Apple Reveals Highly Anticipated iCloud at WWDC
At WWDC, Apple's annual developers conference, head honcho Steve Jobs came and went in only two hours, but left the rapt audience of gadget geeks with the next full year of the company's plans, including the launches of iCloud, iOS5, and the new Mac OSX Lion.
In the spotlight, and held for Jobs' trademark "one more thing" segment at the end of his keynote, was the groundbreaking iCloud service. iCloud is similar to other "digital locker" cloud services offered by Amazon and Google, storing information virtually instead of taking up precious hard drive space.
Numerous apps will use the cloud including iTunes, photos, an automated backup service, calendars and even third-party ones from the App Store. And the best part? The iCloud service will be absolutely free when released this fall for both Mac and PC (though there's an annual fee of $25 to store music not purchased in iTunes).
In other Apple news, the new iOS5 will be coming this fall for iPhones, iPads and iPod touches and will bring the iCloud, native tabbed browsing, UI improvements including dedicated camera button on lockscreen, on-phone editing tools for pictures and a total rework of notifications.
Mac OSX Lion will be released in summer 2011 and the upgrade will only cost current OSX users $29.99.