Ever since Apple bought up cloud-based music distributor LaLa there's been speculation that Cupertino was going to put iTunes in the cloud. All of your music, available anywhere you had an Internet connection, streaming to your laptop, desktop, or iOS device (probably for a fee). But time passed and Apple did...nothing. So it seems. If you don't count building an enormous data center in North Carolina. But maybe, just maybe our favorite computer and gadget maker is thinking bigger than just CeeLo's number one hit whenever you need a kickstart.
AppleInsider draws our attention to the curious case of a patent filed four and a half years ago. This filing gives us a clue that working in the cloud's been on Apple's mind for just about forever, even back as far as when Google was pretty much just a search engine and virtually nobody had Gmail.
The patent carries the fun name of "Method and apparatus for administering the operating system of a net-booted environment." What does it do, you ask? Well, the patent describes Apple's idea where "a network computer (NC) system including an NC server and multiple NC clients is managed by an NC client causing the remainder of the NC clients that are subsequently booted to receive operating system software that is configured differently than that currently in effect by replacing one or more system volumes on the NC server containing the operating system software with one or more different system volumes."
Got all that? Essentially, it gives network administrators the ability to update any networked computer's system volumes from any other network computer. While this may not seem such a big shakes, it does create an environment where some future iteration of Apple's operating system can be updated and run from the cloud.
Does this mean Apple is moving into the cloud? It's hard to say for certain, though it is clear that Apple has something cooking up in their labs regarding cloud services. What exactly, we can't say for sure, though we note that Cupertino has not been particularly pleased with users tinkering with its software. A cloud-based OS could give Apple greater control over how your computer runs and what you can do with it. Hackers and jailbreakers might find that while their fun and games are Library of Congress blessed and legit, Apple's might just be finding out ways around those laws.
