Google, Microsoft, Zoho Must Make Room for Apple in the Collaboration Cloud
Let us now welcome Apple to the cloud computing arms race, according to the numerous reports out of the Steve Jobs-less Macworld, where company officials unveiled a hosted version of iWork.com that includes the Keynote presentation, Pages word processing and Numbers spreadsheet applications hosted on the Internet, aka the cloud. But rather than positioning this tool as an aggressive new entry to the hosted applications space, Apple said iWork.com is more about the ability to share desktop documents created in iWork '09 via the Internet. Apple described iWork.com in a press release as:
Even so, iWork.com, which you can download here for a free 30-day trial, joins Google Docs, some Zoho apps, Microsoft Office Live Workspace and other offerings as the latest suite of messaging and collaboration apps running in the cloud. John Herrman at Gizmodo has a bunch of pictures from the Macworld unveiling, and notes:
Expect existing iWork suite users to use iWork.com, but few others beyond that, especially with Apple charging for these apps.
iWork 2009 is available now from the Apple Store for $79 or $49 with the purchase of any Mac. The Mac lovers only should subscribe. I don't care how pretty it is or how cool the features in iWork.com are, give me free Google Apps or Zoho on my PC or netbook any day. |
Comments (3)
i think it would be great to add apple to the team, some investor's would welcome the news and would think it would be a smart move.
Posted by judy lakhanpal | January 6, 2009 5:47 PM
If nothing else, Apple makes its nominal competitors work harder.
Posted by SkateNY | January 7, 2009 3:32 AM
Let Apple come out with some neat ways to integrate multi media into the cloud then google can make a better version for picasa. I think the real motivation for Apple entering the cloud race is that they have the hardware in place with the iphone to spearhead the direction of nextgen computing. I think the g2 and future android products will integrate with apps far more seamlessly than the iphone will with apple. Ray Ozzie is working along the same lines at MS, the question is who will win out the internet giant in the software world or the software giants in the internet world.
Posted by Ryan | January 7, 2009 2:30 PM