Apple’s iCloud Gives Users Free 5GB of Cloud Space for Syncing

With Apple’s major announcements at WWDC, one might imagine that it’d be OS X ‘Lion’ or iOS 5 to receive the most attention, but at Apple’s homepage, neither of those are at the forefront. Rather, that privilege belongs to ‘iCloud’, Apple’s long-awaited cloud-based storage service. While it’s been imagined in past months that the service would allow people to store their music and some documents in the cloud, Apple has a couple of other surprises to that will make all Mac users want to take advantage of what’s being offered.

First, the price: free. Being that this is a MobileMe replacement, which ran at $99 per year, “free” sounds nothing short of amazing. But, it’s important to note that MobileMe offered 20GB of space with its default package, whereas iCloud gives users 5GB (there is no mention on Apple’s site of expanding this storage at this time).

Second, iCloud’s goal is to make it easy to sync up data across all of your devices. Purchase a song on your MacBook? It’ll be available on your iPhone automatically (with the option to make it not automatic). The same applies for photos and other documents, including books, apps, e-mail and contacts. 5GB may not seem like a lot, but for everything aside from music, it should prove sufficient for most people.

For those who may think that an “aside from music” argument is null given people do have music, Apple has that covered. Like Amazon’s MP3 + Cloud service, music stored in iCloud will not count towards that 5GB – and why should it? Apple has all of it!

In addition, Apple plans to roll out a $24.99 service later this year called “Match” which will scan your folder for non-iTunes music that can be upgraded to iTunes Plus quality for free (256Kbit/s). It can be assumed that Apple wouldn’t overwrite higher-quality music, but for those who have a bunch of ripped CDs or purchased music elsewhere but would like better compatibility or quality with iTunes, this feature could wind up being a “must-have” for iTunes fans.

Let’s be honest here… for Apple to secure the proper licenses for tech like this is nothing short of amazing. Never in my right mind would I ever guess that any company could get the music industry to agree to a feature like this, but it’s soon to be a reality. I’m still in relative awe.

iCloud is in beta testing at the moment, but as it’s public, you’re free to go download the app and get started. Both it and the Match counterpart will become available this fall.