MobileMe Transforms Into iCloud and Gets Useful For Free

First there was .Mac, that transformed into Mobileme and that will be coming out as iCloud in the autumn of 2011. According to Steve jobs Mobileme was not their finest hour, but iCloud really does look like it’s going to be really very useful for all Apple users.

iCloud is going to be the way effortless in the way it works, automatic and with no effort on our part. iCloud is already integrated into your Apple applications such as Keynote and Pages and it will allow you to access your content on all of your devices, best of all it will be free with iOS 5.

Better than DropBox

We already use Dropbox, at least most of us do anyway. And that is kind of like a hard drive in the sky, it is envisioned that iCloud will be more than that because it will do more things automatically. Every time you create content on any of your devices including your Mac computers, the content will be pushed to iCloud and then pushed down to your other iCloud connected devices.

MobileMe was Pretty Good

I did try Mobileme for one year in the paid version and I really was very happy with the way it was so easy to connect with another devices. To login to Mobileme and to have all of my contacts, bookmarks and calendar events suddenly available on the new device was brilliant. Obviously, what is going to be better with iCloud is that it is going to be free. With iCloud we will still get instant access to our applications, like our photographs and our music. And just the same as before, the e-mails contacts and calendars will be up-to-date over all of our Apple devices.

5GB of Storage Free with iCloud

For free with iCloud we get 5 GB of storage and that is going to be a lot of storage space for most people because iCloud stores our content in a very economic way. The 5 GB will not include the purchased music, applications, books. The photos in the Photo Stream will also not be counted in the free amount of storage.

Will We ever Get a Scrivener for iPad

The iCloud features are already available within Pages and Keynote and other Apple applications, but Apple have made the code available to third party developers so that we will also be able to have our documents from those apps transferred into iCloud and then also into our other Apple devices. As a Scrivener for the Mac user I will be disappointed that it is unlikely that we will get a Scrivener for iPad application, even though it is possible to have our data from Scrivener sync to a folder and used via Dropbox on the iPad. It is also possible to sync Scrivener on the Mac so that we can use the text within Simplenote on the iPad and continue our writing work, but it would be useful to have a Scrivener for iPad application.

Even if we don’t get Scrivener for iPad, I’m sure that many other third party developers will use the tools to make their applications work with iCloud. It will be possible to paint something in ArtStudio and have that also available on the iPhone and we will be able to create reminders and also have all that informationon all of our other Apple devices.

The iPhone is the Most Popular Camera on Flickr

According to the numbers from the Photo website Flickr one of the most popular cameras is the iPhone and the iPad will also starts being very popular camera there too. The reason for this is because the best camera we have is the one that we have with us at the time. So when we take a photograph now on iOS devices, that photo will be uploaded or synced with the iCloud and then pushed to all our other iOS devices that has Photo Stream which is part of iCloud. iCloud will automatically send a copy of any photos as we take then over any available Wi-Fi network and it will do up to 1000 photos. Those photos are stored on the Photo Stream for 30 days, and we have enough time to be able to move photos that we want to keep to the camera roll on iOS device or to another album on our Macs.

Photo Stream – A Rolling Collection of 1000 Photos

The Photo Stream is like a rolling collection of our last 1000 photographs and all new photographs will appear on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. You can save your best photos easily if you just move into a photo album.

If you have an Apple TV you are also going to be able to view your new photos on your high-definition television in a special photo frame album that will allow you to see photos that are stored in iCloud.