With so much of rumors and speculations revolving around Apple’s iCloud it was easily the most important announcement of the day along with iOS 5. And when Steve Jobs came on to the stage to talk about the iCloud, he told how he had thought that PC’s would be the most important device in people’s lives with all their data stored safely in it.
But he admitted to how things had rapidly changed with the advent of the smartphones and the tablets and resulting difficulties in keeping one’s data synchronized in all the devices. This is what led to the birth of the iCloud service he said.
A digital hub where one can store all of their digital content. But its way more than just a digital drive. Because iCloud will not only save your data but also sync it with all of your iOS device and that too automatically. So as soon as you buy any new iOS device you dont have to go through the pain of adding your contacts and data to it, iCloud will do it for you. With the announcement of the iCloud, Steve also officially declared Mobileme to be dead as well…
All you have to do is update your devices with iOS5 and signup for iCloud and the iCloud magic will just take over. (Okay did I tell you that you have to have a Wi-Fi / 3G connection for this to work). Okay no doubt your data usage will go up but at the same time iCloud will make you PC free and rid you of all the manual synchronizing.
Lets take a look at all the features that the iCloud brings:
Documents:
All of your documents, viz presentations, word files or spreadsheets will be synchronised and stored by the iCloud. The iCloud will automatically save and update the changes you make in any of these and will allow you to access these updated files from any of the iOS device. So this would essentially mean that even if you have an unfinished document that you were trying to edit you can continue that from any other device because iCloud will automatically update it for you on all the other iOS devices / Mac / PC’s as well.
Photo-stream:
This one is even better. All the images that you take from any of the iOS device or be it imported from digital camera to your Mac, iCloud will make these available on the Photos App on your iOS devices, iPhoto on the Mac, pictures library on your PC and Photo Stream album on Apple TV. Isn’t that cool? Well we all have a habit of clicking away endlessly on our devices and that would mean a lot of storage space even for a virtual storage drive. Well for now iCloud only saves your recent or latest 1000 photos for 30 days.
Books:
Not only all the book that you have purchased get synchronized on the iCloud so that you can download it to any of the iOS device or the Mac but at the same time it also saves the place where you ahve left reading so that no matter what device you use to read the book later you will be automatically able to start from the same place. The same goes with your text highlights, bookmarks and notes.
Apps:
As you would have already guessed it would save all of your purchase history allowing to access on any device. Not only that but it will save all of your app data as well so no matter which iOS device you are using you will be able to start the game from where you have left it.
Music:
Now this is where it gets interesting and all the more exciting. As speculations had pointed to not all of the features in the iCloud being free this is where these speculations turn out to be true. Its obvious that downloaded music from iTunes to any iOS devices / Mac will be saved by iCloud and made available to all of them. Well its a fact that all of your music will not be downloaded from the iTunes store. And this is where the iTunes Match service comes into the picture.
What it does is that it will match your music you have ripped from a CD (or just downloaded for free) with that on the iTunes store and if available replace those with 256 kbps iTunes Plus quality and the ones which are not vaialble will be saved as it is.
You can opt for iTunes Match for only $24.99 / year and this is for unlimited songs. (Well smarter people can make good use of it). Well this service is way cheaper as compared to other players in the market like Amazon or Google.
Mail, Contacts and Calendar:
Signing up with iCloud will give you the option of creating a me.com account. iCloud will synchronise all of your mails from this account and make it available it to you from any of the Mac / iOS devices. Calendar on iClous is interesting as it will not only synchronize your appointments and reminders and make them available on your other devices but at the same time other iCloud users canalso make additions to your calendar or share their calendar with you.
Coming to contacts any additions or changes that you make on any iOS device will be synced by iCloud to other devices alongwith your Mac or PC as well.
PS: Apple says that there is a limit of 5GB free storage only on the iCloud. Okay this limit does not include your apps, music,books and your photo stream. Only your mail, camera roll, account info, other app data and settings are being counted against the limit.
So what does al this mean for the consumer? “Simplicity”, Yes that is what Steve Jobs had to say about iCloud service and we couldn’t help but agree to it. It really makes life easier for everyone using two or more devices