I’m waiting for the first company to come along and seamlessly integrate all of your mobile and media devices. And while I still think that Apple’s living room play needs some work, I have to admit that they made big strides in the direction of data ubiquity with today’s iOS5 and iCloud announcements.

Truthfully – I have to agree with Steve’s comments about obliterating the notion of a filesystem from the average user’s lexicon. Such a thing really should be the domain of power users and server administrators.

Although… I’d prefer a standards-compliant solution rather than entrusting Apple with all of my personal data, but that’s beside the point here. Again, it’s the seamless movement and  availability of data across multiple devices that I think is kewlio.

But… yes, there’s always a but… I see one glaring problem.

While it’s great that I may have multiple devices that can all access the same data such that that data appears to be saved locally, I think that my perspective as a family man (or at least, a person in a relationship) leaves me wanting more.

One of the questions that I get asked often by the Mrs. is “why she doesn’t have the latest photos that I’ve just taken?”. Now, at first glance, it would appear that Apple has a potential solution to this problem; put us both on iPhones (sorry DSLR) and Bob’s your uncle (cloned Apple ID issues notwithstanding).

But that’s a fairly large caveat, having to exclude my DSLR… and any non-Apple product for that matter. Even more of an issue is, does Apple allow me to determine what flies into my iCloud photostream, instantly appearing on the wifey’s phone?

And even if they did, I’m then back to having to introduce some semblance of micro-managing my photos. That’s a large part of the seamless equation that just got cancelled out.

As a family man, you quickly realize that the notion of “me” takes a back seat to the notion of “us”, such that pretty much all of the memory-gathering that you do is for the benefit of the family unit and not your own personal (nefarious?) means. Even issues of music become group debates, at least with the significant other, unless you make a point of walking around your abode rocking white earbuds. In which case one has to wonder what the value is in being able to seamlessly share your iTunes library across 10 other devices, when only one of them is likely to serve as you portable music provider.

The case for Apple’s iCloud services is certainly stronger when you start talking about the stuff that falls under the traditional domain of the cloud – namely, office productivity and document management. But the media part of the puzzle is fraught with more variables and I just don’t think that Apple has solved that equation yet.

It may be that that particular equation has no solution.