iCloud Explained:
As I mentioned in the other thread regarding iOS and Android multitasking, there's the idea of "states". Since iOS and Android can both terminate an application whenever they want without user intervention, they also need a way to bring the user back to the same "state" as they were when they last used the application. To quote the Android developer website again:
Quote:
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If a user later returns to an application that's been killed, Android needs a way to re-launch it in the same state as it was last seen, to preserve the "all applications are running all of the time" experience. This is done by keeping track of the parts of the application the user is aware of (the Activities), and re-starting them with information about the last state they were seen in.
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Anyone use Firefox? Have you tried out the syncing capability? For those that haven't, FF can sync your bookmarks, passwords, browsing history, tabs and so on between computers (Chrome has something similar). It does this by storing information on their server (attached to your account) and making it available to FF on a different computer or mobile device. FF can even remember your last browsing session and make it available for you on another device.
This is the idea of "states", except instead of launching an App on a mobile device that was previously "killed" or "closed" you're preserving the "state" of what you were doing and
continuing those tasks on another device.
This is the heart of iCloud. The idea that any task you were performing on one device can be continued on another
seamlessly as if you never actually changed devices.
Some people think this is no different than Google Docs or Dropbox. Right now I can open a document on one machine, close it and then open it again when I get home on a different machine using several online services. This is nothing new - people have been doing it with servers for years.
So what's so different about iCloud vs some other form of cloud based storage? I'll explain that part later (sorry, off to work).