Having had a day to digest all the Apple announcements at WWDC, it’s clear that iCloud, iOS 5 and Lion represent an evolution in how we will use and interact with our digital devices.
The huge popularity of Apple’s iPhone and iPad clearly point the way to an increasingly wireless and post-PC era and Monday’s keynote promised some welcome developments.
Wireless syncing for one was long overdue. As our home’s one-man IT department, syncing up the iPods, Touches and iPads that have proliferated in our household through my iMac-cum-media hub was becoming a chore. The ability to have all our apps, music, photos, calendars and contacts synced through iCloud will make managing our digital life so much easier and enjoyable. In fact, you will no longer need a Mac at all to activate and start using an iPhone or iPad.
If you have iTunes 10.3 installed, you can already see iCloud in action. New iTunes purchases are automatically synced to all your Apple devices and a new Purchased option shows all the apps or music you’ve ever bought from iTunes and indicates which ones are not on the device you’re using. On your iPad and desperately want to listen to that Lady Gaga album that’s on your iPhone? Just click and iCloud will download it to your iPad.
The full Fall release of iCloud will documents, books and other data between your iPad and desktop and in doing so will make the iPad a much more compelling work device for many people as well as an additional backup and sharing option.
iCloud will also offer iTunes Match – a $24.99 a year service that will mirror up to 20,000 tracks in your iTunes library (not just iTunes purchases) and allow you to stream it anywhere, anytime. Unlike Amazon’s Cloud Player or Google’s Music Beta, you do not have to spend days uploading your music library so all that data will not be counted against your free 5GB of iCloud storage. It remains to be seen if Apple’s service – like Amazon and Google – is US-only and not available to Bermuda users without using a proxy server.
Apple stopped short of offering a Rhapsody or Napster-style subscription service that would enable you to stream virtually any music, but I would not be surprised to see them roll out something along those lines at some point – especially if and when the hugely popular Spotify becomes available in the US.
