Apple offers its employees a number of perks, for keeping the company’s retail stores operating smoothly on a daily basis. The latest perk Apple is offering is slightly odd, to say the least. The Cupertino company is offering their retail employees an upgrade to 50GB of free iCloud storage as opposed to the 5GB offered on a standard account.

The free storage is reportedly $100/a month value and is similar to the free MobileMe subscription employees received until it was scrapped for iCloud. According to MacRumors, Apple employees were given a $500 discount on any Mac except the Mini and $250 off of an iPad.

Apple continues to offer its retail employees free services and discounts on products, likely to keep morale high and keep the employees up to date. Some who don’t use the products, aside from the required training may not know as much about the product as an employee who use it regularly.

{via MacRumors}

Apple discontinued MobileMe, the cloud service prior to iCloud and integrated in the emails as well as contacts and photos. Now, with iOS 6 beta 3, Apple appears to be transitioning users from me.com email address to iCloud.com.

icloud.com email addresses are now available for iCloud mail users. Users signing up for new Apple IDs, or enabling Mail on their iCloud account for the first time, will automatically receive an @icloud.com email address instead of a me.com email address. iCloud users with @me.com addresses that have been used with iOS 6 beta 3 will receive an @icloud.com email address that matches their @me.com address.

Although Apple discontinued MobileMe on June 30, users still have a limited time to access their data. This latest change may not affect users a great deal, although emails would now have to be sent to iCloud.com as opposed to a me.com address. Apple’s final version of iOS 6 is expected for release alongside the next generation iPhone 5  during the month of October, when all iCloud user accounts will be forced to make this change.

{via MacRumors}

Google is holding its annual I/O event later on today, but the company has already released information on the products it is set to announce. One of which is called ‘Music Beta by Google’ — a service that provides users with online, cloud-based storage for up to 20,000 songs — and looks set to rival Apple’s upcoming iCloud.

Google doesn’t yet have deals in place with any of the major record labels, so the ability to purchase and download music through the service is currently non-existent, however, you can use the service store their your own music for access from internet-connected devices, such as tablets and smart phones. The idea is that you store media content in the cloud and stream it to your device when you want it, rather than storing it on your device and taking up precious storage space.

Google’s launch of this service comes shortly after Amazon announced a music storage service of its own. While both companies have launched their services way in advance of Apple’s iCloud launch, will either of them have any advantage?

Well, no — certainly not with iOS users anyway. Firstly, neither Google’s nor Amazon’s services will be designed specifically with iOS in mind. Whereas it goes without saying that Apple’s service (when it finally launches) will be perfected for the iOS platform. Sure, Amazon’s Cloud Player now supports iOS devices, but it’s not a perfect user experience. We’re yet to see how Google’s services works, but it’s sure to be designed to work perfectly with Android powered devices — not those running iOS.

Secondly, neither Cloud Player or Music Beta by Google currently have any arrangements with the major music labels. You can only use these services to access music you already own — that you’ve uploaded yourself. We already know that Apple is currently in talks with record labels, so we know that with iCloud we’ll at least be able to access music that we don’t already own. Whether that will be with a subscription-based streaming service, or just through individual track purchases, we’re yet to find out.

While Amazon and Google may currently be when it comes to cloud-based music services, I don’t think either service will tempt iOS users away from Apple’s iCloud.

iCloud is expected to launch at WWDC 2011 conference in June.

The CNET report notes a recent rumor claiming Apple may charge $20 a year for the service, but they couldn’t confirm with sources whether this figure was accurate. A similar service from Google is also expected to come with an annual fee.

Apple’s cloud-based music service will allow users to store their music and videos in a digital ‘locker’, enabling them to stream the content to internet connected devices, such as the iPhone and iPad – negating the need for content to be stored locally on the device taking up valuable storage space.

The service was expected to come as part of a MobileMe revamp, which would provide users with certain aspects of cloud storage as part of their subscription – just like iDisk. However, it’s now unclear whether the two services will be separate entities, or whether the annual fee could also incorporate the MobileMe subscription.

While Apple has informed music executives that work on the service is now “complete,” it has apparently only provided a broad description on how the service will work, keeping the specifics under wraps.

Meanwhile, Amazon recently rolled out its own cloud-based digital storage service called Cloud Drive. The product offers 5GB of storage for free and then tiered subscriptions that allow storage up to 1TB.

The information in the report is said to come from an “inside source” at EMC – a company which intended to buy Isilon in late 2010 for $2.25 billion – and planned to use the storage infrastructure technology to support cloud computing services.

Although the report made no mention of cloud services, the 12 petabytes of storage could well be just what Apple needs to launch a cloud-based streaming service, allowing users to access their movies, music, and photos on their iOS device from a digital storage locker. Reports have been speculating for some time that the Cupertino company would launch a service to compete with music streaming services like Spotify, Rhapsody, and the new Amazon Cloud Player.

In 2009 Apple acquired a company called Lala which previously provided a similar service. Lala subscribers could buy music downloads, listen to online content, and upload their own music library to the cloud for remote playback on various devices. However, Apple closed the company soon after its purchase sparking rumors that it would build the Lala model into iTunes and relaunch the service, but we’re yet to see that happen.