iTunes.com - hopes and dreams
Ever since the purchase of LaLa by Apple rumours have been floating around about what exactly this cloud service would offer. The whipsers include all the usual suspects from an online locker through to bringing the entire store online in your browser. However, a recent experience has me hoping for a completely different set of functionality from iTunes.com
My wonderful husband surprised me over the weekend with an Apple iPad, resulting in me now having a trio of Apple devices (iMac, iPhone 4 and the iPad). It's a lovely machine that will be absolutely amazing to use while I'm a house-husband for a while on our move to Australia. But getting back to the point, what's the one thing that's been really nice about the iPhone + iTunes combination? Syncing. Yes we don't have wireless syncing but the current combination means that you can easily restore your device (or even a replacement) right down to the level of Angry Birds you were on. Few devices can offer a user experience as seamless as this.
But to me an iPad compliments an iPhone and I'd expect to flitter between the two devices knowing that each has the same content and applications. Except I can't. Yes I can have my movies, music and applications on both devices but they're in a different state. My current level of Angry Birds is not available on both and neither is my position in the current TV show I'm watching. When setting up the iPad I could have 'restored' it using a backup of the iPhone, iTunes did offer to, but that's not the solution as I assume the moment you sync something will be overwritten.
What we need is an iTunes.com service that resolves this state issue. Apple has their Game Centre which they'll be pushing to create a seamless online gaming experience (multiplayer, leaderboards, etc) and I'd love to see a service from them whereby developers can push small chunks of data to be sync'd between devices. This could be anything from what your last played song was on the iPhone to the level a recently completed game level on the iPad.
Everything, everywhere, every (i)device. And with that I'd be able to pick up my iPad in the evenings and carry on exactly where I last finished on Angry Birds on the iPhone at lunchtime. I'll carry on wishing for this, along with wireless syncing over WiFi ;-)