My general therory is that these will be dieing, in a sense, and soon. I have a feeling that the average users will start using there own low cost servers and NAS's making services such as the Cloud (Which is a terrible terrible term) irellavent.
This thought struck me as someone else posted on the forum about Adobe switching to a purely cloud based suite for cs7.
Anyone agree, disagree?
Please sare your thoughts.
Goonch
I personally don't like the cloud, but I also believe it's ahead of its time for major adoption at least in the U.S. Cloud services require speeds that really aren't present outside of major cities, at least for a low price. Big cities get the premium speeds in my town for a third the price, and if you do streaming from the cloud such as cloud gaming, you're clogging up your bandwidth. I also believe the average consumer either doesn't care or doesn't like cloud storage. I prefer local storage so I can access files, videos, and music when I want.
Good point. For programs like the adobe suite a really high bandwidth would be really beneficial. gigabit is hopefully coming to my part of town soon, only the north side has it now. Fiber would be a great breeding ground for cloud networks. I would argue by the time our infastructure expands, personal computing and server use would as well...
I wouldn't be too paranoid about it. Face it, there are some people who would positively thought cloud services would benefit them, especially if they're on the move constantly. But that'll be their opinions and time changes so that's life...
I think that in a few years time there will be a revival of personal computing and desktop PC's. The use will be different than in the past though. I think the desktop computer will become the hub for portable devices. People will learn to distrust cloud services from big companies the hard way, and they will also learn the hard way what it means not to be the master of one's own data.
I think that there are services that actually make sense in the cloud, but other are being pushed to the cloud but don't make that much sense. I think bandwidth and accessibility through the internet will be limited in the next couple of years, with CISPA coming and ISP's tightening their grip, and all the lobbying going on from old media industries to limit the availibility of the Internet to protect their interests (like TV is dying because of the Internet, so they will limit consumer bandwidth to 20-50 GB/month to counter that for instance, mobility is a thorn in the side of the intelligence community so they will limit data bandwidth on mobile devices or impose new conditions of use, like making localisation mandatory, as in you can't connect unless we know who you are and where you are).
In the end, that will lead to a growth in business for small hosting companies that offer cloud services locally, and to a return to private data storage in a desktop computer.
Everything always moves in cycles, now everyone shares everything without even thinking about it, that will end with a bang, and then the opposite will happen. In the 70's, the computing model was a large mainframe with a lot of terminals, then MS-DOS came and personal computing and peer-to-peer networking models became popular, now with cloud services, that is changing again, and there will be a movement back to a more independant networking model again in a couple of years.
i used legal versions of the adobe suite until now, but i'm not going to use their could-service & subscription model (talk about taking customers hostage). I'm going to shamelessly pirate their new version if i'm forced to migrate to from CS5 to a newer version. I'm also going look if i can get a good wrokflow with gimp & plugins.
So for the cloud-software-model in general: it'll stay as a demo-tool, as well as a way to get powerful software to run on low power mobile systems. There might be a model of free software that mines you for data as well as bombarding you with adds, that is going to be used by morons. But the somewhat more intelligent people are going to shy away from it once they realize what it entails.
I'm worried about the legal aspects of creating stuff on the cloud.
Here's the thing:
- Hypothesis 1: you create something locally, by any means you deem necessary, and then use a dedicated publication cloud service like YouTube to publish your created content. YouTube optionally provides a software service to edit your videos, but it's optional and ultimately based on free and open source software. On top of that, YouTube emphasises that the content you publish or edit through their services is yours and that you are responsible for it.
- Hypothesis 2: you have created something locally, by any means you deem necessary, and then use a dedicated publication cloud service like Facebook to publish your created content. Facebook optionally provides third party software applications that you can use to edit your software, and these are all closed source proprietary even though they are optional in theory, but by nature of their closed source character, no user can be sure as to what exactly they do. On top of that, Facebook candidly mentions that all content you submit is your responsibility in case of trouble, but if there's nothing wrong with it, they have all the rights to it.
- Hypothesis 3: you have created something locally, by any means you deem necessary, and edit it with cloud software services like Adobe Creative Cloud, for which you use the available third-party closed source proprietary plug-ins to publish it on third party cloudbased publishing services like YouTube, Tumblr, 500px, etc.... You lease the right to use that software service (including the proprietary publishing plugin) from Adobe on a per month basis. Due to a mishap, you fail to pay your monthly lease and your account is blocked, which per contract means that Adobe suddenly has all rights over your account and the parts thereof, without limitation, and can lock you out from your own content, which you can't salvage because your account is blocked.
Now what kind of model do you prefer/like/hate? And do you really need to try it to know whether it's good for you? Lolz
Good point zoltan. Facebook already can claim ownership of published content on their site. Its a slippery slope we can run down and companies (especially adobe) won't stop at anything to make a extra buck.
This is why personal computing and even publication is the future.
and Destroyed, im not being parnoyed, im being logical.