I just got this email from MobileMe, informing me that my MobileMe subscription was about to end, and inviting me to move my account to iCloud.
iDon't want to move to iCloud! And iWon't!
I’ve been avoiding iCloud like the plague, because I, for one, am not really interested in having Big Brother be the keeper of all my information.
iCloud is Apple’s suite of wireless sync and backup services, whose function is to keep all your iOS devices synchronized, regardless of which one you happen to be using at any particular moment.
While most see iCloud as some savior and a panacea for all that ails us, when it comes to synchronizing and backing up your data, I am not among them.
Even while Apple claims that the cloud (and supposedly all of your private data) is ‘secure’, recent events have proven otherwise.
More importantly, I don’t really dig the fact that I don’t have a choice in the matter.
What if I don’t want to move my MobileMe account to the cloud?
What happens with my data?
Is my account locked?
Is my content irretrievably lost?
And what does moving to iCloud really mean?
Apple claims that I’ve got 5Gb of ‘free’ storage.
But my iTunes library alone is over 20Gb.
What happens with the rest of my music library?
And what about my pictures and video?
How will iCloud handle all that?
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
The reality is that there are (some) answers to all many of these questions.
MacWorld published a very comprehensive article on iCloud last summer, which addressed many of the questions I raised above, and then some.
But, if you’re like me, you’re really not trying to read an entire tome just to figure out the costs and benefits associated with trying something new.
Especially if you really don’t have a choice in the matter.
Come June 2012, MobileMe will be gone.
Period.
If you haven’t moved to iCloud before then, you’re screwed.
Period.
Sure, you’ll still have access to some of the functionality currently available on MobileMe.
But the majority of what (I’m sure) most of us use MobileMe for, will be gone – forever.
And what Apple doesn’t say, is that to access some of the advanced features that you’re probably going to want to use, you’re going to have to pay – dearly.
Being a technologist, I’ve already got data synch and back-up happening without iCloud.
Apple has had these features available within it’s ecosystem for years.
But now they’ve got everyone clamoring to get on the ‘cloud’ even though doing so may ultimately be to their detriment.
I’ve had a slew of calls from clients seeking help for the (to borrow a term from a fellow blogger) clusterfuck they’ve gotten themselves into, blindly accepting iCloud’s Ts&Cs only to find themselves incapable of finding their data later.
Luckily for them, they know that my crew and I are Apple guerrilla warriors and un-clusterfucking the clusterfucked is our speciality.
But if you’re a regular Joe, and don’t have a crew of Apple ninja assassins at your beck and call, proceed into the cloud with caution.
As many who have moved to iCloud have found out, all that glitters is not gold.
Stephen Chukumba 