© Mark Ollig
The title of today’s column is a quote by the late Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away ten years ago on Oct. 5, 2011.
Four months earlier, the 5,200-member audience at the Moscone Center in San Francisco greeted the 56-year-old Jobs with thunderous applause as he took the stage during the opening of Apple Computer’s Worldwide Developers Conference held on June 6, 2011.
Jobs returned from being on medical leave to give what turned out to be his last Apple Computer keynote presentation address.
The following is from the June 13, 2011 column I wrote of his address, which includes a few edits:
Physically, Jobs appeared thin – but acted enthusiastically walking back and forth on stage while gesturing with his hands while talking about Apple’s new iCloud.
“Now, some people think the cloud is just a hard disk in the sky,” Jobs declared.
He continued, “We think it’s way more than that, and we call it iCloud.”
Jobs described the iCloud, saying, “It’s a large place and it’s full of stuff. Full of expensive stuff. We are ready, we think, for customers to start using iCloud, and we can’t wait to get it in their hands.”
If every cloud has a silver lining, Apple’s iCloud, with a reported price tag of about $1 billion, likely has a gold lining.
Come to think of it, inside a computing cloud, most of the physical computer hardware components, printed circuit boards, and wired connections are gold plated.
Jobs then showed a photo of Apple Computer’s new data center complex (iCloud) in Maiden, NC., on the large display screen behind him.
An aerial photo of the impressive 500,000 square-foot data center building appeared on the screen; Jobs pointed to the two small dots on the roof of the enormous facility.
When he revealed the two dots were two people standing on the roof, the audience laughed.
Jobs expressed determination when he said, “If you don’t think we’re serious about this, you’re wrong.”
One source reported this data center alone has a capacity for 95,000 to 120,000 data servers.
This complex, called iDataCenter, is also known as Apple’s Eastern United States Data Center.
This iCloud will be used initially for storing user iTunes music libraries, shifting the file storage role from the user’s computer onto Apple’s iCloud.
Computing clouds will eventually store much of the information we today keep in our home and business computers and smartphones.
Jobs explained people would no longer need to be tethered to their personal computer or Mac to sync their iPods, iPads, and iPhones containing the iTunes program. Instead, they will be able to sync their devices with iTunes from directly inside the Apple iCloud via Wi-Fi – from wherever they are.
It will become much more convenient to store and retrieve our computing content online from remote data center clouds.
Cloud computing will become something all of us, sooner or later, will take for granted.
“About ten years ago, we had one of our most essential insights, and that was that the PC (personal computer) was going to become the digital hub for your digital life,” Jobs said.
“Where else were you going to put them?” said Jobs.
Jobs explained, “it was driving us crazy,” to continuously back up into a Mac or Windows PC and synchronize new data between iPhones, iPods, and iPads.
Jobs proceeded to describe Apple’s “next big insight.”
“We’re going to demote the PC and Mac to just be a device, just like an iPhone, an iPad, or an iPodtouch, and we’re going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud. Because all these new devices have communications built into them, they can all talk to the cloud whenever they want.” he said.
Jobs presented an example of when a person takes pictures, and their iPhone would send them into the cloud. The photos are then “pushed down” (delivered) from the cloud to the user’s other devices automatically and wirelessly; everything is in sync – no user intervention is necessary.
“Everything happens automatically, and there’s nothing new to learn. It just all works,” Jobs explained.”
On June 6, 2011, Steve Jobs appeared very excited and optimistic about the possibilities of the new iCloud service.
Apple Computer’s iCloud services launched on Oct. 12, 2011, six days after Steve Jobs died.
Today, iCloud consists of eleven data centers, with six of them in the US.
“I want to put a ding in the universe,” Steve Jobs said during a 1985 interview while discussing the culture of Apple Computer.
The contributions to the computer industry by Steve Jobs and another Apple Computer co-founder, Steve Wozniak, triggered a technological “ding in the universe” that history will remember decades, centuries, and millennia from now.
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| Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak |