iCloud will compete directly with current cloud services, including Google’s Music Beta and Amazon’s Cloud Player. Both projects have been moderately successful, and it was widely-expected that Apple would be forced to answer their success through their iTunes in the near future. However, unlike the Amazon and Google services which support only music, Apple’s iCloud will host a wide variety of media. In this way, the iCloud offers an alternative to Google’s other cloud products such as Google Docs and Picasa.

As is the case with many of their projects, Jobs announced today that iCloud services will be offered free of charge to users. Each account will be given 5GB of complimentary online storage on which users can store documents, photos and a host of other media to be accessed from multiple computers. Music and books purchased through iTunes will not count against that limit.

The new iCloud service will replace Apple’s current cloud platform, MobileMe, which allowed users to back up email and calendar items to the internet. The MobileMe project had never taken off in the way Apple expected it to, largely due to self-acknowledged poor management on the part of its developers.

Today’s announcement coincides with Apple’s release of iCloud information to developers, who will have only a few short months to build complimentary programs before commercial release this fall. Individuals with multiple devices that purchase music through iTunes, however, can get a glimpse of iCloud’s potential right away. Users can now opt to have any purchases made available on each of their devices.

While Apple and cloud aficionados are excited about the announcement, Jobs did mention characteristics of the program that many users may find objectionable, namely that only music purchased through iTunes would be available for free upload to iCloud. Users will be able to listen to music purchased elsewhere through the cloud, but at a cost. Apple will offer a service called iTunes Match that will identify music on a user’s hard drive for a fee of $24.99 each year. The songs will be made available online through iCloud, but music files will not be users’ original music. Instead, they will be copies of the songs available through iTunes online store.

There had been questions surrounding the possibility of iCloud’s debut in past months following the mysterious purchase of iCloud.com. Sources were reporting in April that Apple may have purchased the domain from cloud storage servicer Xcerion, who had recently changed the name of their service from iCloud to CloudMe. Still unconfirmed rumors speculated that Apple may have paid as much as $4.5 million for the address in anticipation of today’s announcement.

The question is, is Apple prepared to manage this better than some of their more recent and more public problems might indicate? What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you think that Apple manages their software division better than their hardware division?

According to a report by the New York Times, Apple are not planning to produce a smaller iPhone as many have suggested, but they are looking at a budget model.

The reason for the former is that a smaller phone would, sources say, probably be no cheaper to manufacture than the full size phone while at the same time would be harder to use.  It could also force app developers to rewrite their apps for the handset.

However the source for the paper does say that it makes sense for the company to have several different form-factors at a single time.  This would make the company more competitive with Google and its Android operating system and it would help to head off any threat from Nokia, the world’s largest phone manufacturer, when it begins to release Windows Phones later this year.

An Apple engineer said that such a phone could be made with cheaper components, essentially reusing older components from previous handsets and taking advantage of technology advancements over the last few years.  Such a device he says, would not be any smaller that the current iPhone.

Apple being Apple we’ll not know what they have planned until they get up on stage and announce it, and we look forward to that.

In other plans, the company is also planning to make its MobileMe service free and more flexible.  Currently at $100 a year its failed to catch on with consumers, especially when rival services from Google and Microsoft are free.  The aim is to provide better functionality including wireless sync.  “The goal is that your photos and other media content will eventually just sync across all your Apple devices without people having to do anything” a source said.

There is however a way to install iTunes without Apple Quicktime, Bonjour, MobileMe support and iTuneshelper process running at startup. This can be achieved with a custom installer that can be downloaded from the Custom Installers page which contains installers for the English and multi-language versions of iTunes 8.0.2.20 and 8.1.0.52. The only requirement other than running the installer to install iTunes is an installation of Quicktime Alternative and the Quicktime Alternative iTunes add-on which makes the program compatible with iTunes 8.

The correct sequence for installing iTunes without Quicktime and Bonjour would be therefore to install Quicktime Alternative, then the Quicktime Alternative plugin and finally iTunes using the custom installer. The custom installer will skip the installation of aforementioned programs and services. This is great news for users who do not want to have those programs running in the background or those who prefer to run the Quicktime Alternative program instead of the original.

The iTunes customer installer is only available for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It comes as a msi file that allows a silent installation with the switches /qb /norestart.