9:25 AM
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APPLE has played catch up with Google's Android by ditching the iTunes umbilical chord - the USB connection that an iPhone needed to be fed its multimedia from a PC.
Android devices already have been using third-party software and offerings by phone manufacturers for wireless syncing and cloud-based storage.
Third party apps in the Android market such as doubleTwist and manufacturer's software such as Samsung's Kies Air on Galaxy phones already sync music and other media without users needing to connect their smartphone to a desktop computer.
The migration of the Android app market to the cloud also meant users could buy apps for their Android devices from any computer, and those apps would install a little later on their phones.
These Android solutions have partly come about because there has not been a universal Android equivalent to desktop-based Apple's iTunes for enabling syncing with a physical connection.
Analysts this morning believe Apple's integrated iCloud and iTunes services offer an elegant approach that surpasses Android's more piecemeal solutions, but for the first time Apple has come from behind to push out ahead of the competition.
The notion of physically connecting an iPhone, iPad or iPod to a desktop to upload music is gone. Instead, music primarily exists in the cloud: if you pay the $US24.99 fee, your songs are "matched” with copies of the same tracks that iTunes Match has identified. There's no need to even upload them to the cloud.
Alternatively, you can upload unmatched tracks and store them within your free 5GB allowance.
Apps, uploaded music, photos, iBooks and other multimedia can be synced back to all devices wirelessly.
Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi said Apple's syncing system would save users time and effort.
"The plus for the user is one, storage, and two, the replicating of data across all the different devices that you have, including the purchases I make.
"If I'm reading a book, it is available automatically on both my iPhone and iPad.
However some users may feel uncomfortable about the idea of maintaining a music collection in the cloud.
"The cloud is where things are going, but at the end of the day, this is not going to be for everyone.”
Market analyst Ovum said Apple had held its nerve and taken its time to releases its cloud-based media service in the face of rival launches from Amazon and Google.
"Such nerve may well have stood Apple in good stead, allowing licensing deals to be inked and enabling existing iTunes collections to be streamed from the cloud to any Apple device without the need for laborious uploading,” Ovum principal analyst Mark Little said.
"This compares well with Amazon's Cloud Drive and Google's rather lazy Beta for Music, which force users to upload their music collections all over again.”
"This focus on consumer experience looks to support Apple's continued dominance of the digital music market, but much depends on the business model chosen.”
The iCloud service allows apps and electronic book purchases to be synced to devices from cloud storage, and iCloud's photostream service allows photos taken on one device to be backup up and streamed to other devices with the same Apple account.
iCloud also replaces Apple's MobileMe services. The storage of contacts, calendars, mail and device backups are now through iCloud.
Apple said iCloud storage would be managed by three data storages centres, and the corporation had spent $US500 million in its Maiden, North Carolina data centre to support the expected customer demand for free iCloud services.
Source : http://www.theaustralian.com.au
Posted in: Quick News
