Apple users on iCloud 9 as new services come on stream
Jobs, who took a leave of absence in January for undisclosed medical reasons, walked out to a standing ovation from the 5,000 strong Apple faithful at its Worldwide Developers’ Conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Centre, making opening comments for a few minutes before handing over to marketing chief Phil Schiller.
The iCloud lets users play their music and get access to their data from any Apple device.
In cloud computing, data and software are stored on servers and devices access it through the internet.
Apple’s expansion into ‘the cloud’ comes as it strives to stay a step ahead of rivals such as Google and Amazon.
It could ignite more demand for devices from the iPhone to the iPad, while helping sales of music through iTunes.
In only his second appearance since January, Jobs said people will be able to share book purchases, music and data such as calendar items, across different devices, while backing up and updating information regularly.
Apple also introduced software upgrades at the conference, including Lion, its Mac OS X computer operating system and the next version of its mobile operating system.
For the iPhone and iPad, the fifth version of the iOS software will feature drop-down notifications for everything from Twitter feeds to Facebook alerts, and new applications such as Safari tab browsing.
