Anyone nervous about iCloud?

So Apple is moving our lives to the cloud? Two things come to mind reading about how this will work. First, I think Awesome! Then, I think, well what are they doing with all of that information?

Let’s face it, there is something super “the future is now” about having all of your information available across almost any device you own wherever you are. Lots of people have been working towards that using a variety of products from Google, etc. to get entirely into the cloud, but ol’ Jobsy and Apple making it significantly easier in one graceful fel Apple swoop. I’m not surprised. iCloud has been on the horizon for a while, but in true Apple form, it looks like it’s being implemented with high style and big fanfare. 

Looking past the glitz and wow factor though, I can’t help but think about how much information this will put in the hands of Apple. There are so many what if’s my brain starts to tremble at the thought. Conspiracy theorists around the world are probably more giddy today than the Apple fan boys. To date it seems like the security and dependability of the cloud has been pretty well defended with solid logic and facts. Even if that’s true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, I can’t help but wonder things like (1) what if they used that info on us, (2) what if something happened to the info, and (3) what if they sold that info.

Let’s look at those. 

1 - what’s the worst that could happen if they did use the info to market better to us? The decisions in the end are are still ours to make. Afterall, they are giving the service to us free (if you don’t count the arm and leg you had to give for the devices) in return for us using their equipment and keeping our precious info with them. 

2 - Even if something happens to the magical fields of cloud servers that Apple will no doubt employ the latest and greatest security measures for, there is still a possibility that a meteor could smash down on the buildings, a tornado could whip through, or a tsunami could wash it all away, right? Definitely. So do we not use it because of that? Nope. Look, just because they’re going to let us access all of our information from all sorts of places, doesn’t mean that we can just give up the responsibility of keeping backups of our own. This is a lesson that could be applied to a lot of new tech. It’s great, use it, but you are responsible for you.

3 - here’s the big one. I haven’t seen any terms and conditions or privacy policies, but no matter how benign they may seem now, I’m sure they have something in there that lets them change the rules whenever they want. The odds are against them doing wholesale schilling of lists of millions, but there are many other ways to make money from our info than that. Just ask Facebook and Twitter who rake in billions by looking at the information we have on their servers. To be honest, this is what worries me the most. I don’t think any axe murderers are going to show up at my door with info they got from Apple; I’m much more concerned about someone else making so much money off me without paying me. I guess, if I don’t like it, I don’t have to buy their products, but that doesn’t seem like the friendliest way to do things. Why don’t they just let us decide what of it is available to advertisers and cut us in on the money they make from it? 

Like Rodney said “Can’t we all just get along?”