by With the impending arrival of iCloud, I realized my 18 gig iDisk was soon to be in jeopardy. I use my iDisk as a drag-and-drop backup system for oddities and curiosities that I like to save during my work day. With iDisk storage gone in iCloud, I realized I’d better find a new form of easy backup.
What happens to the files on my MobileMe iDisk?
You will be able to continue using MobileMe iDisk through June 30, 2012, even after moving to iCloud. You should save copies of all files stored on iDisk before that date.
One of the forgotten benefits of getting rid of iDisk now, instead of waiting until Apple pulls the plug in a year, was getting 18 gigs of local storage back on my machine! Oh, how I needed that extra stretching room between the Apple remote iDisk storage server and my local, mirrored, drive.
Now that I have all that disk space back, I need to find another simple remote disk storage system. I could use Google Docs or Dropbox or Amazon S3. I am a little disappointed, though, that Apple isn’t moving iDisk into the iCloud.
It looks like iCloud will offer some sort of conditional storage space:
I currently use more than 5GB of storage in MobileMe. Will I be able to buy more storage for iCloud?
Yes. iCloud includes 5GB of free storage for mail, documents, and backup, which should be enough for most users. Purchased music, apps, and books do not count against this 5GB of storage, nor do the photos in your Photo Stream. If you still need more storage, you will be able to buy it. Details will be provided when iCloud is available this fall.
Are people not using iDisk? Is iDisk made of olden technology that doesn’t suit up today’s needs? In all the years I’ve used iDisk, I never had a problem. iDisk ran every day without a single incident or hiccough.
Technology trundles on without us — but I confess to missing my little iDisk icon that would remotely sync to servers faraway that I never saw nor met, but depended upon daily to have my remote backup back.
From what I am reading you can still do backup and restore but it just won’t be called iDisk anymore — it will be a part of iCloud.
Mr. Gordon —
That’s what I don’t understand. Why remove the idea of iDisk if it’s still there? Will we be able to have a remote drive we can still “drop stuff on” to backup in iCloud or not?
I think it’s because the notion of a “disk” is now considered antiquated and they want to get you used to the word Cloud instead in terms of data storage. There is no one disk on which your data is being stored. It’s just floating out there in a beautiful cloud.
That’s interesting, Gordon. I’m seeing a lot of people ditching iDisk for Dropbox — even though Dropbox recently dropped the ball on security — so that suggested to me that there wasn’t an iDisk equivalent coming to iCloud and I don’t think Apple makes it clear on their website what’s really happening.
Thanks for your post. My thinking about iDisk death is, as I read somewhere, the difference between free and paid iCloud:
– free: iCloud for iTune data
– paid: iCloud with (maybe) some kind of iDisk replacement with a new iName, not so usable as an iDisk.
Until now we’ve got approx 20GB of iDisk for free, in the near future we’ll get probably 10GB for a few bucks per month, 20GB for a bit less or equal than the double amount of bucks and so on.
To digress a bit (but not so much), I’d like to add some thoughts about the disappearance of iDisk. In the trench warfare MS/Apple, Apple is closing more and more the door to non Apple users.
Digital Trends wrote about iCloud:
“Will work with a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7 and iTunes 10.3 (Me: XP users – millions – go away!). From what we’ve heard thus far, iCloud will not offer storage for Microsoft Office documents (Me: what a surprise) or an option for storing and syncing outside files. Anything you’ve got stored in Flickr, Dropbox, Picasa, CloudMe, Google Docs, etc – will be staying there unless users personally transfer it over manually. We all know why this is a frustration: Say you’re currently an iPhone, iPad, and Mac user, but at some point you’re tempted by an Android phone. Apple’s trapped your data within its walled garden. A big part of iCloud’s function will be lost on you unless you remain a loyal Apple consumer. Not to say Apple’s the only one guilty of such closed-ecosystem tactics, but it doesn’t make it any fairer to users.”
I pretty much agree with them namely, the new Apple slogan will be: Be Apple or die. Adapt yourself to the product, the product will not.
Hi Eric! Welcome to Urban Semiotic and thank you for your help!
I appreciate your analysis and I know you’re right about Apple wanting to trap us — and they’ll do it really well, too. I buy most of my music on iTunes. We’re a Mac household. We have iPhones and iPads.
However, I don’t like some of the iCloud restrictions. I want my iDisk functionality back. I don’t like storing DRM-protected PIECES of my music on my iPhone while Apple streams the missing bits to me. I want to fully own my stuff and my content and I want to be able to take it all with me if I decide to switch to an Android phone in the future.
I know Apple doesn’t want that to happen and instead of making us so happy we won’t ever want to leave, they’re making it so we will be unable to leave even if we feel we must. Is that smart business or a dumb monopoly?