iCloud, iTunes Match at WWDC 2011: 'The Truth is in the Cloud'

by Jordan Yerman | June 6, 2011 at 11:10 am

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Steve Jobs Unveils iCloud, iTunes Match

MobileMe is dead, and iCloud has sprung from its ashes. iCloud is, as the name suggests, a cloud-based sync and storage system presented by Steve Jobs at WWDC 2011. Jobs outlined how serious Apple is getting about cloud computing and storage, and kicked off the demo with the quote-friendly comment "the truth is in the cloud".

iCloud's Key Features:

Stores content in the cloud, pushes updates to all of your OSX devices.
Links to App Store and iBooks.
Spells the death of MobileMe. Hooray.
iCloud is free, despite previous reports to the contrary. Users get 5GB of free storage, not counting music and books purchased through iTunes and iBooks.
Functions as a sort of warehouse as you move material from one device to the other, but can also permanently store photo albums, etc.
iCloud storage API will also work with PC.
iTunes integration: download the same song to several devices without having to buy it over and over. Well, this should have been standard by now, but Apple kept shooting itself in the foot with DRM.

What happens with music that you've already added to your iTunes? Will iCloud push that as well, or will this only be doable with newly-purchased content? That leads to the "one more thing"...

iTunes Match

iTunes Match will scan your music library and download the songs that it matches in the iTunes Store to your iCloud account as 256kbps DRM-free AAC files. Anything it doesn't find, it uploads from your machine. The service will cost $25 per year, no matter how big your library is.

This is kind of cool, but I don't predict too many users voluntarily subscribing to re-buy their own music. Some will, though, just for convenience's sake. If you're going to get your customers to re-buy music they already have, the price has to be pretty cheap. What happens, though, once a user stops subscribing?

iCloud dev beta is available today, and will go live in the autumn.

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