iCloud rumors rain down
Music, movies and TV, oh my! Until today, we’ve only heard about Apple’s deals with three of the four major music labels, but now there are whispers that feature films and television shows will be in the mix, too. Are you ready for Cupertino’s major cloud reboot?
It’s been quite a day so far — the announcements that Jobs will keynote WWDC and the release of Keynote, Pages and Numbers for iPhone and iPod touch. We’re not done yet, though.
News.com, quoting “two sources close to the negotiations” (i.e. industry worms trying to pressure Apple), reports that the mothership is working hard to make movies and TV programming a part of next week’s iCloud announcement.
In the past several weeks, Apple executives have stepped up their attempts to convince some of the major Hollywood film studios to issue licenses that would enable Apple to store its customers’ movies on the company’s servers, two sources close to the negotiations … Apple began discussing a cloud service with the studios over a year ago.
The twist in this story, the one that makes me feels it’s a studio plant, is that they’re saying Apple will use Ultraviolet (UV), the industry’s one-size-fits DRM (digital rights management) solution.
“If the industry executes it right,” said Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, “[UltraViolet] should dramatically boost the appeal of owning movies.”
DRM will advance the appeal of owning movies? Pfft, right.
I’d love to see iCloud include music, as well as movies and TV. But, Apple agreeing to use the studio’s latest attempt to bugger up the works with DRM? Coloring me skeptical…
What’s your take?
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June 3rd, 2011
I don’t think that iWork’s been bumped – it’s just a non-event. It’s already on iOS so just because it’s gone Universal doesn’t mean it’ll make the keynote. It’s an update, not announcement material. I’m just surprised they didn’t wait to release it silently next week.