Apple have today unveiled their answer to Google and Amazon’s cloud storage systems, the (shockingly titled) ‘iCloud’. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs revealed the service at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this morning (June 7th), where he announced that Apple would be entering the ring with their own dedicated new storage system.
‘iCloud’ will come free with iOS 5, Apple’s latest software system, and will offer 5GB of free storage to customers on top of their existing music, book or app purchases from iTunes. The service will mean that if a user has purchased music in the past it will automatically be updated to appear on all of their devices – equally any new music, books, apps purchased or photos taken will be shared among all devices simultaneously.
For users who are looking to have their non-iTunes music available in the ‘iCloud’, Apple have also announced the scheduled release of ‘iTunes: Match’ this Autumn. The service will be available to US customers for $24.99 a year and will take a user’s musical content, find the iTunes original and add it to their ‘Cloud’ for the set fee.
All music in ‘iTunes: Match’ will be uploaded at a 256 kbps iTunes-Plus quality, so if users had previously obtained music at a lower quality, the upgrade will still be included in the set price.
Jobs also announced a business application of the iCloud at the conference today – as well as offering music synchronisation, the service will be able to co-ordinate documents over a number of devices, so that any changes made to one document (on Numbers, Pages and Keynote) will automatically be updated across an office, if required.
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