iCloud
• iCloud = MobileMe: MobileMe (which launched with widescale service outages in 2009, and has been known as MobileMess every since) will be phased out and its existing services will fall under the iCloud umbrella.
• Scan-and-Match Through iTunes: iCloud will be able to scan your iTunes library and sync all of your audio tracks to the cloud, no track uploads required. From there, you should be able to play them on any device through a browser, or natively on a Mac or iOS device.
• iCloud Will Mirror All Your Music: All of your tracks will be available under iCloud, due to a deal with all four music labels. This means that even if your iTunes collection is full of nothing but torrented albums, they’ll still play just fine from the iCloud.
• iCloud Will Integrate With Ping: This is just speculation, but we believe that iCloud’s music streaming service will integrate with Apple’s half-baked music social network, Ping, for music sharing and discovery. Ping will finally have a purpose.
• No Video, Only Music Streaming: Based upon how much data you can stream on a 2GB data plan and the fact that Apple has just started trying to ink deals with Hollywood, we don’t think that iCloud will launch with video streaming support.
• Price of iCloud: Like MobileMe, we anticipate that iCloud will cost $99 per year, a price which will include access to all existing MobileMe services plus music streaming.
• Price of Just iCloud Streaming: For those who don’t want to sign up for all of iCloud’s services, Apple will allow you to sample the music streaming functionality for a free introductory period, after which it will cost $25 per year
• Release: We expect iCloud to be available to users very, very shortly after it is announced at WWDC.
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John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
