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Jobs unveils service to sync various files
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Apple CEO Steve Jobs gives the keynote address to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Monday, June 6, 2011. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO
Apple CEO Steve Jobs briefly emerged from a medical leave Monday to unveil a free service that lets customers share calendar entries, songs and other files among their devices more easily.
The company also announced new software to make Mac computers behave more like mobile devices and Apple’s mobile devices more like rival smartphones.
Jobs received a standing ovation as he appeared at Apple Inc.’s annual developers’ conference, his second major public appearance since he went on medical leave in January for unspecified reasons and duration.
Jobs left many of the specific announcements to top executives. In the first hour, he appeared on stage for only a few minutes. Typically, he’s on stage longer at major public launches.
Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies and a longtime Apple watcher, said Jobs “almost always” has his key people handle the bulk of the demos at developers’ conferences.
“The last three developer conferences were done almost exclusively by key people,” he said, while pointing out that Jobs came on stage to announce the iCloud music and syncing service.
Bajarin said Jobs didn’t look much different from when he made a surprising appearance in March to announce the iPad 2.
Apple’s stock fell $4.05, or 1.2 percent, to $339.33 in afternoon trading Monday. The stock increased in the morning, but fell soon after Jobs left the stage.
James Brown’s “I Feel Good” played over the loudspeakers just before Jobs walked on stage, looking thin, in his signature outfit of mock turtleneck and blue jeans.
One audience member shouted out, “We love you.”
Jobs returned to the stage about 80 minutes into the presentation to announce iCloud.
An iCloud account will store user information from several devices, including iPhones and iPads, and make sure the same contacts, calendar events and files are available on all of them. It also backs up the data on Apple’s servers. It mimics Google’s Docs system for online files and products from smaller online-storage companies such as Dropbox.
ICloud also will allow customers to store their music online. Buy a song on iTunes once, and it will be available on up to 10 devices.
The basic service will be free for now and replaces a $99-a-year Apple service called MobileMe, which Jobs said “was not our finest hour.”
For $25 a year, iTunes will be able to scan a computer’s hard drive for music files that have been converted from CDs or come from other sources. If the same songs are available in the iTunes store, they’ll be added to the iCloud locker. That means there’s no need to purchase the songs again or upload them. The service, known as iTunes Match, will upload any songs to iCloud if they’re not already available through iTunes.