Despite the large addition of share features in iOS 6 and Mountain Lion , the society ’s concept of “ sharing ” is actually a narrow-minded one . And in an increasingly interconnected era — when the great unwashed are spending more and more time sharing words , images , files , and more with other people and among a variety of equipment — that ’s a problem .
Looking at iCloud in special , it seems that Apple ’s plan of attack to communion is almost antithetical to the conception itself . The online inspection and repair rigidly specify what you’re able to share and how you’re able to share it ; its principal directive often seems to be to keep you inside Apple ’s ecosystem .
Indeed , Apple ’s theme of making all of your files approachable to you from anywhere through iCloud overlooks two specific user needs : Sometimes you want to open up file in multiple programs , and sometimes more than one soul demand approach to a data file .
Feeling un’appy
It ’s clean-cut that Apple ’s launch of iCloud hasthe classic musical theme of a filesystem squarelyin its crosshairs . In the futurity , you ’ll no longer have to create a complicated power structure of folders , to preserve multiple versions of the same file , or even to remember where your file is put in .
From Apple ’s linear perspective , this is all about work things easier for the user . You no longer have to remember where you put a filing cabinet on a disk ; instead , all you have to remember is the app you used to produce or edit it . After all , it ’s easier to remember that you were editing an icon in Preview than that you saved it seven folders late on your hard drive . I ’ve certainly found myself swear more and more on the Open Recent menu option in apps that have it .
Tying filing cabinet to apps has its advantage , to be sure . But Apple ’s way of follow through has a monetary value : share file between applications is more difficult and unwieldy now than it was before .
Right now , data file are associated with the programs that create them . That might be ok and groovy for apps like Pages or Keynote , which use their own proprietary data formatting . But it quickly falls apart when you ’re working with more - generic file types , such as text , images , audio , and video , each of which can be worked on in a multitude of apps .
For case , if you ’d care to take a text file created in TextEdit and stored in iCloud , and then edit it in some other program , there ’s no well-to-do way to do so . No other programme can see that data , either on the Mac or the iPad . In fact , no Io program at all can see the files store in TextEdit , because there ’s no equivalent Apple school text editor program on that program . The same goes for PDFs and image : you may pull through them in iCloud via Preview on OS X , but when you jump to your iPad or iPhone , those files are nowhere to be detect .
Of course , you could just e-mail the file in interrogation to yourself , and then use iOS ’s Open In feature to establish the app you want to use . But you ’d then have two versions of the file , put in in unlike locations , with no established relationship between them . If , after blue-pencil that file , you want to take it back to the original software , you have to go through the electronic mail rigmarole again , create yet another version of the file . That render another of Apple ’s canny filesystem pinch — the Versions feature of speech introduced in Lion — entirely useless .
One solvent might be to enclose an mind of individual and public files . Private documents would still be limited to the current model of doing thing , untouchable to other applications without going through the above - described operation . Public files , on the other mitt , would be accessible to any applications programme that could care a file of that type . An Open duologue boxful for iCloud could display a disjoined list of file usable from the other app on your machine .
irrespective of how Apple solves the trouble , make no error : It require to be solved . While services like Dropbox , Google Drive , and Microsoft ’s SkyDrive might be more complicated than what Apple hopes to offer with iCloud , all of them give you far more freedom to do what you want with your own files . And after all , they are your files , not Apple ’s .
I am a rock; I am an island
There ’s another facet to this sharing conundrum that ’s no less significant . It ’s about divvy up files between people , not apps .
coaction is at the heart of many personal and professional enterprises . Here at Macworld , for example , we influence together on article , keep track of information in shared spreadsheets , and even now and again make joint Keynote presentations . In Apple ’s filesystem - less future , none of this is remotely favorable .
Consider the work flow for a Keynote intro that my co-worker Lex Friedman and I of late co - created . Although writing an clause together is simply a matter of fire up Google Drive and creating a shared document , if you want to create a presentation in Keynote , no tantamount method is available .
Instead , Lex create the intro single file and saved it in a shared Dropbox folder . We then took play — on alternating days — initiative and work on the file . While one of us was edit it , the other would utilise Quick Look to view it from the Dropbox folder — without opening it , lest doing so might make some sort of difference or datum corruption . Even then , the file had to be re - Quick - Looked each meter the Keynote file was update .
Had we stack away the file in iCloud , even this tangled appendage would have depend comparatively simple . The only option for sharing a Keynote file stored in iCloud are via email , AirDrop , or Messages . Each time I ship it to Lex , he would have had to post it back to me after make his changes . That would have required me to sum the data file into iCloud again , yielding two version of the same intro : one before Lex ’s updates , and one after .
Since OS X Leopard , Apple has been diligently manufacture a system of versioning and backing up Indian file , yet somehow it has permitted this unholy pickle to accumulate . As with sharing file between applications , the strengths of feature like Auto Save and Versions go out the windowpane when multiple users are involve , leading flat to a world where files have name likeApple_Presentation_version_3-Lex-final-really.key .
However , there ’s a huge chance here , specially with iCloud now in the picture . suppose being capable to see other documents that booster or co - workers share with you , the right way in that same iCloud Open dialog boxful . You spread out a data file and exploit on it , all of your changes are mechanically save and versioned so that when your collaborators blue-pencil it later , they ’re trusted to be work out on the most up - to - date edition . Apple could even go whole hog and support existent - meter coaction , allow you to see the changes your ally or cobalt - workers are making as they make them . If the ID you expend for iCloud happens to be the same one you utilise for Messages , you could add real - time chat — text , voice , or video — into the par . Incorporating iChat Theater would let you demo a demonstration to your pardner as you worked on it .
This is n’t exactly low - hanging yield in the technology sense ; such an overhaul would doubtless take a lot of work . But it might make Apple ’s productivity software program more attractive to both personal and endeavor user — peculiarly if the companionship added reinforcement for quislingism between any combining of iOS gadget and Macs . Third - company products like Simperiumalready offer many of these potentiality , but Apple could no doubt introduce an even deep stratum of integration with its exist software .
Apple ’s iWork suite launched with a bang back in 2005 and was update in both 2008 and 2009 . Since then , however , it has waste , with only minor updates such as the recent 9.2 rise that brought musical accompaniment for iCloud itself . One way to add punch to a foresightful delinquent update — almost four age in the making — would be to focus on quislingism .
Again , this is just one human ’s take on a possible future . But as with sharing file between programs , Apple has given forgetful shrift to document quislingism in the yesteryear . Google may have the headstart in that orbit , but it would n’t take much to allow some much - needed rivalry . And Apple is well positioned to do just that .
