Apple iCloud Developer Beta Launches, Pricing Revealed

We’re a little closer to answering some lingering questions about the Apple iCloud consumer storage cloud with the quiet launch of a developer beta that also saw the release of some pricing details.

For those who don’t keep up with Apple, iCloud is a suite as straightforward as it is intriguing: Leveraging the impending Apple iOS 5, iCloud keeps mail, contacts, calendars, iWork documents and iTunes music in sync across Apple iPhone, iPad and Mac OS X environments. My colleague Dave Courbanou has gone on record as saying that iCloud is both a potential boon and a possible blow to cloud service providers.

Even as a layman user, I was able to access the iCloud.com page and register my account with the service. But without a legitimate developer account, I can only really see the front page. I’m hearing through the grapevine, though, that it works exactly as advertised for developers who’ve installed the iOS 5 beta on their mobile devices.

Meanwhile,we’re now privvy to the pricing details above the 5GB of free storage, as reported by outlets including ZDNet:

In other words, it’s somewhere around twice as expensive compared to other consumer offerings such as Amazon Cloud Drive, though I’m sure Apple mavens would say its price tag is justified, especially since items purchased from any of Apple’s iTunes media stores don’t count. Overall, it sounds like Apple iCloud is starting to shape up ahead of its Fall launch. TalkinCloud will keep watching for updates.