One of the elements that dampens people’s investment into the iPad line of Tablet PC’s is the internal storage issue. There is a great leap in price because Apple does not give you the option for expandable memory. Currently if you have an iPad 1st or 2nd generation you are limited to 16, 32, or 64 GB for your storage. Apple today made things easier with the unveiling of a new cloud music service called “iCloud.”
Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs took the stage for only the second time this year due to lingering medical issues. He gave only the essential information on the new platform and left the specificss up to his team. This was a smart move because it substantiates that Apple is just not a one man operation.
iCloud is a new service that stores pictures, music, and documents by scanning your computer and uploading them to your cloud account. You can then access your media content on your iPhone, iPad, PC, or iPod Touch. When new content is added it is automatically synced across all of your devices. Apple has opened up three different data-centers to accommodate the launch of the service and did not mention if they had plans for more.
iCloud is in essence Apple’s answer to the Amazon Music Locker and Google’s new cloud storage service. Apple has the advantage on this front because unlike the other services you do not have to manually upload files.
The iCloud service will go into effect this fall and if you did not buy your music from iTunes you will have to pay a modest $24.99 a year to transfer ALL of your music. The one good thing about the iCloud service is that it is not just a paid cloud service but Apple is giving you 5 GB of storage for free. The company did not offer details on how much additional storage would be.
I think the iCloud service is necessary as most companies are offering cloud based storage solutions. Many people have more then one device, such as a laptop, computer, smartphone, and tablet. It is essential to share and access data across all of your devices.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
