possibility, or they're also talking

about it's not a possibility, they're gonna do it. UM. Thinking things like your your address book and your email and contacts between multiple devices including Outlook for the PC UM, which is going to be very handy for people who use uh their mobile Apple devices on for work as well as you know, your personal stuff, because then you'll have assuming again you'll you'll have a lot more information. They're a lot more email, maybe maybe multiple accounts, shore accounts,

multiple calendars, lots and lots of contacts. Um. That would be very useful for these kinds of things. And I think that's one of those things that made people go, That's not what I was really hoping for, but I think it's something that would be extremely useful for a

lot of people. And um, it's kind of funny. Uh. I read on c net uh an article by Josh Lewinson that was published um um just yesterday when at the time of recording this podcast anyway, that um that there's an analyst, Gene Munster, who believes that iCloud might be an indication that Apple is developing an Apple television, not not Apple TV, but an actual television set that incorporates Apple technology in it, kind of like the Google televisions that we've seen, um, and that the I cloud

would be the place where you know, if you were to purchase television shows or movies or rent them, that they would go into your i Cloud account and then you would be able to access them through something like an Apple television. And that that that is something that that he expects to see incorporated in iCloud in the in the somewhat near future. It might be a year from now, but that that would be something that we

would see pop up later. Yeah, it's um. The Apple television itself has been again sort of like the iPad before, it has been rumored for I would say probably at least a year now as again as at the time we've recorded this, maybe longer than that. So, um, you know, there is a possibility. Of course, they do have Apple TV, and the i Cloud will allow you to sync with an Apple TV too, at least on a limited basis.

They mentioned it specifically with the photos the photo stream, you should be able to pull up your photos and show them on your TV if you have an Apple TV as well. So it seems like that that's not even remotely out of the realm of possibility. It's just whether or not they're ready to gear up and launch that. Yeah, the biggest the biggest question I've heard remains, will there ever be a streaming element to this so that you can access the music that there's that's in your eye

cloud without having to download it. So let's say you want to use your UM iPhone and you you want to listen to the music that you have, but you don't want to to take up the memory space like you know that that would be for someone who let's say they want an iPhone, but they don't want to shell out the money to get the top of the line, you know, iPhone with the most storage. They would rather go with the more basic model and then use streaming

in order to access their music. Now, streaming comes with its own problems. Usually you have to have a really fast connection in order to do it, so it might have to be over WiFi, or it might have to be over some sort of four g um network. But uh, you know, there, I know that there's a there are a lot of questions about that. Especially people are saying, well, why did you buy Lala if you're not using a

streaming service? And again, we just don't know yet if I Cloud will ultimately uh allow for some sort of streaming element. UM just right now. It just doesn't seem like that's the case. Well, companies that are as big as Amazon, Google and Apple who are offering these services in similar services, um, you know, they have an enormous

installed customer base. Um. If it was a new a brand new company with a growing customer base and you could roll roll out the beta in a general slower fashion and give you know, a couple of thousand people access at a time, you would be able to have a lot more control over that. Rolling out a streaming service to all the iTunes customers, you know, say just in the United States and you just need to upgrade your iTunes iTunes ten point three and then you can

access the e cloud stuff. Yeah, it just seems like it would be something of an enormous task. And they they Apples famous for holding off until they feel they've done it right, and not only the case that they have, but but but you know, they would rather wait. In fact, they let you know, we knew that this something along these lines was coming, and Amazon and Google both released

their music services first. Um. And of course they they did so without securing agreements with all the music companies as Apple did. UM, so you know, and it remains to be seen to whether they've they will take offense to that. That's been rumored that they will um well, and there's there's even been talk about the twenty four fee. Some people have called that a piracy amnesty fee. Yeah, because the music that you ripped from your CDs. That's

that's the general idea of the iTunes match service. But we all know there are plenty of people out there who have songs that are in their iTunes library that they got through either I mean friends ripping the Friends CD is probably the least the most the most quote unquote innocent of the little the little uh piracy of attempts. Or they may have gone to some peer to peer network in the past and and they downloaded, you know, albums,

several albums and uh, and they never bought them. So some people have suggested that that annual fee, which a portion of which is going to these music labels, that that annual fee is actually essentially the music labels seeing a way to finally recoup some money on music that was otherwise stolen um and that that was one of the reasons why these agreements finally went through, was because they were actually gonna you know, Otherwise, these companies are

never getting money for those songs that were stolen, right, And this way they get a little money for it, which is better than no money at all, or so I'm told. And I mean, if you've got a hundred million people logging onto your service, and even only if even only half of them use iTunes match, that's fifty million people at twenty four nine a year. Um, you know that's that that that totals up pretty quickly to an impressive amount. I'm pretty sure it's more than seven dollars.

It might be as much as ten could be. Wow. And you know what, actually, dollars don't mean as much to me anymore, because I just got back from Europe, and once you started making that conversion from euros to dollars in your head over and over, you're thinking, wow, I am so poor. Alright, this hot dog is costing me a fortune. All right. Yeah, it's kind of opposite of when I went to Canada anyway, So let's wrap

this up. Uh, that Canada joke was from many years ago. Actually, because of course, now the Canadian dollars dollar very close. I was just gonna let somebody right in and correct you. But Okay, well, no, no, they need to know I went to Canada many years ago. Okay, that's why I'm referencing anyway, So we're wrapping up this conversation, and uh, we'll keep an eye out. You know. The Eye cloud service will officially debut in the fall of twenty eleven, so we will keep our eyes open and see what

other things develop as we get closer to launch. And we'll play around with the cloud service in the meantime and see what kind of nifty things we can do with the beta features. And uh, then we'll probably bemoan the things that we can't do because because we're tech

people and we like to we like to complain. Plus, um, you know, both Jonathan and I have gotten invites to be uh participants in the Google Music program, which I need to play with that in the Amazon I've uploaded I've uploaded music to Google, and I also I'm a customer with Amazon, so I've already got that as well. Uh, but I've just barely scratched the surface because uh, I just haven't had the time to devote to really play

with them. So yeah, we will. We will definitely do more pair and contrast amongst them, especially once we book and in that month long time span we have to upload all of our music to to Google and Amazon. That's gonna take a while. Um, so we'll we'll talk more about this in the future. And of course cloud service is not going away. Even with all the recent stories about hacking and there's concerns about security and stability and privacy. Even with all that, it's clear that cloud

services are are gonna be around for a while. I mean, they've got some major backing behind them, so we're not gonna see them disappear overnight, probably unless there's some sort of cast traffic failure, in which case we have other things to worry about. Well, maybe the sun will come and burn off the cloud. So anyway, we're gonna sign off now. If you guys have any topics you would like us to talk about, let us know on Facebook

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