Apple announced its much-awaited iCloud storage service today. The basic aim of this service is to store users' content and push it to all their devices. Thus, if you click a photo on your iPhone, it will seamlessly be available on your iPad and your Mac or PC, without syncing them manually. Let's dig a bit deeper.
To start with, iCloud will feature synchronization with Apple's iWork apps for the iOS. Whenever a user creates a document, it will be automatically uploaded to the cloud and will be available on other Apple devices and PCs. Similar functionality will be available for iBooks and apps on the Apple app store.
Apple will also offer iCloud Application Programming Interface (APIs) for app developers which will enable third party apps to access iCloud.
For photos, a Photo Stream app will enable users to push all their images to the Cloud and these images will be available in the iOS photo app as an album. Photo Stream will also support Apple TV. Using the iCloud, iOS devices like the iPhone or the iPad will hold the last 1000 photos, the PC or Mac will hold all photos; the photos will be available on the Cloud for 30 days.
But more importantly, iCloud will support iTunes. Users will now have the ability to sync all their purchased music on-to iCloud. Though we don't know what this means to people who have large ripped music libraries. Interestingly, iCloud will not upload music if it detects it in its library and will automatically take the version available on Apple servers. The Apple version of the files will be 256kbps AAC files. Users will be able to sync up to 10 devices.
All these iCloud apps will be free and Apple will provide storage of 5GB for these, which will not include purchased music, apps and Books.
iCloud will be available in beta for iOS 4.3 and will ship with iOS 5.