• June 6, 2011

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today unveiled the company's highly anticipated iCloud digital locker service, which will let users push downloaded content wirelessly to all of their devices for free. Speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, Jobs said the free iCloud service would replace its $99-a-year MobileMe offering, which he admitted wasn't the company's finest hour. With the demotion of the PC to just another device, Jobs promised iCloud will become the center of your digital life.

Much of the speculation about iCloud surrounded the music element, with Apple having lined up deals with the major record labels leading up to the launch. iTunes for iCloud will not be a subscription service, but the usual a-la-carte model the Apple platform already uses. What's new is iTunes Match, which will scan songs a user's iTunes library to find titles not purchased from Apple and creates a DRM-free copies of that music in the cloud. That service, which Jobs assured would only take "minutes' to scan songs, costs $25 a year.--Mark Walsh