What lining for this cloud?

(Senior tech-finance columnist)

Apple Computers has accustomed its fans and even detractors to a certain pattern: bring to market a well-packaged product that while not delivering leading edge technology on every dimension stretches the current limits of the user experience in one or more meaningful ways.

With that, we might wonder how Apple’s recent launch of its cloud service fit the bill? This may not be so much linked to current products from Cupertino but rather to what everyone has been expecting from the company that Steve built: an Apple stamped TV with all the whistles and bells.

As it turns out, Mr. Jobs’ vision may well have been a product roadmap on the way to domination of the home. Who knew that when we were first shown the iPod, we were in fact being trained to use iTunes, that the iPhone was essentially a training device to allow us to navigate the App store and that the new iPod Touch may simply just be our new remote when the much expected iTV (or whatever they’ll call it) arrives, as one source predicts before the London Olympic Games?

When the iPod arrived, it already had the capacity to essentially allow users to purchase all the music they might want without fear of storage limitation. But as the back and forth on the capacity of the iPhone and even iPad demonstrated , the capacity that most users purchased just acted as a limitation on their ability to consume movies and store them.

While Apple is deliberate in wanting to offer us a cloud with a silver lining for the buyers of its devices, the California wunderkind may already have secured a gold lining for its cloud service. This is because the launch of a TV device will only be as successful as users will feel free to consume the content Apple will offer. iCloud solves this limitation by offering users pervasive access to their libraries without needing to buy the physical storage on their devices.

Yes, we fully expect a very engaging interface on the new Apple TV product and myriad programs to go with them. But the launch of iCloud so many months before the actual screen is offered to the market is a testament to the product road mapping thoughtfulness of the late Mr. Jobs and his cohorts.

(DFA reminder: there are nearly dozens of cloud based content storage services for consumers and small businesses operating with reasonable prices and very good security if you just want to store your videos, pictures and music in that heavenly place.)