While Apple’s iCloud has enjoyed a good start to its life as a fully-fledged cloud service, the Cupertino company recognizes the importance of constantly updating and improving it – particularly given Microsoft and Google’s recently introduced cloud-based efforts SkyDrive and Google Drive.
Also recognizing the increasing influence of services such as Instagram, a Wall Street Journal report suggests Tim Cook’s company is about to take the wraps off a refreshed iCloud service at this year’s WWDC, which will place more emphasis on the social aspect of storing images. Citing the clichéd "sources familiar," the new and improved service will allow images and photos to be shared, while also offering the ability for users to comment.
In addition, users could also be given the opportunity to sync video to iCloud, and the WSJ certainly seems confident the features will be showcased at this year’s world-wide developer conference, which commences on June 11. The annual conference, which is mainly centered around presenting developers with an opportunity to look, test and learn more about new and exciting technologies, products and features, is also a time when Apple makes announcements to the on looking tech world, and although iCloud hasn’t commanded much blog space up until this point, a new, vaguely Instagram-esque offering is certainly an intriguing prospect.
At this point in time, an iCloud feature called Photo Stream allows users to store a set of photos, but there is no current sharing infrastructure in place for those with an incessant need to share everything. While it’s hard to mention any upcoming image-sharing service without referencing Instagram, it’s unlikely Apple’s changes will cause Facebook’s recent billion dollar acquisition too much grief – at least not initially – due to Instagram’s reach and range of features and filters.
There aren’t any further details, although it shall be quite interesting to see whether it catches on and manages to garner a decent following. After a string of terrible web-based ventures, the fruit company is certainly looking to make amends and create a service used by everybody, and I don’t know about you guys, but we certainly can’t wait to see how Apple approaches this fiercely competitive market of photo sharing.
Thoughts?
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