Is This The Interface You’ll Use To Sync iTunes To The Cloud? [iCloud]

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patent-110519-1

With all the deals getting inked and all the right hires in place, Apple is increasingly ready to jump iTunes into the cloud… possibly as early as next month’s WWDC. But how exactly will it work?

We know you’ll fling music up into the cloud and then be able to stream those songs on any device, a la Google Music or Amazon Cloud Locker, but is that all there is to it?

Not quite. As it turns out, Apple still intends to use your iPod’s available storage even when streaming from the cloud. The only difference will be, instead of storing whole songs, your cloud-stored music collection will only sync brief snippets of songs to your iDevice.

Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of flinging music into the cloud if you still need to sync your device and store data from those songs locally? Yes and no. What Apple’s trying to accomplish here is a way to make sure that the whole experience is seamless. Even if you skip to a random new track unexpectedly, Apple wants just enough of your song buffered in iPod storage that it’ll feel like it’s playing instantly.

It’ll be interesting to see how far Apple takes this concept. Perhaps a more interesting aspect of the patent is the above line illustration of exactly how iCloud syncing will be handled within iTunes.

Looks unwieldy. Let’s hope Apple has something better up their sleeves when iCloud goes live: if this is the way you sync music with your iCloud, no one’s ever going to use it.

For another take on this patent, check out Jack Purcher’s excellent coverage over at Patently Apple.

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