I hear a lot of talk focusing around iCloud these days and rightfully so. It’s a huge undertaking that Apple is betting the farm on and even with just seeing the previews of it I can say that Apple might as well double down on it’s bet. When Apple came out with the iPhone everyone wanted one but they saw it as just another device. Fast forward 3 years later and now the iPad is the new big thing but this time it’s seen as not just a new device but a possible laptop replacement.When I first got my iPad I thought it was a great device but replace my laptop? No way. Now that the ecosystem has grown for iPad specific apps the use case makes much more sense to me now.

I work on a Windows 7 machine all day, as most people do, and when I come home I want to check my Facebook and Twitter feeds, catch up on news, and waste some time on Reddit. But using a laptop for just browsing seems like overkill now in today’s ever expanding market of tablets. It’s much easier for me to sit down on the couch, or even start cooking dinner, pull out my iPad and swipe though my apps. With a few swipes and taps on the screen I get the information I am looking for and it’s, usually, displayed in a great UI/UX compared to desktop websites.

But now let’s take a step back and look at the rest of your tech. We have an iPad, and iPhone or iPod Touch, and probably an Apple computer. I do a lot of work on my iPad but it’s a pain to get that stuff back to my computer and it takes a whole extra step to get anything from my tablet to my iPhone. While tech geeks like me have been using Dropbox to help out in this dilemma Apple is bringing a solution to market in iCloud. Wireless syncing between Apple devices without thinking about it. Essentially pulling the file system out of the equation. Save a file in your Pages app on your iDevice and it shows up on the rest of your devices and Apple computer. No more worrying about where did I save that file. While a power user like me might not want that functionality it’s going to be a hit with the public.

Think about this, the file system is no longer an obstacle. For the past 20 years some people have been reluctant to use computers because they were too confusing. Now that Apple has gone out of their enable iPad’s to be setup without hooking it up to a computer they have just entered a whole new market of consumers which had previously been untouchable.

Now I am not saying a laptop/desktop doesn’t have its time or place because it does. Power users still want all the functionality of a full OS, gamers are not going to be jumping ship for tablet’s anytime soon, and developers still need a system to…develop on. Apple saw that the iPad was a hit and now they are poised to take an even more commanding lead in the marketplace by coupling iCloud with their devices. The fact that it’s free and “It Just Works” makes it irresistible to the public.