Roboform Is No Longer King of Password Managers.... LastPass Is A Tool You Need Today!

 I have long advocated the need for using a password manager. (I wrote about these and other productivity tools earlier this year. Click here if you would like to review this earlier post.) There are a wealth of reasons for this advice. First, the sheer number of authentications even a casual web user must grapple with can easily grow to thirty or more logins. An astounding number of users still attempt to "solve" this issue by using the same password, or perhaps a minor variant when necessary (i.e. adding a "1" or capitalizing, when a particular site insists on one or more of these rules for acceptable password creation). If you are among this group you are far from alone and what follows is of particular value..... 

CNET  recently wrote this article explaining how the majority of Windows passwords can now be cracked in less than 14 seconds! Identity theft seems to be a daily news topic and even Apple Mac users who have thought themselves immune to malware and virus threats have recently been reminded that they too are targets. You need to take prudent steps to protect yourself and employing a password manager is one important aspect of your online security health.

Online security experts often offer a number of authentication recommendations. Most of the advice is sage and will go a very long way towards ensuring you aren't a victim of identity theft. Following these steps also minimizes any potential damage (and liability) which may occur should one of your accounts happen to be compromised. Among the most important rules:

1. Use strong passwords. So called dictionary attacks makes it increasingly trivial to hack into an account secured by a user password, or even minor variant, which can be found in a modern dictionary. So if your idea of a "good password" is using the word, "simple" or "simple123" even a rookie hacker is likely to be reading your email or checking your bank balance in a matter of minutes if they are so inclined.
2. A close corollary to the first point, use pass phrases if at all possible! It is orders of magnitude more difficult to divine a pass phrase such as "simple solutions to 123 cake recipes" than "simple123."
3. Far better than a dictionary prone phrase, is a truly strong, twenty (or greater) character password such as, "Uq7ZT2D8YeNIS9lO2tbz." This character string contains UPPER case, lower case and numeric characters. The odds of such a password being discovered using even today's sophisticated hacking tools and powerful hardware are extremely slim.
4. Again, the value of such a strong password is greatly enhanced if you generate UNIQUE passwords for each of your various online accounts. If someone discovers the password for your old Hotmail account you haven't even reviewed for a month, the damage is very containable IF this same password isn't also the key to unlocking your online bank account or ROTH IRA!
5. This is almost a given, but using easily discovered personal data in your authentication scheme is an extremely bad idea. In today's electronic universe of social networks and search engines, it doesn't require a rocket scientist in most cases to unearth your mother's maiden name or the fact  your cute lovable pet's, moniker.
6. Which brings me to one more security point worth mentioning. Even if you follow my advice and practice good password policy, if you answer those security questions with easy (or in fact true) responses, you still leave a rather big security hole in your online fortress. Especially for highly sensitive sites such as your bank and/or investment accounts, consider answering, or resetting, the security questions to information that is not available anywhere. In this case, telling a white lie or two is the better part of valor. There is nothing that requires you to answer these questions with the truth! It is really only necessary that you know the answers! So if one question is, "What street did you grow up on?" Avoid telling the truth. If you lived on "Eastside Avenue," respond instead with, "Westside Street." (Just remember what subterfuge you employed so if the worst happens and you truly do need to reset one of these sensitive accounts, you don't outsmart yourself! See Safe Notes, below.)

The nearby advice is all sound. There are additional nuggets of online protection which are well worth your consideration, but one thing all of these rules have in common is they are virtually impossible to follow if you are relying on traditional ways of generating and recalling your authentication information. Unless you truly have an eidetic memory, you need help! This is where Roboform, LastPass and other utilities fill a very real need.

I am going to focus on Roboform and LastPass. These two tools have more in common than not in terms of what they offer. Importantly, these companies have extremely good security themselves! After all, creating highly secure authentication and then entrusting this data to a less than trustworthy third party really defeats the purpose of the exercise! These two companies offer truly secure password protection with high levels of encryption while still allowing you access to your password accounts across all of your connected devices (if you need and want this functionality). Others may have similar services and security, but I can vouch for these two alternatives.


First let me highlight some important functionality both services provide:

• Strong password generation. Effortlessly, create truly strong passwords, unique to each site you visit. 
• Automatic log in. When you visit a site, these programs will offer to automatically authenticate you with the proper user name and password information you have created.
• Form filling. You can rely on these programs to fill out a multitude of online forms, saving you a great deal of repetitious data entry (and possibly data entry errors). You can also easily set up Identities, allowing you to fill out forms as appropriate (perhaps with individual information in some cases, company information in others, ....). Optionally, you can securely add credit card data and other personal information, further speeding the form filling process on most sites.
• Ubiquitous access. If you find yourself using multiple devices as I do, you know how challenging it can be to access various accounts on multiple devices. Roboform and Last Pass both offer premium "Anywhere" Access. (More on this later.)
• (Safe) Notes: If  you have very sensitive information you want to keep handy and secure (perhaps those fake answers to security questions we discussed earlier), it is easy to create a secure note with this information which will always be available with a mouse click.
• Single password access! Yes, you will still have to commit a single master password to memory! No getting around this, but it is just one password and it is used to provide you "master access" and encrypt all the rest of your information from the rest of the world. One password is all you have left to remember. (You SHOULD provide this master password and instructions, to a loved one, executor, or caregiver. Should something happen to you, this password truly is the key to castle and having it in  proper hands can be among the most important estate planning actions you take!)
• Integration with all modern web browsers. I have found a challenge or two using some obscure tools in various browsers, but key functionality-- managing and accessing web sites-- works well in modern versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Both companies offer plug ins for all these modern browsers.

Hopefully, I have convinced you of the value of these tools and the need to add one of these to your daily computational toolbox if you haven't already. I have been a long term user of Roboform. It is the grandaddy of password management. However, I no longer see any reason to pay this company's fees. Last Pass offers virtually all the functionality and security  of Roboform without the expense.

As of this writing, Roboform Desktop costs $29.95 (free trial available). Lastpass is free to download and use. Confusingly, Roboform has another, separate program, Roboform To Go, designed to allow access to account information on a USB key ($39.95) AND Roboform Everywhere which is an annual fee based service which synchronizes your passwords, allowing access on Android, iPhone, iPad and other platforms using "free" Apps. Roboform Everywhere is available for $9.95 the first year, but renewals are pricier, costing $19.95 a year at the time of this writing.

Situations vary and you may not need, or want, all the functionality of Roboform's three products. If you do, it will cost you $80 the first year and $20/year thereafter. If you would like to review a comparison chart of the company's various offerings, click here.

On value, LastPass is the clear winner. LastPass can be downloaded at no cost. There are no gotchas. No limited functionality, no trialware, nada. If you want synchronized, everywhere, access, plus premium technical support, LastPass Premium costs $12/year. This fee is billed at one time and is refundable if you aren't satisfied with the service. Installation of LastPass on mobile platforms is also free (as are Roboform's mobile Apps).

The nearby video will provide a quick primer in using LastPass. If you would like to see some of this program's additional features in action, click on this link for a complete set of tutorial videos. With my annual RoboForm renewal days away, I decided to download and evaluate LastPass again. My conclusion, this program is every bit as powerful and functional as Roboform at a fraction of the cost. LastPass also transparently keeps you in full control of your data. You can easily export all of your information and use it as you see fit.

Siber (spelling changed from original post), the maker of Roboform, makes saving and exporting your data more difficult. In fact,  exporting my logins, identities and Safe Notes from Roboform for use in LastPass was more challenging than I ever would have expected. It seems Siber consciously has made it difficult (impossible without some trickery), to get your data in a format which can be used by its competitor. (Shame on you!!!) For the record, moving from Roboform to Last Pass can be accomplished. The trick is downgrading from the current release of Roboform to an older version (which is no longer available on the company's official web site)! Once you have completed this step, the process isn't too painful, but there are still a couple of hurdles. If you are interested in learning how most easily to make the move from Roboform to LastPass, share your thoughts in the comment field, or contact me directly. I will be happy to share the specific steps necessary and if there's enough interest, I will write a formal follow up article.

If you don't have a Password Manager, stop what you are doing and download LastPass today. There is no cost and much to gain. Anyone who has suffered identity theft can vouch for how costly and painful this can be in life. Even if you haven't fallen victim to this dreadful modern day disaster, I bet you have scratched your head more than once trying to remember a forgotten user name and password!



Enjoy! If you find this post of interest, please share through Google+, Twitter and Facebook! We welcome your comments (which you can provide via the comment form below).

 
I currently participate in Associate Programs and certain item links included within this post may tie to these affiliate programs. By using these links, you help support Music Row Tech, I appreciate your support.

Companies:   LastPass, Siber  

This commentary is not meant as an endorsement of any company or to provide financial advice.  If the author has any financial interest in any company mentioned at the time of this article’s posting, it will be explicitly noted. I welcome feedback and comments. 

Resolve to Communicate Better In 2012! Five Communication Apps for Small Business

I am not a believer in formal New Year's resolutions.  Fundamentally, I find the process filled with trapdoors virtually guaranteeing disappointment and/or outright abandonment weeks if not days after the dawning of a new year. The very fact that most people's first day of "new" behavior is supposed to be January 1, the day after many revel well into the night and wake up groggy and muddled and unmmotivated to do much more than find a couch, a remote, and a football game, sets whatever bar unrealistically out of reach for many on Day One! Need more proof? Simply visit your local gym on January 2nd (not the first, see above!) and again on February 2nd and do even a semi-scientific head count. The attrition rate is staggering and alarming for everyone but the club owner who has happily bounced on the annual resolution bandwagon and has an inbasket filled with newly minted year long clients, I mean contracts....

Does this mean I find change impossible or without merit? Absolutely not! It is my experience that for any change to be lasting and meaningful has to be internalized, self-directed, and almost always borne of some glaring realization of survival (in other words, without improvement, life is going to be materially worse; the status quo simply is no longer acceptable. Necessity is the mother of invention.... This oft cited axiom most often attributed to an anonymous author could easily be rephrased, "Necessity is the mother of real change."

So what does this soliloquy have to do with communication apps? Much of what I do professionally is to help small businesses work smarter. In today's world, this often means effectively utilizing the rich resources of technology to get one's job completed more efficiently and maximizing the human and capital resources at hand. Mobile communication has never been more ubiquitous. Smaller business have a real advantage of speedy adoption and necessity (see above) in implementing new tools and protocols. 

While Apple itself will tell you that "over 90% of all large businesses or use or experimenting with iPads," these monolithic companies have layers of IT decision makers and other constraints making widespread use more challenging. (Venturebeat wrote a great article detailing larger company deployment issues, The iPad Is A Great Tool, If your IT Department Will Allow It.) I have worked with corporate IT departments throughout my career and many of their concerns rolling out highly customizable mobile devices such as the iPad are quite valid; this group has real challenges and must often serve multiple masters and mandates. The companies I currently primarily work with are smaller, more focused on creative, fast, problem solving, than on uniformity, security (at times to their detriment!) and other factors.

In the first part of this series, I thought I would present five "must have" communication tools which used alone can offer significant change and improvement in your small business (and yes many of these have great application for individuals!!). So, if you have resolved to "work smarter" this year out of necessity, desire, or even New Year's Resolution, here are five downloads to get you started:

Google Voice (Free; requires a Google Account (free)): This swiss army knife app can transform much of your communication activity and shave hours off your work week (or at least free this time up to tackle other issues and still make it to that spin class at your new gym). Actually, this service is difficult to sum up in a few sentences and you should click on this link to take explore this service more completely. A few of my favorite features include a unified inbox (your voice mail; text; call history; and much more in one place, available anywhere you have internet connectivity)! 

A single number (for life; number porting now available) which can then follow you at your choosing-- don't want to answer calls from your Aunt while at work, no problem  (and you can customize a greeting just for her so she won't even feel bad!); would you like to keep your cell phone off for clients while out on a date on Friday night? Want to answer your  Can do! (Of course your clients will go straight to voice mail and you can be notified via email or text with a transcribed  notice of their call.) Busy working and want to screen your calls, you can and then decide to pick up, send do voice mail, or otherwise handle. Have a call which you may need to reference? Google Voice will record the call for you. Of course all this and much more is maintained for you and is searchable at any time. This is a life changer  and perhaps Google's most underrated service at this moment.... (Disclosure: I am currently hold a  long position in Google $GOOG stock.)

GVConnect ($2.99; iOS-- iPhone & iPad): Ok, I have convinced you that Google Voice is a game changer. Google does have a native app supported by Apple (as of this writing). However, it doesn't have all the functionality  Google Voice has to offer (ironic isn't it). Skip a tall Starbucks today and buy GVConnect, you won't be sorry. Like Google Voice itself, it is hard to synthesize all of this application's features in a paragraph or two. It has become my traveling "inbox" and I predict it will be yours as well. Once you experience the efficiency Google Voice coupled with GVConnect can bring to your life, you will wonder how you have survived without these tools in your life. I have contacted Andreas Amann the developer on a couple of issues over the years and he has been very responsive and supportive.

While not a "must have" Google Voice add on, Talkatone (free, upgrade to Ad Free version available; iOS) can prove especially helpful for those with limited talk and/or SMS plans. Free works any time of the year, and VOIP is the wave of the present and future much to the dismay of traditional carriers such as Verizon and AT&T. Talkatone has been especially wonderful when traveling out of the country! Roaming, what roaming!? International call rates, not for this guy! Add this app to your communication commando kit (just be sure to be comfortable with Google Voice before adding this to your App count). 

Roboform (limited version Free; full version $29.95): If you can't log in, you can't communicate! Sometimes communication and productivity (and security!) require more than a call! In fact, voice calling is rapidly becoming one of the least use forms of communication (which is a good topic for another post)! Plenty of clients, friends, and family, stumble with authentication issues! Me too! (Can anyone remember all their passwords these days)? Filling out online forms is another tedium which sucks up minutes and hours in an already busy week. Roboform works across virtually all platforms, helps create and use secure passwords everywhere, and can  fill in almost all online forms with a single mouse click. 

If you are one of those folks using the same password across multiple sites "so you can remember," or one of those Post It password savers I find in cubicles everywhere!, you need to resolve to change this behavior now! It can make your life extremely difficult and perhaps bring your company and/or your personal life to its proverbial knees! IT folks despise weak passwords, repeated passwords, and never changing passwords (and for good reasons). Get on board in 2012. This app makes it easy and you will be able to log in through your iPhone, Android device, iPad, any computer, you name it! (Resolve to remember just one master password and don't put it on a Post It!) You won't ever want to go back! 

LastPass (Free; $1/month premium): This App is a well regarded Roboform alternative. It performs many of the same functions across multiple platforms and is less expensive. I haven't personally used this tool in some years, but it is a secure, well regarded alternative to Roboform if you want to look at an alternative.

iTap RDP ($9.95; iOS and Android): Today's small business owners are mobile multitaskers; survival in the marketplace demands being able to address client needs and business opportunities quickly and efficiently. Mobile iOS and Android tablets offer efficient platforms only dreamt of five years ago. However, these tools aren't designed as desktop replacements. There are mission critical applications and files which only function on your Wintel or Mac desktop. This doesn't mean that you should be tied to your office! Having ready access to your programs and data can mean the difference between getting that new account, saving hours going back and forth simply to use a specialized piece of software or grab a file you now remember is critical, or even keep that all important vacation from being ruined. iTap, and similar programs such as Logmein (free iOS and Android), allow fast, secure, access to your desktop from anywhere you can find an internet connection. The Pad versions of this software are optimized for touch screens and allow full access to programs and files with remarkably little latency. I have utilized iTap RDP from halfway around the world; keeping clients satisfied and saving a much needed vacation from frustration for myself and my traveling companion (I am not much fun when I am thinking about a business issue instead of the next sailing adventure.). 

Dropbox  (free basic; $9.99-$19.99 additional space; multiple platforms): Sometimes just accessing your files is all you really need. (Think about that cover letter for your client you began at the office and want to polish at home. How about a photo of a client's other property you want to show off over lunch.) When this is the case, Dropbox is the solution. The free version allows file synchronization across platforms, effortless file sharing (even to non-Dropbox users); and more. Many app developers are "baking in" this utility for their iOS and Android applications. If you have more than one productivity device in your life, and who doesn't, Dropbox is guaranteed to save you hours of time and frustration. 

This is a "busy" area and Dropbox is likely to find some significant market competition from Google and others in 2012. (Walter Issacson, in Steve Jobs wonderful biography, describes a meeting Steve held with Dropbox where he famously declared, "You have an application, not a platform.")  Ultimately, it has been stated that Steve offered the founders "nine digits", which was subsequently turned down. Since this encounter, Apple has entered this arena with iCloud, which has debuted with some success and some frustration for early adopters.

For now, Dropbox has a well established hold on this corner of the cloud, and is worthy of your time, and yes, money. If you would like to try the service risk free, click this invitation link and get started!

The lines between communication and organization have blurred in today's always connected, always plugged in, world. Without one it is increasingly difficult to be effective with the other. In the next installment on this topic, I will cover some additional apps which can bring efficiency, and organization, to your world. However, like a New Year's resolution, these apps are of no value if you simply download them and add them to your technology "bucket list." These tools, individually or collectively, have to be integrated into your daily communication flow to pay benefits. Try one, try them all, but make the effort to get to know what each of these tools capabilities truly are and enjoy the dividends of a more organized, connected, new year! I'm off to jog around the neighborhood (work outs are a resolution in my life, they are part of a lifestyle). I know when I get back all my inboxes will be organized and waiting....

Have an app that has changed the way you communicate? Have a story about how one of these tools has made your personal or professional life materially better? Please share your comments here or contact me directly. 

This commentary is not meant as an endorsement of any company or to provide financial advice.  If the author has any financial interest in any company mentioned at the time of this article’s posting, it will be explicitly noted. I welcome feedback and comments. 

You may also contact me directly.  

All rights reserved @2012, Music Row Tech (MRT). Any reproduction without the author's consent is prohibited.

Is Apple Losing Its Mojo? The iCloud Has At Least A Few Raindrops....

Apple’s once seamless experience, the “it just works”  mojo which every fanboy has waved in front of Windows centric guys like me for years like a red cape in front of a bull,  is being bloodied of late. In many ways, it pains me to write about these missteps. You see after decades performing network support, coding for, and proselytizing the merits of the Wintel ecosystem (particularly for mainstream businesses of all sizes), I have embraced the Apple Kool Aid. For the past six years, I have advocated that Apple’s walled garden approach is a “better mousetrap” for many, especially for individual users and smaller businesses.  The  lack of mainstream malware issues alone more than offsets the TCO (total cost of ownership) equation for virtually this entire, massive, user community despite the premium you pay for that stylish Apple packaging and logo  on the front end.

The tipping point for me, and many others, has been the undeniably joyous mobile experience of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.   I have used every iteration of iPhone and iPad on a daily basis and have been accused of working for Apple, or at the very least being a shareholder (which sadly I am not, then or now!). I have happily related the personal and professional productivity these tools have added to my life on hundreds of occasions since the earliest days of the iPhone’s debut.  My tales and ad hoc demonstrations are responsible for “selling” dozens and dozens of iProducts to family, clients, and even passing strangers.

So why do I sense the winds may be changing…? Let me cite this recent, “unApplelike” experience:

Authentication!  With the addition of iCloud and its at times confusing subsets—Photo Stream; iCloud Music/Match—Home Sharing and of course the Apple Store, log in issues are surfacing with great frequency and causing (real losses of productivity, not to mention frustration). Ironically, in many instances, it is the long term Apple faithful, experiencing the most frustrations.

If you happen to be beginning your trip into Apple’s garden today, authentication can be administered in a straightforward manner. Sign up following Apple’s rules for user name and passwords when you register your first Apple Product. When you purchase your second (and Apple hopes your third, fourth, ….) use the same user name/password log in combination. When you add a new service to your personal ecosystem such as iCloud, iCloud Music (and yes they are different), Photo Sharing, Home Sharing, use the same authentication!  Adhere to a few more caveats which are known issues but aren’t highlighted in Apple’s many getting started videos and tutorials.

 For instance, don’t try to share your devices and content libraries with your family members.  Think you and your daughter should be able to listen to each other’s music while sitting around the house through your family iPad or through the family iTV? After all, you (Dad) in all likelihood paid for all that great “99 Cent” song content no matter what Apple ID your kid was signed on as when s/he hit that all so easy, “Buy Now” button! No way, Pops! Not if you (very rationally)  gave your kid their own Apple ID to say keep track of  their online spending (after all what Dad wants to give their kid unrestricted “Buy Now” rights to their Apple tied AMEX card at age eight???) or for any of number of other valid reasons. Multiply this several fold if your nuclear family (and number of Apple Accounts) is  larger than my little two person household (discounting the dog who to date hasn’t gotten into this circus beyond chewing on an Apple charging cord several years ago). Or how about reading an eBook and wanting to share it with your family member? Not likely (this one you can assign blame to the print publishing world who is even further behind the twenty-first century curve and the folks down the street from me on Music Row  many of whom still are living in denial of the “new” digital music world in which they live. But this is a topic for another post.)

Don’t travel internationally (you can’t use the same credentials in Apple’s Japan iStore, as well as several other countries,  and in America). Again, certain legal issues make this separation necessary, but we expect Apple to solve these logistical hurdles for us, or at the very least make them well known "potholes," and not let us fall into these problems unwittingly!

You think everything you buy from Apple is yours to use on any device? You have to understand, it is your authentication, now really a verified email address, not your AMEX number, not even your Social Security Number, which is the glue holding your iCloud world together (or will tear it apart).

Problems, some severe, arise if you have multiple Apple IDs; happen to have an Apple ID which is not a fully qualified email address (such as “rwachs”) or have at one time accepted an Apple email account tied to the soon to be jettisoned, Mobile Me experience….?  If any of these situations applies to you, the promise of putting your life in Apple’s hands and servers can be filled with stormy iClouds….

Reports of “losing” access to at times years of paid content; improperly or non-synching of important, critical, calendar and contact information, and more have resulted from these issues. Add imposed DRM (digital rights management) constraints imposed by book and music content providers (and yes there are still plenty of hoops to jump through!) and the problems simply multiply! Even after sorting through the various user name/passwords governing:

•          Apple Store
•          iCloud Data (Contacts/Calendar/Bookmarks/etc.)
•          iCloud Music/Match
•          Home Sharing

across multiple devices including iPhones; iTvs; iPads; iPods and computer systems (including a Windows box running  the now aging iTunes software which remains the chief local “meteorologist” for this new iCloud  vision of your digital life), and I have vexing problems. After more than thirty days of “experimentation” with these services My iPad2 still insists that, “This Device is Already Associated With an Apple ID…. You can use iTunes Match on this device with just one Apple ID every 90 days. This device can be used with another Apple ID in XX days.”

Of course my iPad is associated with an Apple ID! Ironically, until very recently, you couldn’t even use an iPad2 without tethering it to an iTunes enabled computer and “phoning home” with an Apple approved account! I don’t even know which ID my iPad2 is unhappily tied to (when I purchased this unit the first day it was available almost a year ago I only had one Apple Account to associate)...  Frankly, I stand a very real chance of typing the “wrong” ID again when my 90 Day penalty box finally expires (which will put me into the summer of 2012 before I can play music or  synch a book or app, off this device again)! By the way, the iCloud process kindly erased all my existing music on this device before telling me it “isn’t eligible” for the newly purchased iCloud Music Account or other iCloud synching benefits!

To be fair, authentication issues aren’t “easy” to fix and merging accounts on the backend of complex databases can be a challenge. Google (I am currently  hold a long equity position in this company) struggled to get Google Docs users onto Google+ for several months (during this product’s beta period which is the time to explore these problems!) But Apple certainly has the engineering resources to resolve these issues and should have every motivation to do so as it is its most loyal base of long term users that are bearing the brunt of these problems.

I spent several hours sorting through these problems. I resorted to creating simple spreadsheets to identify and isolate which devices and log ins might be causing the problems I was experiencing. I even contacted Apple Support in an effort to “merge” my user name with the verified, primary, email address tied to this account, thinking this would solve some of the issues. After an hour’s conversation and some internal discussion I wasn’t privy to, I was able to make my primary email, rwachs@musicrowtech.com my default Apple ID—my ten plus year, “rwachs” user name was not accepted by one or more new Apple services which require a fully qualified email address. This did resolve some, but not all, of my connectivity/synching issues.

All told, I spent about eight hours troubleshooting, researching, and contacting tech support on these issues alone. The $25 annual iCloud Music charge, bandwidth, upload time, and other costs are strictly incidental to my time and yes, “frustration.”  If these inconsistencies between new Apple products  prove vexing to someone with nearly thirty years of IT experience, I can only imagine what some of the less computer savvy—including  many of those I have encouraged to move  to Apple’s ecosystem through the years!—must be experiencing. Judging by Google searches and support forum posts I have read in an effort to understand my problems, I am far from alone.

Apple, with Steve Jobs at the helm over the past couple of decades, has built what is arguably the premiere technology company, not to mention the most highly valued worldwide corporation, by building wonderful products which “just work.” Whether it is reaching for the next new thing (e.g. cloud computing), pushing a product out the door prematurely (with the exception of Siri, Apple is not known for releasing products into “the wild” in beta), or simply striving to appeal to an ever growing audience beyond its core constituency Apple fan base, iCloud seems to be the first major endeavor in quite some time to leave Infinity Loop not quite ready for prime time…. Stay tuned for more.

How has iCloud impacted your life?  Have you had a smooth transition? Can you not live without the cloud in your life? Not live with it!? Please share your thoughts….

This commentary is not meant as an endorsement of any company or to provide financial advice.  If the author has any financial interest in any company mentioned at the time of this article’s posting, it will be explicitly noted. I welcome feedback and comments. 

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