Apple to unveil iCloud on June 6

The cloud music service will finally let iOS users access their music from the cloud

Sound the trumpets and release the doves: Apple’s iCloud is almost here. Just two months after Amazon released its new Cloud Music Player to the masses (to limited fanfare), Apple plans to unveil its own cloud music service, iCloud, at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6.

Also on the agenda will be the unveiling of Apple’s next generation software, Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X. Additionally, we’ll be seeing the next line of iOS 5, which rumor previously held would not include an iPhone 5, given all the recent hullaballoo around the release of the CDMA-compatible iPhone for Verizon, and the debut of the white iPhone, which was finally released at the end of April. That’s a lot of iPhones for one year. But Apple’s press release does include an iPhone mention under its list of iOS devices, so who knows, maybe Apple will surprise us with a “One more thing…”

Very surprising indeed is the appearance of Steve Jobs, who will deliver the keynote address after stepping down to take an indefinite medical leave due to his health. Jobs has made a few appearances at Apple events, so it makes sense that he would be present for Apple’s biggest annual event.

But the announcement that everyone is waiting for is the unveiling of iCloud, which will finally let iOS users access their music from the cloud, unlike Amazon’s Cloud Player, which doesn’t have an iOS app, making Amazon’s cloud service impractical for a quarter of the smartphone-owning population. To call attention to the service, Amazon launched a promotion last week offering the new widely anticipated Lady Gaga album “Born This Way” for only 99 cents as an MP3 download to Amazon’s Cloud Music Player (compared to $11.99 if purchased from iTunes).

Unfortunately, Amazon didn’t anticipate the barrage of Lady Gaga fans that was going to topple its servers like the French storming the Bastille, and the promotion took a turn for the worst as customers complained of only being able to listen to a few songs, if any. To make matters worse, because Amazon makes it so damn hard to find a customer service number to call, disgruntled users took to the comments section of the Lady Gaga album to rant, which resulted in the album getting an average of three stars due to the technical issues.

Everything was fine in the end. Amazon refunded everyone who asked to cancel their purchase, and for those who didn’t, they got the whole album the next day. And Amazon tried the promotion again, this time with prepared servers.

Few details have emerged regarding Apple’s iCloud service, but it’s Apple, so it’s going to be glorious.

Image source: Apple.com