Call me paranoid, but it appears the smart phone companies and the US cellular carriers are in cahoots!

Yeah, I said cahoots! You and I are being forced into the "Cloud," and if you're not sure what that is yet let me get you up to date. Cloud computing is the way most things are going, it simply means you store your music, video, data files online somewhere and as long as you have high speed Internet access, your stuff is just a click and a fast download away.

The benefits are:

  1. Your stuff is available to you from anywhere you have access and on virtually any device.
  2. You don't have to remember to back up you local hard drive(s), so if you computer fails you, your stuff is still safe... in the "cloud."
  3. Reduces cost for computers, tablets and smart phone systems and always having to buy and upgrade hard drives.

But what is the downside you ask?

  1. Trusting your "stuff" (files) to a third party cloud provider.
  2. Not always having access to the Internet.
  3. Increased costs associated with increased data uploading and downloading (bandwidth usage).

In the case of your smart phone, I believe  number 3 is exactly what they want though.

You'll notice that all of the major cell phone service providers have recently gone back to data usage fees and have dropped, or are in the process of dropping, all of their unlimited plans. The only exception I know of at this time is Sprint. That's the SP I use for my Android-based phone, been with them for over 13 years now and am reasonably happy with their service. But you can bet that if they see the other service providers making huge sums of money by charging for data and over-charging for over-data usage you can bet they will find a way to fall into that roiling sea of cash-olla as well.

If you look at most of the new smart phones that have come out recently, and from what I hear the newest phones coming this fall just in time for Christmas, they are all trying to push you into the "cloud" concept. It makes the phones more affordable because of less hardware, and it will make your data usage go through the roof.

Now you're seeing that "cahoots" thing, huh?

It's the same thing with tablets - you'll soon be noticing less internal storage, making the prices go down on the device, but cloud storage will save the day... with a low monthly fee for keeping your files safe and easily accessible.

I hate being manipulated, don't you? I like having my own internal and external hard drives and solid state drives and SD chips and micro-SD chips, etc., etc....!

I like being in control of my stuff.

The good news is there are still many devices that give you the control you want and I hope there will continue to be smart phone and tablet designers that will realize there are a lot of people like me out there.

Are you like me?

More From Majic 93.3