There was no grand keynote, no 'magical' new product and the Apple Store didn't even go down for 'updating', but last week may have seen the most significant move by Apple in recent years: it bought a domain name.
The Cupertino company shelled out $4.5m for www.iCloud.com. The lucky beneficiary was Xcerion, a Swedish Dropbox rival, which has since renamed its service 'CloudMe'. It bought this domain just three weeks earlier. For now Xcerion is still listed as the owner of iCloud, but any attempts by Apple to keep this a secret are well and truly out the bag.
"At this year’s conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS", said senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller. "If you are an iOS or Mac OS X software developer, this is the event that you do not want to miss."
To put it bluntly this is because Apple is years behind when it comes to Cloud computing. When it comes to streaming music, rivals have not just come, but in the case of high profile failures like Sky Songs and Nokia's Comes With Music gone too. In fact these companies are already diversifying. Just last week Spotify was rumoured to be readying a movie streaming service after concluding deals with US film studios. Come on Apple.
