In a particularly biting editorial recently, Carl Brooks, Senior Technology Writer for SearchCloudComputing.com, penned that he wasn’t pleased with the use of “cloud” to describe Apple’s new iCloud service. The crux of his argument rested on that it didn’t involve any cloud-computing; but instead presented itself as a sort of Software-As-a-Service architecture for simplified media streaming and that didn’t cut it for him. A recent update to the article shows that now that iCloud has launched it’s not “only about streaming-media” but there’s a few other things to clear up still.

He writes,

You know what iCloud is? Streaming media. In other words, it’s a Web service. Not relevant to cloud; not even in the ballpark.

And you, IT person, grumpily reading this over your grumpy coffee and your grumpy keyboard, you have Apple to thank for turning the gas back on under the hype balloon. Now, when you talk about cloud to your CIO, CXO, manager or whomever, and their strange little face slowly lights up while they say, “Cloud? You mean like that Apple thing? My daughter has that…” and you have to explain it all over again, you will hate the words “cloud computing” even more.

ReadWriteWeb also picked up his article and spun it into poll, and one of the poll items really spells out why iCloud actually could be seen as a cloud-service: “Yes, it provides remote storage and services over the Internet. That’s what the cloud is all about.”

That’s right: the cloud isn’t just cloud-computing. Computation isn’t the only thing that computers do—cloud-based technologies are all about offloading part of what our devices do for us into the communication network above us (in the cloud) and even if iCloud was just streaming media it would still fulfill part of that.

Yes, Brooks updated his article to cover the fact that iCloud is in fact more than just streaming media: it’s also the beginning of remote storage for Apple users.

Cloud-based services provide the foundation for enabling a departure from static devices, a sort of spreading IT across mobility. With iCloud, Apple users will have access to their data across a multitude of devices from iPhone, to iMac, to iPad. Each time the device they’re on syncs to their personal cloud, they’ll be able to access it no matter what they’re carrying with them. Certainly, what they can do with that data is limited by the power and capabilities of the device in hand (not like we’re going to be doing intense media editing on an iPhone) but each device is another window into the personal cloud.

Among those devices will be entertainment centers, of course, and Apple is already a powerhouse when it comes to media. Although, until the advent of iCloud they didn’t do streaming media so well—and they’re being left in the dust as a result by outfits like Netflix and Google. To tangle in that market, Apple’s iCloud gives them the perfect reason to enter into the living-room and provide a space for people to offload their personal media. Visiting a friend and you’d like to watch the most recent Aliens Vs. Predator movie? No problem, just have your iPhone authorize your version in iCloud with their Apple set-top-box and you’re good to go (after all, it’ll play on your iPhone and movies are way too big to fit on a mobile device by themselves.

Although streaming media is a big part of what will drive consumer adoption of iCloud, its integration into iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion will mean a cornucopia of other apps for users to tap into Apple’s Software-As-a-Service offerings (subscription market anyone?) and that will drive broader and deeper innovation above and beyond simply storing and streaming media for their consumer base.