It was a long time coming but Apple finally unveiled its long awaited iCloud service at the WWDC (Apple Worldwide Developers Conference) 2011. Apple CEO Steve Jobs did the honors of revealing the new services at the event. This was his second public appearance ever since he temporarily turned day to day operations to his no.2 Apple COO Tim Cook. The iCloud service is a free wireless storage and syncing service which will be launched with the upcoming iOS 5 in the fall. The blogosphere was abuzz with all the new features and they had speculated that iCloud would be available for an annual fee. It came as a great surprise when Steve announced that not only would iCloud be free but there also wouldn’t be any advertising on it.
The implementation of iCloud means that Dropbox’s glory days are nearly over now. The writing is on the wall and iCloud is here to rule the roost. iCloud will be switched on by default on all iOS 5 devices. It will allow users to save their content on the cloud and push it to their devices. Dropbox’s USP is that it is easy for users to save files on one device, sync it and access it on another. Despite the popularity of Dropbox, not every iOS user has it installed on their device. They won’t have any excuse with the iCloud as it will be a default feature and will eventually make DropBox redundant. It will be available for the iPhone 3GS, 4, the forthcoming iPhone, iPad and iPad 2, and iPod Touch (3rd and 4th Generation).
Here is a great summary of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, explaining the iCloud
Steve claims that iCloud will be automatically uploading content such as photos, videos, books, music, device settings, app data, storing it and pushing it to devices without any hitch. The devices will be utilizing WiFi to upload everything. Apple’s iCloud will be able to support 10 devices per user for free, and everyone will get up to 5GB of free storage for music, docs, or photos, though it does not include the Photo Stream photo-synching feature, or purchased apps, docs, or books. 5 GB of Storage is a pretty good number and is a better deal than the free 2 GB offered by Dropbox. The other factor which is not in Dropbox’s favor is that one has to manually select files for storage as opposed to the more automated syncing feature on iCloud.
The introduction of iCloud means that Apple has shuttered its MobileMe service which didn’t find many takers mainly due to its confusing interface and its hefty annual price tag. Apple did take a long time coming up with the service but then the wait was truly worth it. Dropbox may not disappear overnight as it is used on other platforms besides iOS. However, one can’t deny the fact that Dropbox was quite a popular feature on iOS devices . With the introduction of iCloud there will be no need to use Dropbox in the near future. This will mean a huge drop in users for Dropbox and will surely affect them in the long term.
The official iCloud Home Page.
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