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Apple finally revealed when it will take the wraps of its highly anticipated iCloud service and iCloud will go live starting on October 12. With iTunes Match, even songs you’ve imported from CDs can be stored in iCloud. And you can play them on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC and iTunes Match is just $24.99 a year. iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store and any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device……………

Apple has announced that iCloud, a set of free cloud services, including iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream and Documents in the Cloud, will be available on October 12. Apple says iCloud will work seamlessly with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store content in iCloud and push it to all devices. iCloud will store music, photos, apps, contacts, calendars and documents and also keep them up to date across all your devices. When content changes on one device, all the other devices are updated automatically and wirelessly. “iCloud is the easiest way to manage your content, because iCloud does it all for you and goes far beyond anything available today,” said Mr Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice- President of Internet Software and Services. “You don’t have to think about syncing your devices, because it happens automatically, and it is free.” iTunes in the Cloud lets the user automatically download new music purchases to all devices. If the user buys a song on his iPad, he will be able to find it on his iPhone, without syncing. iTunes in the Cloud also lets the user download previously purchased iTunes content, including music and TV shows to devices. iCloud’s Photo Stream service lets the user take a photo on one device and have it automatically appear on your other devices. A photo you take on the iPhone is sent to iCloud and automatically pushed to iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC. The Photo Stream album could also be viewed on Apple TV. iCloud also automatically pushes a copy of the photos imported from digital camera over Wi-Fi or Ethernet, so the user can view them on other devices.

iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud keeps documents up to date across all devices, automatically. Apple’s iWork apps for iOS, Pages, Numbers and Keynote will take advantage of iCloud storage and Apple is also offering developers the APIs they need to enable their apps to work seamlessly with Documents in the Cloud. iCloud lets you see the user’s App Store and iBookstore purchase history and download those apps and books to any of your devices at any time. Purchased apps and books could be automatically downloaded to other devices, not just the device they were purchased on. iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up information to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi. Apple claims iCloud works seamlessly with Contacts, Calendar and Mail, and the user can share calendars with friends and family. iCloud will be available on October 12 as a free download to iPhone, iPad or iPod touch users running iOS 5 or a Mac running OS X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, TV shows, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. Apple finally talked about when people can expect to get their hands on iTunes Match and it’s later than iCloud in general. Later in October is as specific as the company got to putting a release date on  the cloud-based subscription music service that makes your iTunes library available to all your Apple and Mac devices.

iTunes Match only provides you with access to tracks already in your library; iTunes music you’ve purchases, or albums you’ve added from other sources like your own CD collection are what you’ll have access to. iTunes scans your library, and then looks for matches on the iTunes store servers. Where it finds a match, nothing more needs to be done; you’ll be able to download tracks from Apple in high-quality 256kbps AAC to up to 10 computers or iOS devices. iTunes Match uploads copies of that content from your hard drive to its servers, including album artwork and any other track and artist information, so you shouldn’t even notice the difference between it and the music provided by Apple. You can download and play back songs from iTunes Match on any device where you have your account signed in, but the party ends when you switch Apple IDs. Content is erased from your device when you sign in using different credentials, so if your iTunes account for music and the one you use for apps are different, for example, switching between the two is not a simple thing. As announced when iTunes Match was originally previewed, the service will cost $24.99 per year. For that price, you get unlimited downloads on up to 10 devices (iOS, Mac or PC) and access to Apple’s 18 million strong iTunes store database for 256 Kbps AAC tracks for matching. Again, other tracks not found will be uploaded in their original format to Apple’s servers. Any tracks from iTunes Match doesn’t count against your iCloud storage limit. iTunes Match will be available for U.S. users late in October, but international users will have to wait. No announced timeline for release in other markets is yet available.

Sources: (1), (2)

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