Is the Cloud overrated?

[persia]

Yeah, it's like this newfangled web thing, highly over-rated, neither of them will amount to anything....

[persia]

The point of the cloud is that nobody has just one computer any more.  {ep[;e have a main laptop or desktop, a mobile phone, a tablet and/or netbook, perhaps another portable device, a work computer, plus there are just times that you need to use someone else's computer.  Keeping all those in sync is difficult and not really necessary.  Do I want all my work documents on my mobile phone?  No.  Do I want to be able to access certain ones at certain times?  Absolutely.  Do I know what those certain ones are?  No, not really.

So here we are, the cloud has privacy implications but in the end it may be the only real solution for the growing presence of computers in our lives.

[persia]

Everyone's computer is on the internet 24/7, everyone's phone and other device is on the internet 24/7.  Look at the iPhone, can you figure out which apps are online and which are local?  Nope.  The key to the cloud is the ubiquity of the internet.

There are examples of this already -
The moment you loose that immediacy of availability, it falls on it's backside as an option for most users. Sure, people will try it, some people might even like it. What's more likely though is you'll end up with a situation similar to that which was seen with the launch of Vista: People going en masse to get XP put on those machines.

[persia]

The future is a computer hooked to the TV via HDMI, with a wireless keyboard and mouse.  This will be eventually be replaced by a computer inside the TV....