Apple iCloud, iOS 5, Mac OS X, and more at WWDC next week
Apple that it will be kicking off the festivities of its Worldwide Developers Conference next week with a keynote led by CEO Steve Jobs (and other executives) covering iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion, and its long-rumored cloud service Apple iCloud.
The announcement cements the fact that this year鈥檚 WWDC is all about software. We already knew that Apple would be dishing out more details on OS X Lion at the event (we ), and iOS 5 seemed like a given as well.
IN PICTURES: Steve Jobs and Apple
But the announcement is definitely a strange way for the company to reference Apple iCloud, a service that has been talked about for some time, but never acknowledged by Apple.
So what is iCloud? Apple鈥檚 doesn鈥檛 offer up many details, but at this point we can assume it鈥檚 . And it could also serve as , Apple鈥檚 subscription-based file storage, mail and calendar syncing service. At this point, I suspect iCloud will make it easy for consumers to store their media files online and easily retrieve them via the iPhone and iPad.
Apple has been building up a data center in North Carolina for some time, and it鈥檚 also in Santa Clara, Calif., both of which are expected to serve at the heart of Apple鈥檚 cloud services.
The company will definitely have some surprises in stock for its WWDC keynote, but at this point it doesn鈥檛 seem very likely that we鈥檒l see new iPhone hardware at the event.
