Connecting Every Application to the Cloud
I recently read an interview with Steve Jobs in 1985 just as the Mac was launching. Here is an excerpt…
PLAYBOY: Maybe we should pause and get your definition of what a computer is. How do they work?
STEVE JOBS: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this cafe [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, "Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until it is horizontal. Extend left foot and shift weight 300 centimeters forward..." and on and on. If you could interpret all those instructions 100 times faster than any other person in this cafe, you would appear to be a magician: You could run over and grab a milk shake and bring it back and set it on the table and snap your fingers, and I’d think you made the milk shake appear, because it was so fast relative to my perception. That’s exactly what a computer does. It takes these very, very simple-minded instructions—"Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number"—but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.
That’s a simple explanation, and the point is that people really don’t have to understand how computers work. Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works, yet they know how to drive a car. You don’t have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. You don’t have to understand any of this stuff to use Macintosh—but you asked
I think the design constraint of simplicity or invisibility is at the heart of what make technology consumable by everyone. Think about GUI’s, think about Google and search, think about the iPhone. Every time there is a significant breakthrough in ease of use you get 10x number of users.
For us, the key focus has always been to make our service completely transparent, so you don’t even know it’s there. We want our users to enjoy the power of the cloud without having to change their behavior. The way we do this is to tie each and every one of your current application directly to the cloud so you don’t have to change the way your work.
Kevin Toffel emphasizes this when in his video review of ZumoDrive in jkontherun. He keys in on the coolness of playing iTunes from your laptop or netbook without having to store the songs locally. There’s definitely a lot of buzz around this particular application, but ZumoDrive can do this with effectively any application. This is because ZumoDrive integrates directly with your computer’s file system, which all the applications on your computers happen to already use.
Just as with iTunes, ZumoDrive lets you work on Word, Powerpoint and Excel files in the cloud without doing anything differently than you have in the past. We’ll continue to explore new ways we can tie the cloud even more tightly with applications involving videos, photos and other file types. After all, it’s all about the apps and we'll strive to make it as transparent as possible to for them to use the storage in the cloud.
