It appears as though Apple has just opened up the doors to their iCloud service for the first time, dropping the beta tag and allowing access to the general public. To actually use the service you will need either iOS 5, or the yet-to-be-released version of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion to set up the account, both of which currently are not available to the general public; however due to the recent opening of the iCloud web front it can only be a matter of time before either or both of these iCloud companions are released.
Also released earlier today was iTunes 10.5, which allows you to store all of your purchased music and TV shows in Apple’s iCloud, enabling you to easily download it to your other devices anywhere at no extra cost. It was also previously rumoured that the iCloud-supporting iOS 5 will be released today alongside the cloud storage service, and possibly a new version of OS X Lion. iCloud support will be coming to Windows PCs at a later date.
For those that aren’t aware, iCloud is Apple’s new service (unveiled at WWDC 2011) that allows you to store data, such as music, videos, books, application data and backups, from your Mac and iOS devices in Apple’s cloud. From there you can easily download it to other devices for easy access; up to 10 devices connected to the service are supported for free, along with 5 GB of storage space (excluding music). If 5 GB isn’t enough, you can upgrade that by adding 10 GB for $20 per year, 20 GB for $40 per year or 50 GB for $100 per year.