Shades of Instagram, MobileMe may be coming to iCloud

An upgrade appears to be on the horizon for Apple's iCloud, potentially shifting the service from just syncing your shots to sharing them as well.

Apple is expected to announce at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June that iCloud's 125 million users will be able to share and comment on photos and not just sync them on their own devices, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Currently, users can access a single stream of their most recent 1,000 photos on iOS devices as well as on their Mac or Windows desktops, which automatically download every photo from the Photo Stream by default. (For heavy shooters, those thousand snapshot slots can fill up fairly quickly.)

At this point, iCloud doesn't sync video, meaning you still need to use a cable to get your videos from iDevice to computer - or upload them to, say, YouTube.

This upgrade sounds as if it would blend a little of the social element that is part of Instagram's magic with the previous functionality of iCloud's troubled predecessor, MobileMe. The now-defunct service did allow subscribers to create, upload and share galleries of both video and still photos through an app and online.

Along those lines, according to WSJ sources, iCloud is expected to let users share sets of photos with other iCloud users - again, as MobileMe did - not just the single stream, as well as sync videos from their camera roll, possibly within Photo Stream.

Recently, Macstories reported that iCloud may include syncing for Notes and Reminders, based on these icons having been spotted in a developer version of the cloud-storage software.

This also comes amid rumors that Apple's desktop photo application iPhoto will be made over in iOS style.

Just a couple of requests on the iCloud update: Please, Apple, you can stop the self-consciously nostalgic photo-filter obsession a la Instagram by keeping it out of iCloud, but maybe you could add the ability to send honey-do lists to a family member's iPhone or iPad through the Reminders app.

WWDC is coming up June 11-15.

(c)2012 the Los Angeles Times
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