Apple revealed on Tuesday that it will officially launch its iCloud service on Wednesday, October 12, along side the release of iOS 5. The service will replace MobileMe and the company is positioning it as a key component in its iOS ecosystem.
The new service offers file storage, data syncing, calendar sharing, music and photo storage and syncing, and more.
iCloud rolls in MobileMe’s features, such as calendar and contact syncing, me.com email addresses. New features include:
- Calendar sharing
- App Store purchase management with auto-download for new purchases
- Support for pushing iBooks bookmarks to other iOS devices
- Daily data backups over Wi-Fi connections
- Auto-save support for storing documents on iCloud
- Photo Stream for pushing photos from the camera roll to iCloud, iPhoto and Apple TV
- iTunes in the Cloud for sharing iTunes libraries with up to ten devices
iCloud will include 5GB of storage. Purchased music, App Store purchases, iBookstore purchases, and photos don’t count against the data storage cap.
iCloud is a free service.