14 DAY TRIAL // A Silicon Valley software veteran who has been on Apple’s payroll has published a lengthy post about the upcoming iCloud. Essentially, he makes it sound like Apple’s next best thing.
Kevin Fox, who not only worked at Apple, but also Google and Yahoo!, says “The rumblings are huge.”
He is currently a lead designer at Mozilla and is known for his work on Apple’s Newton software.
He is also behind Yahoo’s popular IM service and Google’s Calendar and Reader applications.
He is obviously well connected as well, but makes a point “of not trying to pry secrets from [his] friends who work at Apple.”
All in all, Fox is in a position to know that “… given the complete failure of MobileMe over the last decade there’s no way Apple would introduce [iCloud] on such a pedestal unless it’s incredible.”
“My guess is that iCloud is to MobileMe as iPhone was to Newton: a complete, deep, polished solution after an underwhelming market failure,” he writes in a post on his fury.com blog.
Fox admits his theory is not based on any inside information, but strongly upholds that the technologies set to be unveiled today - Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud - will change the game yet again.
“At its core, Apple will use Lion and iOS 5 to make the shift from building computers that access the Internet to building a global computing service that lets people use any number of physical devices to access it,” he stresses.
Some of the updates Fox is expecting to hear from Jobs & Co. later today at the WWDC 2011 keynote address include:
· Seamless remote access to any data kept in the user’s Documents folder, and cross-device synchronization
· The ability to walk up to any Mac, use your Apple ID to sign in as a guest and see your personal desktop displayed
· Apple will eliminate the ned to plug your iPhone or iPad in to your computer via realtime, continuous syncing of iOS devices
· iPhone apps will run as Dashboard widgets while iPad apps will be deployed as first-class desktop apps via iOS runtime within Mac OS
· Facilitating lightweight actions on your Mac from your iPad, Apple will introduce built-in screen sharing of Mac OS to the iPad
· Continuous media play across devices.