Laptop Thoughts: Syncing is Just the Beginning

"On Sunday, PreCentral published an interesting rumor piece based on a leaked slide from HP. According to the story, the company has plans to include a “music syncing solution” with the forthcoming TouchPad tablet that will allow users to remotely store and sync music in the cloud — something like Amazon’s new Cloud Drive service, but with a webOS front-end. While this may sound like a great solution to combat Apple’s iTunes dominance, I think it’s the wrong move for HP and its mobile strategy (if it is, indeed, true)."

The idea of syncing, cloud services and Synergy, as it is being called, I do not think is going far enough. One of the benefits of cloud computing is that you do not have to cart around a massive amount of storage. Where ever you have Internet access, you have everything at your fingertips. The idea of merging the various providers into one also has benefits (assuming they are subscription and not ad based). But looking for an all-in-one solution on the mobile platform is not enough.

The other side of the equation is that people may have multiple devices, or even none. While we are starting to see integration on the provider side, we need aggregation on the consumer side. What you use on the iPhone is undoubtedly different than what you use on a Windows machine. Different services are available in different ways, or different devices. I would like my iPhone, Laptop, Android tablet and Chumby all to have access to the same data. I want to be able to go to a friend's house, boot up their networked TV and start streaming a new playlist I just created. I want it where I am the common link, not one of my devices.