A Break in the iCloud

The iWork for iCloud beta is pretty impressive.

Scrolling through an essay length document in Pages is a little slow compared to Google Docs, but overall these web apps seem snappy. And I like the peace of mind which comes from being able to grab a copy of a Keynote presentation – optionally as a PDF or PPT file – in an emergency. It’s particularly handy since it’s difficult to rely on Dropbox for file storage with iWork documents when the ability to edit on iOS is required.

Reminiscent of the slowly increasing set of tiles on Apple TV, the iWork expansion grows the grid of of app icons on iCloud. How much longer can we still have to wait for web-based management of Photo Streams (plus iPhoto?), Reading List, iMessage (maybe FaceTime too?), and an iTunes Match player?

More exciting (and almost certainly a longer wait) would be logging on to iCloud and finding icons to access to third party apps. Not necessarily as full-blown web apps running on iCloud, but perhaps as a mechanism to manage an app’s data storage. I think it would help novice and expert users alike if iCloud established a cloud-as-truth metaphor as a safety valve and assurance for our inevitable synchronization problems.

Fingers-crossed.