iCloud Question
Does anyone know if it's possible to stream ALAC from iCloud via your iPhone 4 (running iOS5)?
I'm a bit unclear on exactly what iCloud is for (unless using iTunes Match which streams at 256kbps) except for backing up data?
Can I extend my paltry 6GB by another 5GB and fill my free iCloud allocation with lossless music?
The best you can get out of iTunes Match is 320kbps, but not sure if it worth the extra effort. You need to encode your music to 320kbps, then 'trick' gracenote in to not recognising the music by editing the titles etc. This forces iTunes to upload your 320kbps versions. I should add that I couldn't tell the difference, and could not be bothered.
Thanks for the quick replies. iTunes match sounds OK but I believe it deletes everything from your device? (all the music anyway). I couldn't be bothered with all that faffing for a few extra kilobits - I run Spotify Premium anyway. Guess I'll just have to wait for 128GB iPad and get an airport express...
If you have signed up for iClound you can go to www.iCloud.com and log in and see all the stuff thats in your icloud account
Which reminds me, I'm about to hit my 5GB limit so better dive in and do some deleting!
Which reminds me, I'm about to hit my 5GB limit so better dive in and do some deleting!
Really, god i haven't hit 1Gig yet and i have music, apps and photos there
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You can't do that I'm afraid. iCloud is essentially meant to be a backup / synchronisation tool for iOS devices and Mac OS X computers (though there's some limited synchronisation with Windows e.g. calendars and contacts with Outlook and web bookmarks). For a standard user, it ensures your iPhone's details are constantly backed up and can be restored at any time - very useful. It also means any purchases made on an iPhone can easily be downloaded to another iDevice without any charge - it's just seamless.
The beauty of it as a Mac user is, I can make changes on my Mac such as in my contacts list, and they're automatically updated on all my Apple devices (e.g. Macbook Mini, Macbook Air, iPhone and iPad (if I had one)). Same goes for adding a bookmark to Safari - I do this on one device and that bookmark is available on all my devices without me having to do anything. There's other features like Photo Stream which mean photos are instantly available on my Mac in iPhoto once I've taken a photo on my iPhone - again, it's just seamless. Same goes for certain documents e.g. documents created in any of the iWork applications.
The iTunes Match service will allow you to sync your music library to iCloud, but it will only be stored in 256 kbps AAC - there's no option to do this in lossless. I suspect this is because the amount of space this would take up for potentially millions of users would just be too much of a strain on Apple's storage in their Data Centres, so it's just been ruled out (at this stage).