Replacing Flash Storage With The Cloud

Speaking of streaming for media through MobileMe, Chris Foreman at Ars Technica makes a good point:

Relying solely on the cloud, whatever the particular method, ignores the reality of wireless networks. Even in major cities, wireless data connections are not 100 percent ubiquitous. There are areas where connections are tenuous or nonexistent—suddenly, if you have zero bars, you would have zero data. As frustrating as it might be when you drop a data connection when trying to access a webpage, we believe the experience would be far more frustrating if your device became effectively useless anytime you went deep inside a large building, down into a basement, or on the subway.

While WiFi can help mitigate the problem somewhat, there’s still the issue of how quickly data usage rates would skyrocket if a potential iPhone nano streams all its data from the cloud. Part of the alleged reasoning behind Apple releasing an iPhone nano is the ability to offer a lower-priced device, possibly without a contract. But what benefit would this lower-cost device offer consumers if it required them to pay yet higher monthly data bills?

Ars’ report is more geared towards the recent rumors of an iPhone nano with no internal storage at all (which is incorrect anyway, as a minimum storage for the OS must be provided – you can’t “stream” iOS), but the problem remains: if Apple is moving to the cloud, then we’re all becoming dependent on always-available, reliable and “fast enough” internet connections. That’s why I believe a caching system for offline access will be needed in order for this to work properly for everyone.

The Spotify apps already do this and it’s great. You stream music, but you can save songs in your device’s cache for when you don’t have a 3G or WiFi connection available. Sure, cache can grow huge in size and waste space, but at least you’re sure you always have full access to your files.