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iCloud: Raises stakes in Apple's race with Google, Amazon

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: The big announcement during the Steve Jobs keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was the launch of iCloud, the company’s new cloud-based service.

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There is no second thought on whether the iCloud will be vital to Apple users, the corporation and as such the industry as a whole.

Also Read: Apple buys iCloud.com domain for $4.5mn

The big, visionary talk was there but was there much more that Steve Jobs could have done, as he has done in the past? The CEO effectively demoted PCs and Macs, relegating them to a secondary role in users’ lives behind that of phones and tablets.

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The hub of digital life will be the cloud, Jobs promised. However, he did not use this opportunity to push users to the cloud, instead it was more of an introduction to what the cloud can do for you.

What is the iCloud?

"iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices," said Jobs in his address. "It automatically uploads it, stores it, and pushes it." On iTunes, Jobs commented that "now, when I buy a song on one of my devices it automatically downloads to all of my devices without having to sync or do anything at all. We're making it free, and we're very excited about it," he added.

The service automatically synchronises information stored in the calendar and contacts book between devices, and when a consumer buys a new piece of Apple hardware, iCloud can also push all the user's stored data to that new device at the touch of a button.

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Apple is also opening up iCloud APIs to third-party developers to enable them to store application information in the cloud as well.

Comparison with Google and Amazon

iCloud raises the stakes in Apple's race with Google and Amazon, which have both recently launched their own cloud services. Amazon's Cloud Player and Cloud Drive unveiled in March enables subscribers to upload their music and play it back on a PC or Android device, while Google Music allows users to store songs in online libraries and stream them to multiple devices.

However, unlike its rivals, iCloud does not require users to upload their songs to the Internet, and instead for $24.99 per year matches (iTunes Match) their existing collection with the iTunes store.

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iTunes in the Cloud will for the first time allow previously purchased iTunes music to be downloaded to all devices at no extra cost, as well as new music. The brand new paid for service called iTunes Match will scan all music in your iTunes library and replace it with a 256kbps AAC DRM-free version, which will then be available to stream in a matter of minutes.

This is a major advantage over Amazon and Google’s cloud music plays, which require all previously acquired content to be manually uploaded before it can be streamed back to the device, which for large libraries could take weeks. Apple will be charging for the privilege however, and as with Amazon and Google’s service it will only be available in the US at this stage.

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In other words, iCloud could be an all-encompassing system that would tie consumers to Apple even more tightly than they currently are. Customers would buy and rent media; store what they own; synchronize contacts, emails, and media; back up everything; and keep a complete application and data history – all under Apple’s auspices.

However, when you get down to it, Apple didn’t change the way computing happens. Its cloud is more of a storage-and-transfer way station than a destination. You can backup devices and get data and media synced to each device you own.

You can download any music you’ve purchased in the past if you bought it in iTunes; all Apple has to do is store the fact that you made the purchase. For music that you’ve acquired elsewhere (ripping CD’s / online purchases); Apple iTunes Match identifies high-quality equivalents to your MP3s in its song library and make them available to you via the cloud. You’ll be able to upload photos automatically to the cloud, but you’re limited to 1,000 images that will disappear after 30 days.

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One can understand why Apple hedged its bets here. Music, video, and images take up lots of room. It’s cheap to limit storage and track purchases of material that Apple already has online. Making people store some of the bulkiest material locally means that users still have an incentive to buy more expensive iPhones and iPads (the newer ones with more storage) or to move the material to a conventional desktop or laptop.

That said, the difference between what Jobs unveiled and what he could have unveiled was almost palpable. It was like asking consumers to walk slowly into cold water rather than giving them a way to jump in all at once and change how they do everything on computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Overall Apple has held its nerve, taking its time to create a cloud-based media streaming proposition, the iCloud, in the face of rival launches from both Amazon and Google. This move shows how Jobs and his management team have once again out-maneuvered such competitors as Google and Amazon.

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That’s because Apple knows how to develop ideas over time, negotiate effectively with vendors, and take an encompassing systems approach to its business. And while doing so he has introduced the cloud to consumers.

The author is leader of emerging technologies at PwC India.

(The ideas and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to CIOL)

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