Apple is launching a new iCloud service that automatically syncs your music, photos, documents, apps and ebooks across your many devices.
If you take a photo with your iPhone you can see it on your iPad.
CEO Steve Jobs, said Monday, “Everything happens automatically, and there’s nothing new to learn. It just all works.”
iCloud is WiFi-based and it launches in beta now with an official release this fall.
Most of the iCloud services are free and it works with iPhones, iPads, iPods, Macs and PCs.
There are some limits to the service. You get 30 days of photo storage in the cloud and the mobile devices store the most recent 1,000 photos. Beyond that you must download your photos to save them permanently. You also get 5GB worth of document storage. iCloud automatically syncs your iTunes purchases across all your devices. But there’s a separate service to put your existing music (that was not purchased from iTunes) in the cloud. This service—called iTunes Match—carries a $25/year fee.
“This is the first time we’ve seen this in the music industry,” Jobs said.
Amazon and Google already offer their own versions of a cloud service.
Apple also updated the iOS software for its mobile devices. The new iOS5 is due this fall. It gives you quick access to the camera from the opening “lock screen” and it’s now easy to Tweet your photos. Web browsing is faster. You get all sorts of reminders and you may create a geofence around an area (such as work). Then when you leave the area, you can get a reminder (such as buy milk). There’s also photo editing directly on an iPhone or other device. Push notifications are less invasive and you can now get over the air software updates.
Here’s some recent Apple stats:
- 200 million iOS devices sold
- 100 million iOS games, making it the most popular gaming platform
- More than 25 million iPads sold since the original launch 14 months ago
- 15 billion songs downloaded from iTunes
- 90,000 apps just for the iPad
- 14 billion apps downloads from the App Store
- Apple has more than 225 million customer accounts “all with credit cards and one-click purchasing.”
Source: Apple
Photo via Engadget
