Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes stage to introduce iCloud
SAN FRANCISCO. June 7. KAZINFORM Apple's chief executive officer Steve Jobs on Monday took a break from his medical leave to introduce the company's new cloud-based service iCloud; Kazinform refers to Xinhua.
Jobs, in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, got a standing ovation in San Francisco's Moscone Center when he appeared on stage. Someone screamed "I love you," and Jobs said " it always helps and I appreciated it."
"ICloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices," said Jobs, calling it Apple's "next big insight."
According to Apple, iCloud Backup will automatically back up users' iOS devices to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi when they charge their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Backup content includes purchased music, apps, camera roll, device settings and app data. It will also automatically upload documents from iWork in the cloud and pushes them to users' all relevant devices.
The service will currently be free and replaces the former MobileMe which Apple once charged 99 U.S. dollars per year.
Users will get five gigabytes of memory which is not counting purchased apps, music or books. A beta version is available on Monday and the final version will be shipping with iOS 5 this fall, with paid plans for more storage to be announced at that time.
For a 24.99-dollar paid music plan named iTunes Match, a user's iTunes library will be scanned and they will gain instant access to those tracks or albums from compatible devices, rather than uploading them. Song files, including those converted from CDs, will also be uploaded to iCloud if they are not matched in iTunes stores but recognized by music labels.
Jobs pointed out that iTunes Match paid plan is cheaper than Amazon's offering and Google has not announced a price yet, saying "it's an industry leading effort."
The Apple CEO finally showed a photo of the company's new, massive data center in North Carolina to emphasize Apple is ready for iCloud service.
Before Jobs, Apple executives introduced Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X and iOS 5, the next version of Apple's mobile operating system; Kazinform cites Xinhua.
For full version go to www.xinhuanet.com/english2010