On Friday Apple posted an announcement on their News and Announcements for Apple Developers RSS feed asking developers to get their apps ready for iCloud backup and restore. The announcement is yet another clue that Apple is getting closer to releasing iCloud and iOS 5 to the public.
Developer support for iCloud is very important to Apple, but with the plethora of other options like Dropbox or SugarSync and with extensive baked in app support for DropBox already in existence will Apple see user adoption of iCloud surpass that of Dropbox? Initially the first wave of iCloud users will be current Mobile Me users. I’ll be one of those, but I’m not all that excited about iCloud due to the fact that it won’t support all of Mobile Me’s sync features.
Additionally, I don’t think iClouds Music Match feature will be very exciting either. Initial reports say that it is slow to sync, cumbersome and doesn’t stream music. The latter might be a problem for a lot of people.
This is the first round of calls Apple will make to developers to get on the ball and support all the new features that iCloud and iOS 5 will offer. As we get closer to the release of iOS 5 expect another Apple developer call for apps compatible with iOS 5.
