Apple prepares for iCloud launch

As Steve Jobs puts the final touches to his keynote speech, details, or at least rumoured details, of Apple’s new iCloud service have begun to emerge.

As has been widely expected, central to iCloud will be an iTunes streaming service. Apple developer and pundit, John Gruber told readers of his Daring Fireball blog that they should think of iCloud as ‘the new iTunes.’

iTunes, the desktop app, currently syncs the following things with iOS devices: audio, movies and TV shows, iBooks e-books, App Store apps, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, notes, and any sort of files shared between iOS apps. All of these things would be better served syncing over-the-air via the so-called cloud.

iCloud, however, is not all about music. It may also be host to an improved MobileMe which will could include location and mapping services.

More interestingly, Cult of Mac reported yesterday that iCloud could be tied to Apple’s TIme Capsule network storage device, to allow owners to access all the data stored on a Time Capsule from anywhere on the Internet. ‘All your files and data — pictures, videos, Word and Excel documents, and so on — will be available anytime, anywhere, on both Mac OS X and iOS devices,’ it reported.

It will work something like this, according to Cult of Mac:

Files saved on your computer are backed up instantly to Time Capsule, which makes them available to remote Macs and iOS devices.

If you make any changes on any computer, those changes are updated through iCloud and stored on your Time Capsule. The Time Capsule archives and serves up your files even when your computers are off. When you get home and fire up your desktop computer or laptop, the files are automatically synced across your devices.

This service will also allow you to upload photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad to your Time Capsule. The media will be stored on the device and be made available for other devices to sync.

Or, in the words of Steve Jobs himself, from 1997, like this: