Apples Icloud – Oh My God

10 years ago Steve realized the computer would become something of a hub for your life — your photos, your music, your content. “You’ll basically sync it to your Mac and everything will work fine. And it did, for the better part of 10 years, but it’s broken down in the last few years.” “Keeping these devices in sync is driving us crazy.” “We’ve got a great solution to this problem… We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device.” “iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your device. It automatically uploads it, stores it, and pushes it to all your devices.” The MobileMe apps have been re-written from the “ground up” to work on the iCloud.

• Contacts added in any device are pushed to the cloud and then sync’d down to all the other devices. Naturally, change it anywhere and that change propagates.
• Calendars works about the same, make any changes and they get pushed. Plus, you can share your calendars with other users.
• “Mail was in the best shape of all, but it’s even better.” Get an @me.com account and all your messages are sync’d and pushed across.
• MobileMe used to cost $99 annually. “As of today this product ceases to exist.”
• Usage of iCloud will be free!

• Example: the AppStore, which lets you see all your app purchases, even if they’re not installed on the current device.
• Tap on the cloud button and apps are pulled down to the current device. When you buy a new app or a new device everything is propagated across again.
• iBooks now, same basic story. You can push the button and pull things locally if it was purchased elsewhere.
• Every day content will be backed up. Get a new device? Just type in your ID and password and there’s your content, pushed right there.
• Backed up over WiFi only, including purchased music, books, photos and videos, device settings, and App data as well.

Documents in the Cloud

Documents in the Cloud really completes our iOS document storage story. A lot of us have been working for 10 years to get rid of the file system so the user doesn’t have to learn about it.”

Photostream

It’s going to bring the cloud to photos. Any photos taken on any devices are pushed to the cloud and then sent to the other devices. Automatically.

• In the cloud, photos are stored for 30 days – enough time for you to decide where to store them long term
• ios devices store the last 1000 photos
• Seems like if you want to keep something permanently, just move it into an album. On the Mac or PC, all are stored permanently.

Itunes

• You can download songs from the cloud over wi-fi
• “This is the first time we’ve seen this in the music industry — no charge for multiple downloads to different devices.”
• “Now when I buy a song on one of my devices it automatically downloads to all of my devices without having to sync or do anything at all.”
• Itunes Match – Software will scan your tunes and match it up with those songs in the store. “We give that music the same benefits as music purchased in iTunes.”
• “This takes minutes, not weeks. If you have to upload your entire library to some service in the cloud, that could take weeks!” – a dig at Google
• If any songs don’t match they’ll be uploaded for you. Anything that’s matched is upgraded to 256Kbps AAC, without DRM.
• Apple is $24.99 regardless of how many songs you have, so if you have 20,000 songs you’re looking at $200 on Amazon. It’s still anybody’s guess how much that will cost on Google.

“We’re making it free, and we’re very excited about it. So that’s iCloud. It stores your content and pushes it to all of your devices, and it’s integrated with all your apps.” This will be set up by default on new iOS 5 devices, and you’ll get 5GB of storage for mail. Steve ended with pictures of the new data center Gallery of all this below.. [gallery]]]>