Apple uploads digital life to the cloud

This Monday, Apple presented iCloud, a set of new free cloud services that work perfectly integrated with applications on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store content in iCloud. It has also unveiled the new possibilities of Mac OS X Lion, the new version of its operating system.

This Monday, Apple presented iCloud, a set of new free cloud services that work perfectly integrated with applications on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store content in iCloud and send it in push mode to all devices. When something changes on one of your devices, all the others are updated wirelessly almost instantly.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has pointed out that "today it is a real and very frustrating problem to keep all your information and content up to date on all your devices. iCloud keeps your information and important content up to date on all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and since it is integrated into our applications you don't even have to think about it, it just works."

The previous MobileMe services (contacts, calendars and email) have been completely redesigned and rewritten to work perfectly integrated with iCloud.
The App Store and iBookstore will now download iOS apps and purchases on all devices, not just the device on which they were purchased. Additionally, the App Store and iBookstore now allow you to view your purchase history, and by simply tapping the iCloud icon, any of those apps and books will be downloaded to any of your iOS devices (up to 10 devices) at no additional cost.

On the other hand, iCloud Backup will automatically and securely back up iOS devices to iCloud, every day and via Wi-Fi, while the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch is charging. This way, if you replace an iOS device with another, you only have to enter the Apple ID and security key during setup, and iCloud will take care of restoring the new device.

iCloud Storage stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all devices. When you modify a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all other devices.

Regarding iTunes, it is also uploaded to the cloud. iTunes in the Cloud will allow you to download music that has previously been purchased from iTunes on all your iOS devices, at no additional cost. Additionally, music not purchased on iTunes can enjoy the same benefits using iTunes Match. This is a service that replaces your music with a DRM-free 256kbps AAC-encoded version, if we can identify it with one of the 18 million songs in the iTunes Store. The identified music will be available in a matter of minutes (rather than the weeks it would take to upload your entire music library), and only the small percentage of songs that cannot be identified and matched to music from the iTunes Store will be uploaded. iTunes Match will be available in a few months, for now, as an annual subscription for $24.99 in the US.

Mac OS X Lion

Apple has also announced Mac OS X Lion, the eighth version of its operating system with more than 250 new features and 3,000 new APIs for development. It will be available in July, to download from the Mac App Store.

Some of the features of Lion are: new Multi-Touch gestures; support for full-screen apps (applications), extensive to the entire system; Mission Control, an innovative new unified view of all the apps and windows running on your Mac; the Mac App Store integrated into the operating system itself; Launchpad, a new stage for all the user's apps; and a completely redesigned email app, Mail.