The introduction of iTunes Cloud is what's known as an inflection point. It's beyond the "post-PC" era Steve Jobs described in his last major public appearance and rolls aggressively forward towards a full-scale demotion of PCs and laptops from centerpieces of our digital lives to things we think of as simple "devices."While Apple didn't fully adopt my vision of the end of content ownership, the company has unshackled much of it from the confines of a single device. With iCloud and, especially iTunes Cloud, Apple's finally acknowledged that it does know who you are and what you own. Apple's cloud strategy will very likely be the thing that takes the cloud from a fuzzy concept to something real, concrete, and desirable.
Apple's cloud covers a lot. It's like a blanket over every part of your digital life, encompassing photos, documents, email, contacts, schedules, and, of course, music. Suddenly, the Apple ecosystem—which used to comprise a piece of hardware, the iTunes software, the App Store, and content—now includes all of your Apple content-consumption hardware. If you're logged into any of them, your experience should be the same.
Google's plan is similar. One account, many gadgets, a ubiquity of content access. But Google has stumbled badly on the music front. Major music labels are not working with the company and Google's music locker is just a place to upload DRM-free music you own. You can't buy major label music in the Google cloud and play it from there or download it to all of your Android or Chrome devices. Read More
