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With Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference just weeks away, expect plenty of reports of new features to come crawling out of the woodwork. In fact, here’s one from the Wall Street Journal — they claim that Apple has been doing some major tinkering with their iCloud storage service, the fruits of which will be unveiled on June 11.

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Though not a storage vendor, Apple had arguably the biggest influence on consumer-grade storage products during 2011.

And just like the way the company has always been trying to control its products, this influence didn’t always turn out to be a good thing for consumers, including Apple fans. Let’s take a look at a few major examples of how Apple changed the face of computer storage in 2011.

1. The lack of support for USB 3.0

USB 3.0 was first introduced in late 2008, and by late 2010, most new and high-end Windows computers were equipped with it. Consumers who don’t already have it can easily get a add-on PCIe card to upgrade their desktop PC to the new standard. With a top speed of 5Gbps (just 1Gbps shy from the top speed of the SATA 3 standard, and about 10 times that of USB 2.0) and total backward compatibility with USB 2.0, USB 3.0 allows consumers to drastically improve their storage performance without any sacrifices.

To be fair, one of the reasons Apple decided to forgo USB 3.0 was possibly because Intel didn’t include this standard in its chipsets during most of the year. Now, though Intel has hinted that USB 3.0 might become standard in its chipsets next year, Apple still hasn’t provided any clues if it will follow suit.

This lack of support means that Mac users have been missing out on a standard that’s not just fast but also very versatile and affordable. Instead, they will have to bite the bullet and opt for another new I/O standard, which is also the real reason Apple skipped USB 3.0: Thunderbolt.

2. The introduction of Thunderbolt
Initially known as LightPeak, Thunderbolt is a new I/O standard that, for now, offers the top bandwidth of up to 10Gbps. Intel teamed up with Apple to announce Thunderbolt in February and made it available exclusively in Apple’s computers. This has still been the case ever since.

Thunderbolt is more than just a storage standard; it can also handle video and carry audio signal, in additional to data. The standard also allows for the ability to daisy chain up to six devices together without bandwidth reduction.

Strictly in terms of storage, however, Thunderbolt is rather overkill. This is because even the fastest internal drive offers a top bandwidth of just 6Gbps (of the SATA 3 standard). This means it doesn’t matter how fast your computer is, for now, there’s no way you can get the true speed of Thunderbolt in consumer-grade storage applications.                 More

Apple's online guide tries to help you set up your iCloud account. (Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Those of you trying to figure out to how to tap into Apple’s iCloud now that the service is officially up and running can turn to the company’s setup guide.

The newly released guide explains how to get the online service working on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, as well as on a Mac or PC, a process that apparently can be confusing.

To start off, you’ll need to upgrade iTunes to version 10.5 and then upgrade your Apple gadget to iOS 5. The iOS 5 install may itself be the first challenge since some users have bumped into technical problems trying to install Apple’s updated mobile OS. An attempt this morning to upgrade my iPod Touch to iOS 5 turned the device into a brick. I had to run a Restore to get all my data back and to update the OS.

Assuming you can get iOS 5 working without any hiccups, the next step is simply to follow a series of onscreen directions that will pop up on your device to set up your iCloud access. After opting in to iCloud, you can choose to back up your device on a daily basis via Wi-Fi.

You can then customize your iCloud settings by selecting which services you want and choose the specific content you wish to back up to the cloud. You can also enable automatic downloads, which means that any music, apps, or books you buy via iTunes are automatically sent to and synced among all of your iOS devices and computers.               More

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will announce a range of new products, including a widely anticipated cloud service, at its developer conference next week.

iCloud is likely to offer services rivaling that of Google and Amazon.

Attendees will also see Lion, the latest version of Apple’s Macintosh operating system, and an upgraded version of mobile system iOS.

Mr Jobs, who is on medical leave, has not appeared in public since March.

Details of the products on show came via an Apple press release ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) – an unusual step for a company which is usually very secretive ahead of its flagship event.