By samdizzy

steve-jobs-icloud

As you may recall, iCloud is a family of free cloud services that work closely with Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac platforms. Oh, and just for good measure: iCloud will support PCs as well. Apple’s goal: Allow consumers to wirelessly store all of their content in the iCloud, while automatically synchronizing that content across all devices.

In some ways, Apple is considered invincible. HP’s decision to kill WebOS and its TouchPad tablets last week reinforced Apple’s market dominance.

Far From Perfect

Still, Apple has stumbled on cloud-related projects. Anybody else suffer endlessly while trying to run Apple’s defunct MobileMe services? Apple claims the former MobileMe services are all completely rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Additional iCloud services will include iCloud Backup, iCloud Storage,  and Photo Stream, just to name a few.

At first glance, we’re not sure if channel partners can potentially profit from iCloud. The answer to that question likely includes Apple’s Cloud Storage APIs, which may allow ISVs and VARs to link iOS and Mac applications to iCloud.

We’ll get clearer answers when iCloud launches this fall simultaneously with iOS 5. In the meantime, the countdown to iCloud continues. But this time around, Tim Cook — rather than Steve Jobs — is the one keeping tabs on Apple’s progress.