
Apple to unveil iCloud Monday, June 6 - shawndumas
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/31/apple-to-unveil-icloud-monday-june-6/
======
mortenjorck
All this speculation about iCloud being Apple's answer to the Amazon Cloud
Drive / Cloud Player is missing the forest for the trees. If iCloud is about
iTunes, why isn't it being announced in September with the iPod family
updates, instead of at WWDC?

The logical answer is that it's not a consumer service, but a developer-
focused service. iCloud will no doubt be the _platform_ for the Lala-derived
service unveiled in September, but the platform is the big deal here: Think
Amazon Web Services, but built specifically for integrating with iOS and
MacOS, complete with a new Core Data Cloud API that makes adding sync to any
app barely more challenging than writing for Core Data in the first place. And
the basic tier (more than enough unless you're a top-100 app) is included in
the $99/year membership.

 _That_ would be a game-changer.

~~~
tonfa
Do they really have the infrastructure? Which other datacenters besides the NC
one have they been building? (I think AWS has many more datacenters, both in
the US and outside).

~~~
mortenjorck
That's a really good question. The reported buildout is likely well short of
AWS, but I simply cannot believe Apple would make an investment at that scale
just to store millions of redundant copies of music files!

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shawndumas
Official Press Release: <http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/05/31wwdc.html>

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tuhin
What is interesting is that Apple is announcing this, so I am being highly
curious to see what the "big secret" announcement this year will be.

Also sorry for being a fanboy, glad to know Steve will be giving the Keynote.

~~~
ugh
They likely announced this to set expectations. They don’t want headlines like
“Apple Fails to Deliver Next iPhone on Time”.

They want to make sure that everyone knows that this event will be about
software and nothing else.

~~~
DeusExMachina
This is still strange for Apple. Speculation and then 'failing' to meet
speculation always happened around Apple events, but still Apple didn't care.

Wether they do it to set expectations or not, this is the first time they give
a list of what they will announce.

EDIT: spelling.

~~~
ugh
Nah, Apple does care. They are very good at playing the expectations game and
have gotten better with time.

Their invitations have become less cryptic and outright explicit
([http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apple-hints-at-
ipa...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apple-hints-at-ipad-news-in-
march-2-event-invitation.ars)), probably precisely because disappointment
about a lack of flashy announcements was fast becoming a big deal after Apple
events.

There will always be stupid speculation – also before next Monday – and there
will always be people complaining – also after next Monday – Apple just
doesn’t want that to turn into the main thing.

That press release is in context not much more explicit than above invitation
to the iPad event. It’s just a different tool.

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statictype
I know that everyone wants over-the-air syncing and all that, but I would much
rather have a better notification system and lock screen in iOS 5.

I can imagine a lot of creative/useful 'Lock Screen Apps' being released if
Apple would just release an API to access it.

Like what pg said about giving an inch to a hacker and they'll take you a
mile.

~~~
kenjackson
Smart money is they'll have all three (OTA syncing, better notification
system, and better lock screen) in iOS5.

~~~
mikemaccana
Sources?

~~~
kenjackson
See:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2602939>

~~~
MaxGabriel
Is this like a joke..? That there isn't a source, its just a good guess? The
link is to this discussion

~~~
kenjackson
It's meant to be sort of a joke.

I said, "Smart money ...", which implies speculation. The other person
responded "Sources?". If I had sources it wouldn't be "smart money" (or I
guess you could argue that it would be "really smart money"). Since my
statement was purely speculative, I referenced a speculative source --
directly back to the echo chamber -- myself.

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andrewcross
Does anyone know how a Cloud music service would work for non-iTunes bought
music? While I would never pirate music _cough_ , I'm wondering whether music
obtained in such a manner would be available in the cloud. I can see three
different ways the iCloud could work:

1) The only music available via the cloud are songs you've purchased. You have
to sign in to get access to the music and only songs purchased with the
account are available. Possible, but I doubt anyone would really use it if
this was the case. 2) You are able to upload any music that you haven't
purchased and add it to your cloud account. I think this is most likely but
doesn't really differentiate it from current competitors. 3) Any music that
you have in your itunes is instantly available online. I highly doubt this
will be the case.

Anyone else have any thoughts on how it would work? Would you use it if you
can't get pirated music on the cloud?

~~~
schrototo
Option 3 is pretty much exactly what the most recent rumors suggested: "Armed
with licenses from the music labels and publishers, Apple will be able to scan
customers' digital music libraries in iTunes and quickly mirror their
collections on its own servers, say three people briefed on the talks. If the
sound quality of a particular song on a user's hard drive isn't good enough,
Apple will be able to replace it with a higher-quality version. Users of the
service will then be able to stream, whenever they want, their songs and
albums directly to PCs, iPhones, iPads, and perhaps one day even cars." [1]

[1] [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/26/some-icloud-music-
servic...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/26/some-icloud-music-service-
details-others-companies-likely-to-follow/)

~~~
andrewcross
Very interesting. If Apple is able to pull this off I'll be very impressed,
but I can't see how the record labels will go for this.

~~~
wmf
The record labels are happy to get paid N times for each song that they sell.

~~~
joezydeco
_"We've scanned your iTunes library of 12,000 songs. The price to stream each
song over iCloud will be $0.09/song. Click here to bill the $1,080 directly to
your card."_

If that's not the scenario, than what is? You can only stream songs newly
purchased over iTunes and only iTunes?

~~~
wmf
I suspect Apple will charge a flat rate for iCloud and allocate the royalties
proportionally (like Spotify). From the customer's point of view it will be
"free" to sync their music into iCloud, but the labels will get paid (again).

~~~
elithrar
> I suspect Apple will charge a flat rate for iCloud and allocate the
> royalties proportionally (like Spotify). From the customer's point of view
> it will be "free" to sync their music into iCloud, but the labels will get
> paid (again).

This is how I see it too. Customers with smaller collections (i.e. the
majority) will have higher margins, and effectively subsidise those with
larger (and therefore with larger royalty payouts) collections.

Works similarly to the way ISP's do: users who use say, 20GB of a 60GB cap are
more profitable than a user who uses 145GB of a 150GB. Bandwidth costs are
small, but on a large scale, it works.

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masklinn
Question of the Day: will apple finally release a "cloud" service worth using,
and at what price?

The previous tentative (.Mac, and its reincarnation in MobileMe) was "not
conclusive" (slow, lacking features and not worth anywhere near the asking
price), and Apple has now been providing a terrible "cloud" service for 9
years (since the rebranding of iTools to .Mac).

I don't know what others think of it, but as far as I'm concerned this may
make or break the next phone I go with (between iOS, WebOS and Android)

~~~
cageface
Android is a much more integrated and native citizen of the web. Apple is
playing catchup here and I have my doubts that they'll make it work this time
after several lackluster previous attempts. It just doesn't seem to be in
Apple's blood, just as social isn't in Google's.

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naeem
It's good and bad to see Apple really joining in to the cloud phenomenon. On
the good note, nobody has really built a cloud service worth using yet, so
Apple may very well be the first to do that. On the bad side, it's Apple, so
it's probably going to come with a cost and interested developers will
probably have to handcuff their left hand to a mac.

~~~
hyperbovine
> On the good note, nobody has really built a cloud service worth using yet

Dropbox and Flickr are both pretty good...

~~~
adw
Or, um, Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo! Mail.

~~~
achompas
Or Google Docs, Google Calendar, Evernote...

~~~
adw
It's fairly hard to find a large Web service which isn't "cloud" in some
sense. Doesn't nearly all of Netflix run on Amazon AWS?

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stuartmemo
Anyone else bored of the "i" prefix?

~~~
watty
I don't mind it when paired with a unique product name but do find it boring
when paired with an every day word, iPhoto, iBook, iPad, iCloud. What's worse
is that this one uses the 'i' and 'Cloud' together... my Apple fanatic
marketer is going to have a heart attack!

~~~
hucker
Other than perhaps iMac, which of Apple's i-products doesn't have their i
paired with an every day word?

~~~
tesseract
'iPod' is perhaps unlike any of the others - even iMac - in that even though
'pod' is an everyday word, the resulting product name is almost completely
opaque.

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babyshake
Too bad web apps or Phonegap apps won't easily be able to participate in any
of the syncing fun through the mobile safari localStorage API.

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MrJagil
Does anyone know where the video of the presentation will be posted?

(it's usually uploaded a few hours after the presentation)

~~~
wtn
You can subscribe to the MacRumors spoiler-free Keynote email list.

They send out links to Apple Keynote videos when they are available.

~~~
MrJagil
I found some older macrumors spoiler free sites and tried subscribing to the
mailing list ([http://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/24/january-2010-media-
event...](http://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/24/january-2010-media-event-
spoiler-free-keynote-stream/)). It didn't work.

I did find apples event site though: <http://www.apple.com/apple-events/>

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lion0
I don't get it, why so much excitement over a cloud service? Lion or iOS 5 I
understand, but a cloud service?

~~~
pohl
Is there excitement? All I see is a press release on a website.

~~~
mishmash
Ignoring the rumor community, right now TechCrunch, CNET, CNN, and Fox News
all have front pages stories about Apple/iCloud/WWDC.

The BBC doesn't mention Apple specifically, but does have an article asking:
Is cloud computing ready for primetime?

~~~
pohl
I'm sorry, I took the word "excitement" to indicate a heightened emotional
state of some sort. Yes, I agree there are lots of sites out there pumping
this for page views. I don't find that out of the ordinary, though.

~~~
mishmash
Ah my misunderstanding. I'll just add then that I'm personally excited to see
where iCloud will land on the speculation spectrum from a full AWS cloud
infrastructure to a simple online iTunes media player. ;)

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patrickgzill
ISTR news of a large datacenter being built by Apple near Asheville, NC; I
assume this is part of that push.

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hop
No more local backups? That seems like the next big step.

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dongsheng
Is there any chance to have the free email account?

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vladoh
There is one more thing... the iPhone 5 :)

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jcampbell1
I wonder if the early announcement is to put pressure on the record companies
to finish the negotiations. They now have a hard deadline to get the deals
signed.

~~~
tuhin
_iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering_

If it were that, would not it have been wise to mention the word music
somewhere in that. Just saying that what you state does not seem to fit in as
the motive here.

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programminggeek
It makes sense that they would pre-announce this given that it will likely
include transitioning MobileMe accounts to it as well. Thus, it's probably the
worst kept secret in tech that iCloud is coming.

Thus, I'm guessing all the "big surprises" have to do with iOS 5. Also, given
that WWDC is a dev conference, I expect that some of the coolest announcements
will be dev related and won't be talked about much in the press.

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chrisjsmith
Hopefully they will release an iPod Nano that has tactile controls (again!) at
the same time. That is my main hope!

