iCloud

Speculation ahead of tomorrow's WWDC announcement of iCloud is that it's a cloud-based version of iTunes.

Instead of nominating a single computers of yours as the canonical "central" store to which your iDevices are associated with, you now have an iCloud account where all of your music and videos/movies are stored. This removes the desktop computer from the system entirely. You'll be able to playback your music and video through a browser on any machine, anywhere in the world. Your iPhone and iPad will synchronise over 3G or Wi-Fi with Apple's servers, not your local iTunes account.

Obviously Apple is assuming that everyone has a fast-enough Wi-Fi connection with which to download their 16, 32, or 64GB worth of content with. If you leave a device on overnight to sync you can grab about 6 or 7GB whilst you sleep which isn't too bad all-things-considered. The platform might be ahead of its time so long as residential connections are in the sub-20mbps zone but it's the future, welcome to it. This is the post-PC world Steve Jobs was describing.

And where's Microsoft's solution to this? Until they get the backing of the major record labels (doubtful, but they'll have to capitulate unless they want to be accused of being anti-competitive by being in cahoots with Apple and Amazon) they won't be able to compete.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Stevenote.

Discuss.

I had a Zune pass for some years now. I can already listen to all the music I want from wherever I am.

@PaoloM: I find music completely distracting. It's bad enough just playing in the background. But when you have to pick your own playlists, its like going to the dentist and having to pick out the scraping tools for the cleaning, no thank you.

-Josh

1 hour ago, PaoloM wrote

I had a Zune pass for some years now. I can already listen to all the music I want from wherever I am.

Yeah but just because you  live in US. Do you remember how it was in Canada?

@PaoloM:+1, Zune pass rocks.

If that's all it is then colour me underwhelmed.

@W3bbo:Hopefully it'll do more than just music, especially if Apple wants to charge for it. There has been talk of multi-million dollar deals with the record companies which should alleviate the need to upload your whole music collection to the servers. I imagine this will only be the case if you bought the tracks on iTunes (most of my stuff came from Amazon).

Still, I'm looking forward to another game changer.

for music, I am impressed with soundcloud.com because it is pure fun.

@W3bbo: Hmm... so Apple is playing catch up, and you want to ask where Microsoft is here? Not that Microsoft doesn't have some catching up to do as well, but let's be real. If this is what iCloud is, it's a response to Amazon, not some innovation by the man with the RDF.

Color me bored.

All software giants trying topromote their Servise whether its Microsoft or Apple and google is not behing of these. iCloud reminds me of Google's Music beta. Microsoft is doing for their Windows, apple for their iOS and google for their Android.

13 hours ago, AndyC wrote

@PaoloM:+1, Zune pass rocks.

If that's all it is then colour me underwhelmed.

There's a difference between Subscription services like Zune Pass and iCloud: with Zune pass it's the same as the requires-DRM services of the past like Napster To Go, whereas iCloud is more like an online file locker for your existing purchases, and does not use DRM, so if you stop paying you still have access to your files.

I imagine that iCloud will only allow downloads of songs stored in the locker if you stop paying your subscription.

So yeah, iCloud is Skydrive. Cool.

Apple, hope you didn't destroy those photocopiers...

Ahahahaha! And photos are kept on iCloud for 30 days only!

LOLLERSKATES!

And you can only sync 1000 photos between devices!

MAGICAL!

"2:46PM "This is the first time we've seen this in the music industry -- no charge for multiple downloads to different devices.""

Er... what?

9 minutes ago, PaoloM wrote

"2:46PM "This is the first time we've seen this in the music industry -- no charge for multiple downloads to different devices.""

Er... what?

 Yup - I had exactly the same reaction when I read that line...

The only interesting thing is iTunes Match, but that's $25/year (I wonder what happens if you stop paying...)

All in all, Apple is again copying Microsoft and others, while at the same time Jobs is straight out lying on stage. Again.

Plus ca change...

Yeah, iCloud is meh. I was hoping maybe they'd throw a subscription service in there somewhere. I guess I'll stick with Rhapsody and their iPhone app for that.

The general idea of removing the dependence of iOS devices on the PC mothership is encouraging though. 

24 minutes ago, PaoloM wrote

"2:46PM "This is the first time we've seen this in the music industry -- no charge for multiple downloads to different devices.""

Er... what?

It sounds fine to me. Every time you download a song from iTunes or Amazon you have to re-buy the song, but now you don't need to.

Yes, it's something we've been waiting years for, but then you cannot say subscription services like Zune Pass are anything comparable because once you stop paying you lose access even to songs you've already downloaded. This is different.

10 minutes ago, PaoloM wrote

The only interesting thing is iTunes Match, but that's $25/year (I wonder what happens if you stop paying...)

All in all, Apple is again copying Microsoft and others, while at the same time Jobs is straight out lying on stage. Again.

Plus ca change...

How is Apple copying Microsoft, exactly? This is not a DRM'd subscription service.