The "cloud" is the concept of servers out there on the internet, you don't care particularly where. iCloud is Apple's slice of that pie. Carbonite has theirs, Google has a cloud implementation, Amazon was some of the first to go to market with cloud services for corporations.

And it was short?

There was a great thing on Fresh Air recently about how The Cloud just means your stuff is stored on someone else's physical hard drive, probably in Virginia or somewhere.

My mother just asked me how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Nobody here butters the bread, right? You just put butter in the pan!

My mother is always calling me up to ask me how to make really basic stuff that I learned how to make from her. It's very disconcerting.

One of the advantages of the Cloud is you can have multiple devices use it for a source of data, so you don't need to sync your devices anymore for that data, as each device will just pull it from the Cloud.

(Though actually I take that back - I forgot his Gmail was hacked too. If someone got into my Gmail account they'd basically have everything because I store all the "Welcome to Extremely Secure Internet Thingy That Will Never Be Hacked! Here is your username!" emails there. So backing up to a 3rd party wouldn't have helped him here.)

I still maintain that there's nothing inherently unsafe about online backups. I back up to an external hard drive at home, but all that means is that I'm more protected from hacking and less protected from fires.

I butter the bread.

Nobody here butters the bread, right? You just put butter in the pan!

It depends on whether or not the butter is soft enough to spread. Room temperature butter directly on the bread makes a more evenly browned sandwich.

I butter the bread. When I just butter the pan, it doesn't brown as nicely and evenly.

Oh my God, I've been doing it wrong!

No, wait, you people are all crazy. Plus my butter is always frigid.

I butter the inside of the bread, but I let the butter in the pan brown the outside.