The difference between Apple and Microsoft is curious: if the first one keeps in horrible secret any details about his products, then the second generously shares the details regarding his current and future projects. So today, the president of the Windows division Steven Sinofsky described in some detail the future model of integrating the SkyDrive cloud service into the currently preparing and actively awaited Windows 8. According to him, this issue is important for the corporation insofar as service subscribers, who number about 17 million people, keep SkyDrive 10 PTB information, and this is far from the limit - on the HotMail mail service servers there are all 100 PTB and, therefore, Microsoft is quite ready to scale its cloud products in a very wide range. Throughout 2012 - the year of the release of Windows 8 - Microsoft will improve and improve the capabilities of SkyDrive so that it can become “the
world's hard drive ”.
The first thing Sinofsky told about is rather expected - the built-in SkyDrive application, like all built-in Windows 8 applications, will have a Metro interface (it is already contained in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview). How it looks is shown in the screenshots below:


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An important feature of SkyDrive will be that the service will be automatically available for any file operations in the system: in other words, in the file saving dialog for the user there will be no fundamental difference where it is to save their work — on a local disk or in the cloud. or effort is not required of him. The screenshot shows the contents of SkyDrive in Windows Explorer Windows 8.

It is curious that Sinofsky especially emphasizes the fact that the developer is not required to support cloud-based operations in any way, since the system will take care of ensuring their correct operation. Files in SkyDrive can be easily - “in one tap” - shared via the mail program Mail, while the number of attachments to the letter is thus unlimited because the user will actually share the links to the files.
SkyDrive will not be forgotten as a normal desktop application: it will take about 5 MB, it will be quickly installed and work in approximately the same way as the DropBox client will work - a folder will be selected for synchronization with SkyDrive account, where you will need to copy or simply drag and drop files to send them in the "cloud", and will support files up to 2 GB. The screenshot below shows a fragment of the Computer Performance Monitor window when transferring a file of 500 MB in size (the blue line is the total CPU usage, the black line is occupied by the SkyDrive process).

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Forgot something? ”, As it is called at Microsoft, will allow forgetful users or simply those who want to share the contents of their home computer, which has not yet been downloaded to SkyDrive, remotely. via SkyDrive.com to your computer’s hard drive (or other device) and copy the file to the “cloud” to enjoy photos, a forgotten report or other content at home. It looks like the one shown in the screenshot below:

To ensure the security of remote access, a two-factor authentication mechanism will be provided, in order to access the system you will need to have a confirmed phone number to which the user will receive a verification code to enter it into one of the dialogs.
So, apparently, Microsoft has done a serious job of integrating its cloud service into the future system, which, like none of its predecessors, will be focused on the Internet and modern technologies. Moreover, as noted by Sinofsky - "this is just the beginning."
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