∞ Apple finally unveils iCloud and iTunes Match

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After first acknowledging last week that it was launching a service called iCloud, Apple on Monday took the wraps off, during a two-hour keynote presentation kicking off this week’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. iCloud is expected to be fully operational this fall with the release of iOS 5, though some features are available now.

[ad#Google Adsense 300x250 in story]iCloud is a set of free “cloud” services that enables users to synchronize data, apps, content, music and more between Macs, PCs and their wireless devices running iOS – iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

The service incorporates the capabilities Apple previously offered under its subscription-based “MobileMe” service – e-mail, contacts and calendar synchronization, now re-architected to work with iCloud features. Users can share calendars; inboxes and mailboxes are kept up to date across all devices.

iCloud backup backs up iOS devices daily over Wi-Fi, securely and automatically. Backups include purchased music, apps and books, the contents of your devices’ Camera Roll, settings and app data. As you buy new devices, you can automatically restore all that content to the new devices during setup.

Both the App Store and the iBookstore will download apps and books to all devices rather than only the ones they were purchased on; you can download any apps and books you’ve bought to up to ten iOS devices.

iCloud Storage stores all documents; when any document changes on any device, iCloud pushes the change to all other devices. Pages, Keynote and Numbers – the apps included in Apple’s iWorks suite – already support this capability. Users get 5GB of free storage, and can buy more storage (details will be posted this fall, when iCloud formally debuts).

Photo Stream automatically uploads and and syncs the photos you take or import; the last 1,000 photos are stored in the cloud. Macs and PCs store all photos from the photo stream, and iCloud keeps each image for 30 days.

iTunes in the Cloud is the figurative icing on the iCloud cake – it lets you download previously-purchased iTunes Store-bought music to all iOS devices at no additional cost. And new music can be automatically downloaded to all devices.

For users with libraries full of music not purchased from iTunes, Apple offers iTunes Match, a service with a $24.99 annual fee. iTunes Match compares music in your library to what’s on iTunes; you can replace what’s on your computer with a 256kbps AAC-encoded DRM-free version if iTunes can match it.

By matching your content to what’s on the iTunes Store, you can sync the music to any authorize devices, potentially in minutes. If iTunes fails to find a match, you can upload the unmatched music, then sync it.

Apple is releasing on Monday a beta version of iTunes in the Cloud, without the iTunes Match service, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users running iOS 4.3. iTunes in the Cloud wil support all iPhones that support iOS 5 this fall.


  • Vamsmack

    Hopefully the photo sync supports Aperture as well as iPhoto, can’t see why they wouldn’t but stranger things have happened.

    • S. Mulji

      Remember, this is iCloud version 1.0.  I’m quite confident (albeit not 100% certain) Apple will integrate it into their major apps eventually.

    • http://twitter.com/ankleskater Ankle Skater

      It makes sense to support iPhoto because it is more than just a photo editing app – it is in fact a database of photos. I don’t use Aperture but I don’t think it is the same type of database?

  • http://www.theuniversalsteve.com Anonymous

    In the email to MobileMe customers Apple says “When you sign up for iCloud, you’ll be able to keep your MobileMe email address and move your mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to the new service.”

    Hopefully the existing MobileMe third-party sync services (e.g. Yojimbo & Transmit) will make the transition to iCloud.

    Also, this means that if you don’t sign up for iCloud, You lose your .mac/.me email address. You can only sign up for iCloud if you use iOS 5 or Lion. I guess I will upgrade to at least one of those by next June. I sure hope there’s something that can replace Quicken (specifically on-line billpay and the investment features) by then. Otherwise, if Lion drops Rosetta as rumored I can’t use it on my main Mac.

    • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

      Almost any bank with a decent Web presence can do its own online bill-pay. The investment features of Quicken are another matter, though.

      • http://www.theuniversalsteve.com Anonymous

        Yes, but then I’m entering the same data twice. I do that for the vet clinic my wife and I own (once in the accounting software and once on the bank’s website). Every now and then I forget to enter a payment in one or the other. I think the Ruby doctrine of DRY (don’t repeat yourself) applies even more to finances than programming.

        And, yes, I know I’m whining. :-)

        • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

          I don’t know why most users would enter data twice. When you get a bill, you pay it at the bank’s site. Sometime later, you download the month’s or the week’s transactions to Quicken semi-automatically. Those transactions include bills paid through the bank.

          Splitting the task might indeed be inconvenient. But my bank handles all of my regular bill-paying each month. Even recipients that can’t take electronic payments get sent a check that I didn’t have to fill out and snail-mail.

  • JohnO

    Am I the only one who has ripped their CD music to something higher quality than 256 AAC?  Not sure I want to move backwards with the iTunes Match process.

    • Gustav

      Then don’t use it. Do you really want to download music at higher bit-rates than that anyway – you’ll blow your data cap in no time. Just sync the music to your devices now.

      • JohnO

        I guess that will be the trick – figuring out how an existing scheme (3 Macs, 2 IOS and 4 older iPods will migrate to the new way of doing things – keeping the old way where it makes sense, and taking advantage of new features where possible.

      • JohnO

        I guess that will be the trick – figuring out how an existing scheme (3 Macs, 2 IOS and 4 older iPods will migrate to the new way of doing things – keeping the old way where it makes sense, and taking advantage of new features where possible.

        • lkalliance

          I’ll be curious to see how that works, too. And among different accounts. I have multiple accounts on my computer; if I’m in account A will iCloud push to account B in the background? Will the document be there when I log into B? Not saying Apple hasn’t thought of this or that it isn’t in the first implementation (it’s too subtle a thing to which to devote keynote time), but I’ll be curious about that.

          For that matter, is Documents granular on a document-by-document basis? I have a budget program. My partner and I use the same OS X user account, and use the same program but we each have our own document. I’d want mine to deploy to my iPhone, she’d want hers to deploy to her iPhone. Will that be possible? I’m looking forward to being able to query Apple Store geniuses on this and other questions.

        • lkalliance

          Also (appending to my comment just previous) what about shared iTunes libraries? For years now I’ve had one library on an external disk, with each OS X account pointing to that external library. Will iCloud want to be pushing purchases to only one account? I suppose it won’t matter, since the song would be added to the shared library and accessible to all sharers (I’m guessing)…but then would it be pushed once to each account, and appear multiple times? Excited for iCloud, but lots of eager questions.

    • http://mangochut.net/ mangochutney

      I have almost all of my music stored in ALAC.
      While I think 256 kbit/s AAC is good enough for some kinds of music, it’s absolutely unacceptable for others.

      This feature is great, and I will surely use it for many an album, but not for everything.

  • Jth9234

    Why is it taking soooo long? Fall? Really? I think I will stick to the Amazon Cloud Player…