HANDS-ON: iTunes in the Cloud [PICS]
At WWDC on Monday, Apple officially unveiled its much anticipated iTunes in the Cloud feature.
The feature will be part of iCloud, which will formally launch alongside iOS 5 this fall, but users can get a taste of some of features today.
iTunes in the Cloud allows users to access songs, albums, music videos, apps and books that were previously purchased but that don’t exist locally on a user’s device. That means if you don’t have a copy of an album on your iPhone or iPad but you really want to hear your favorite song, you can just redownload the track from your account free of charge rather than having to sync with your Mac or PC.
In the fall, Apple will also introduce an iTunes Match service that will make it easy for users to gain cloud access to all the music they haven’t purchased on iTunes for just $25 a year. Starting today, however, users can take advantage of the larger “access your iTunes purchases” feature.
GSM iPhone 4 owners (sorry Verizon folks) and iPod touch or iPad users running iOS 4.3.1 or higher will now see a new “Purchased” tab in the iTunes app in iOS. iTunes 10.3 beta brings that functionality to the Mac or PC.
We’ve spent some time with iTunes in the Cloud and put together this gallery to show off the major features in this early preview. On the outset, we have to say we’re impressed at how easy it was to browse through our purchase history and download single tracks or complete albums at the push of a button, both on the iPhone and on the Mac.
I have a large iTunes collection, and many of my purchases are not on my MacBook Pro. Some aren’t even on my iMac but are instead archived on an old iPod video. Thanks to iTunes in the cloud, I can redownload content I purchased years ago, including bonus and exclusive track, for free.
Purchased Button
In the iTunes app in iOS 4, a new “Purchased” button now appears on the bottom of the application.
You can choose to see all music or just the songs/albums not on your current device
Recent Purchases
In addition to browsing alphabetically, you can see the most recent 50 items purchased from iTunes.
Artist View
Selecting an artist name will bring up a listing of every album or partial album you have from that artist.
iTunes includes music videos as well as songs in the mix, scrolling below the album section will show music videos
.
Download Screen
The download screen for an album gives the user the opportunity to download individual songs or the entire album in one action.
Purchased Section in iTunes
The iTunes 10.3 and 10.5 betas have a new feature in the iTunes Store sidebar, “Purchases.”
Album View
Just like in iOS, users can download individual tracks or full albums at the press of a button.
Album View, Partially Downloaded
A nice touch is that iTunes recognizes if you already have some of the items from an album in your iTunes library.
In my case, I because I downloaded some of the pre-order tracks for this album on a different computer, only those tracks will be downloaded.
App Purchases and Downloads
Just like music and books, users can browse their app purchases and past downloads by device type, name or download date.
