Take Control of the Cloud, 2nd Edition

Cloud Apps

The topics covered in the previous two chapters, Cloud Storage and Cloud Syncing, are mostly passive from the user’s point of view. Sure, you may drag a file into a folder, update a contact, or click a Share button, but for the most part, storage, sharing, and syncing are just “plumbing”—stuff that goes on behind the scenes without requiring much interaction. In this chapter, we turn to cloud-based apps with more overt user interaction, from productivity apps to entertainment.

To summarize the next few pages: almost any computing task you may need to perform, you can probably do in a cloud-based app.

I should point out that, when I say “cloud app” or “cloud-based app,” I don’t merely mean apps that run in your Web browser, although ...