Android. iPhone. iPad. iCloud without Apple: your platform-agnostic alternatives. Apple unveiled its new iCloud remote storage and synchronization service during a keynote presentation this week at the company's annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC).
The service brings tight cloud integration to Apple's mobile and desktop operating systems and delivers a much-needed replacement for the company's soon-to-be-defunct MobileMe offering. But what if you want similar service on different platforms? Can iCloud's features be hacked together from other existing offerings on the Web? Although competing ecosystems can provide comparable functionality to iCloud, the service has some Apple-specific features that can't trivially be reproduced by third-party alternatives.
For example, Internet users can now choose from an increasingly broad assortment of music streaming and synchronization services—but iCloud is the only one that allows you to re-download your previous iTunes Music Store purchases.