Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils iCloud, new online storage

Apple aficionados had their heads in the iCloud at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.

After taking the stage of San Francisco's Moscone Center to a rousing standing ovation, CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iCloud, a new online storage service that allows smart phone and tablet users to access their music library and other data from the Inteet instead of storing it on a device's hard drive.

\"We think this is going to be pretty big,\" said Jobs, who has been on medical leave since January for an undisclosed illness. \"We are going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.\"

ICloud stores a customer's music, apps, photos, calendars, documents and emails in Apple servers and automatically synchs to all of the company's devices, including iPhone, iPads and Mac computers. It's free - for now - and replaces Apple's data-sharing service MobileMe, which costs $99 a year.

Unlike past years, Apple did not introduce any fancy new gadgets at the conference. Looking gaunt and thin in his customary turtleneck and jeans, Jobs instead told the crowd of more than 5,000 that, \"Today, it is all about software,\" he said.

\"If the hardware is the brain and sinew of our products, the software in them are its soul.\"

The company also announced a new version of Apple's mobile operating system - iOS 5 - which features a revamped system of alerts for iPhones and iPads that now appears at the top of a device's screen rather than the middle; a built-in app that reminders users to create to-do lists; camera app that allows users to take photos quickly by pressing the volume button; plus better integration with Twitter.

Also covered was Apple's operating system upgrade, called Lion, that boasts 250 new features, including Mission Control, which lets you view all the programs running and tap on any document to bring it to the front, and AirDrop, in which users can swap and share files over a Wi-Fi network.