Last week’s iPhone 4S release foreshadowed an iCloud release date this week. Predictions were found to be accurate, and we now know the iCloud for iOS will be released on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
While the official Apple press release states Oct. 12 as the iCloud release date, we have a preview of some of the features (the iCloud Beta download went live on Aug 2 so developers have been playing with these features for a couple of weeks now). So, what can this new iCloud product do for you?
First off, iCloud gives you 5GB of free storage, 10GB for $20/year, 20GB for $40/year, or 50GB for $100/year. It’s a pretty straight-forward proposal; for the above prices you can access your data from anywhere that’s connected to the internet, with no need to carry sensitive data on encrypted physical storage.
So you can stick your documents, pictures, presentations and anything else you think you might need from anywhere in your iCloud account. iCloud works with the iPad, iPhone and iPod, or any computer that can run iTunes, so anywhere you go with any of your Apple devices you’ll be able to grab and work on your files. If you add a file to any device, then it auto-magically is made available to all of your devices. The “scan and match” iTunes features allows for quick access of any of your media that’s in Apple’s huge iTunes library.
This is the future of mobile data access; everything you need, everywhere you go, on any and every device. The one downside to note about any cloud product is its reliance on an internet connection. I have just moved and my home internet connection is not yet hooked up (Fios is coming on Wednesday). So, since I have my media stored on an Apple Time Capsule, I was able to access my movies and watch ‘Rango’ last night, even though I didn’t have an internet connection. So, for “always-there” access, there’s still nothing that beats physical media in my opinion.