LOS ANGELES — Syncing music from your iPhone or iPad across computers has got to be one of the least enjoyable experiences in Apple’s computing ecosystem. The advent of iCloud was meant to lift the headaches of this cord-reliant process into the upper atmosphere and usher in what the late Apple guru Steve Jobs called the post-PC world.
The main problem until now: You can have different songs on different computers and devices, and they never seem to be where you want them.
With iCloud, a faraway bank of computer servers known as the cloud remembers what you’ve bought on iTunes and pushes them to you wirelessly on all your Apple devices. The promise is pretty sweet — especially with the basic service free.
In about a week of tests, using both high-speed Wi-Fi connections and regular 3G cellular networks, the system did just what Apple’s Internet services boss Eddy Cue said it would: “It just works.”
Songs I purchased on a Windows version of iTunes showed up on an iPhone 4 in about 15 seconds using AT&T’s cellular network (although I had to tinker with the settings to turn automatic downloads on). When songs appeared as incomplete downloads, I could still start playing them as the downloading continued.
Free book samples popped in just as fast as songs, but TV shows required both Wi-Fi access and manually tapping the cloud button beside each episode. Plus, the TV show service had a glitch. I’m still waiting for the iPhone to register “Hell on Wheels,” an upcoming AMC show I downloaded for free on my PC’s iTunes.
Movies won’t work in the cloud system at all — at least not yet, thanks to Hollywood’s convoluted system of rights for premium pay TV partners such as HBO.
Still, iCloud is not a complete wireless solution.
You’ve likely acquired music somewhere other than iTunes, either online at places such as — especially when Amazon has discounts — or from CDs you bought or borrowed.
To cover that likelihood, Apple Inc. has iTunes Match, a $25-a-year service that aims to match every song on your computer against the 20 million it has in the cloud. It will upload what it can’t match from your computer. Then you’ll have access to the entire collection wirelessly on demand — at least when you have a Wi-Fi or cellular connection. The service, which works only with music, will be available in the U.S. at the end of October.
