1345 If you're a cloud computing proponent your end game is likely a world of cheap thin access client devices that do not rely on local storage or even local computing power to get the job done. Connect me to the cloud, let the cloud handle all storage and computing tasks, and let my device just be a display and control portal.

When Apple announced its iCloud service yesterday at the WWDC, we saw a step in that direction, but the details of iCloud also point out the obstacles that still must be addressed if the journey is to continue. When the service launches later this year, it will instantly become the largest, most pervasive and most completely integrated cloud-based service on the planet, but in reality iCloud is really nothing more than a really cool way to easily keep content on your computing devices in sync. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but while Steve Jobs used the phrase "do away with the filesystem", that's not really happening here. While it might not be doing the heavy lifting in terms of managing the sync process, your primary Mac or PC is still the hub of your digital life. As of 2011, you still need something with a big disk and plenty of CPU juice to actually get things done.

There are reasons for that.

1. Storage is cheap, but there is a practical limit. Allowing every Mac and iOS user to store everything in the cloud indefinitely would require mind-boggling amounts of storage and at this point that would be impractical from a cost and management perspective. This is one reason why iCloud is limited to 5GB of storage and photos are only retained in the cloud for 30 days - just long enough to get them pushed to all your devices. iTunes storage doesn't count, but that's not really news because Apple is already storing its iTunes inventory so there would be no reason for them to count songs toward end-user storage quotas.

2. Bandwidth is still a finite resource. I'm very curious to see what the impact of iCloud will be on broadband and wireless networks. Almost every operation involves some kind of network traffic, much of which is actually the transmission of documents, songs and/or photos. For any individual user that's not really too much, but when you look at all iOS and Mac devices, that will add up very quickly. The fact that some iCloud operations are limited to WiFi connectivity is a clue that bandwidth consumption is an issue that Apple had to address in its design.

3. CPU is still relatively expensive. Its true that Moore's Law still applies, but while CPU power continues to expand at a rapid rate, that doesn't make the latest and greatest CPUs cheap. Trying to offload the processing load of 200 million iOS devices and Macs into the cloud would be impractical from a cost and management perspective.

These issues will be addressed over time. I'm sure of it. There are just too many economic advantages (for too many companies) inherent in controlling all end-user computing and storage tasks. We're probably looking at solid state storage and quantum computing, or at some other technology that either does not exist today or is still so deep in R&D labs that we've never heard of it. Regardless, be it in 5 years or 20 years, the guys at Sun Microsystems will be shown to be visionary geniuses. The network will be the computer.

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