Apple's upcoming iCloud service is rumored to rely on both Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's AWS for hosting, as the company has played to its strength of building a consumer-facing experience rather than becoming a cloud provider.
Scammers are trying to trick Apple's existing MobileMe subscribers into providing credit card information, purportedly to migrate to the new iCloud service, in a new spam campaign that echoes previous attempts.
While many of the features of MobileMe are simply being upgraded in the move to iCloud, Apple has previously noted that Gallery, iDisk and iWeb are on the chopping block. Now, the company has further made it clear that data sync features will also be canceled in its iCloud transition steps.
Apple's iCloud services, announced this summer at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference, are quickly maturing for their initial release this fall. Here's what's new and what's changed.
Apple has posted a not yet fully functional login page for its new iCloud service, representing a revamped version of its existing Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Find My iPhone MobileMe apps as well as newly integrating the document sharing features of iWork.com.
Apple on Friday offered some additional transparency on its MobileMe to iCloud transition, specifying which features will safely make the jump to the new service and which will be lost forever — namely iDisk, Gallery and iWeb.
A new survey of iPhone users indicates that Apple's iCloud service could gain 150 million users, while nearly as many are also interested in using iMessage.
Apple could be planning to greatly enhance its "Find My iPhone" security feature in the future, as the company has shown interest in giving users the ability to scramble or delete specific data, or even record audio or visual information in the event that an iPhone is lost.
Speculative reports that Apple will throw away all of its existing web services in the transition from MobileMe to its new iCloud service appear to be reinforced by the company's job postings for iCloud web engineers, which describe web services but make little mention of web clients.
Apple is rumored to begin selling unlocked versions of the iPhone 4 in the U.S. starting at $649 on Wednesday, while iOS 5 beta users have discovered that iCloud.com is mirroring some of MobileMe's web services.
On the heels of the unveiling of the new iCloud service, Apple has indicated that current MobileMe subscribers will receive a free extension until June 30, 2012, at which point the service will be shuttered.
Apple finally showed off its long-awaited iCloud service on Monday, portraying it as a service that stores content, wirelessly pushes it to devices, and integrates with applications — all at no cost to users.
Apple's forthcoming cloud-based service could replace iTunes' syncing functionality, according to an unverified report.
In order to get the major record labels onboard with its forthcoming iCloud service, Apple could fork over as much as $150 million in "advanced payments."
Apple has filed for the "iCloud" trademark with the European Trademark Office with a wide range of classes, including "delivering digital music by telecommunications."
Apple next week is likely to announce that all Mac owners who run the latest version of the OS X operating system, Lion, will also receive at least some of the services from iCloud for free, sources have told AppleInsider.
After Apple tipped its hand on Tuesday and revealed it will unveil its new iCloud service next week, Wall Street analysts believe the company has set the stage for a strong software-focused Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.
In addition to agreements with music labels, Apple is also said to be pursuing licensing deals with movie and TV studios that would allow users to remotely store and stream copyrighted video content via the forthcoming iCloud service.
Apple announced on Tuesday that in less than a week, Chief Executive Steve Jobs will return to the stage, along with a team of company executives, to present Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and iOS 5 — and to introduce its new iCloud service.
{{ summary }}
Josh Ong
Daniel Eran Dilger
AppleInsider Staff
Neil Hughes
Sam Oliver
