WWDC 2011: iCloud Streaming & Sync Cloud-Based Service Becomes Official

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Apple announced before WWDC 2011 that iCloud will be one of the important products to be presented during today’s keynote and Apple delivered on that promise just earlier. iCloud was the last product to be properly unveiled today, right after Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5. And it was Steve Jobs’ turn to really take the stage after Phil Shiller and Scott Forstall to talk about this new Apple resource for its customers.

So what is iCloud really? Simply put, it’s a tool that will help you stream music to your devices, but it’s really a lot more complicated than just music. iCloud is a cloud-based service that will help you backup photos, files, apps and music and sync them with your iOS and Mac OS devices. Pretty sweet, right? And exactly what the doctor ordered in case you happen to own various iOS devices and Mac or PCs.

The cloud, or better said the iCloud, will take care of all your files that you require on the go, whether they’re documents, apps, music, or whatever else you need syncing between your smart devices, including iPhones, iPod touches and iPads.

iCloud also happens to be the killer of MobileMe. That’s right, Apple’s $99/year service has died today as it gets replaced with the iCloud. But that doesn’t mean that iCloud will cost you any cash once it becomes available. In fact, Apple will offer it free of charge, which is quite impressive.

Inside iCloud you’ll find support for various apps like contacts, calendar and mail, which are exactly the kind of apps MobileMe had support for. Contacts syncing, calendar events sharing and @me.com email addresses will be available inside the iCloud. Add to these three apps App Store and iBooks support (iCloud will always have all the apps and eBooks you purchased available for you to download on your current device), not to mention wireless backup (includes app data, device settings, camera roll, music, apps and books) and Apple’s cloud becomes an even more powerful tool to use, not to mention a very tough competitor to beat by Amazon and/or Google.

In case that’s not enough then Apple has even more stuff available: documents in the cloud, which work pretty much as you expect: save documents in the cloud and have iCloud push them to all the devices that support them. Whenever a document is changed, it gets updated and backed up on all the devices it is stored on. Besides documents you also get iCloud storage APIs, which means you’ll be able to “tie your apps into iCloud’s storage system.”

iCloud will not be restricted to the Apple OS world, as it will work with PCs too so in case you’re working with iOS devices and PCs, the same features will be available to you just as if you were sporting a Mac instead of that Windows machine.

Next up is Photo Stream, another useful iCloud app, which will help you back up your photos to the cloud and have them downloaded on other devices immediately. In fact the new photos will be right there, available on multiple devices after you have actually taken the photo thanks to iCloud synchronization. That’s another neat trick if you’re taking a lot of pictures on the go. The iCloud will store your latest 1,000 image, for 30 days at all times, but they will all be stored on your Mac or PC for ever, and you won’t have to keep syncing them as you normally would.

We started talking about music streaming when we referred to iCloud but, as you can clearly see, iCloud is more than just music. When it comes to music though iCloud will also come in handy as it will let you access all the music you have ever purchased on any device, and download it to your current device with a simple push of a button. All that for no extra charge, “the first time you’ve seen this in the music industry.” The songs will come in 256kbps AAC quality and will be available for up to 10 devices, so you can sync your music with plenty of iOS devices out there, wink, wink!

Or, as Apple puts it:

iCloud stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices.

iCloud is integrated with your apps so everything happens automatically.

So what do you say folks? Does iCloud sound like something you’d be interested in right away?