You'd think someone at Amazon would have said something. But no, the company has instead chosen to offer a silent update to its Cloud Player online music service that now allows users running Apple's iOS to tap into parts of the Web-based music service.
This fixes one of the larger criticisms levied at Amazon's Cloud Player when it was first released, namely that trying to access the site on an iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone resulted in absolutely nothing happening. Nothing but a tease, that is—users would be able to load up the Cloud Player site in its entirety. However, trying to upload any music files to the online service would elicit a prompt to install Adobe Flash, a no-no within iOS. And trying to actually play any files via the service did nothing whatsoever.
But that was then. Now, hitting up the Amazon Cloud Player using Safari on a mobile Apple device actually leads to a working player. So long as users click through the initial warning that Safari isn't supported on the Cloud Player, they'll be able to access the Cloud Player interface and play songs using media control buttons located in the lower-left-hand corner of the screen. And for connected iOS users, songs that are jamming will automatically pause should the device receive some kind of Push Notification or incoming call.
Users can even use the Cloud Player to create and manage playlists provided they have enough finger dexterity to do so. We phrase that as we do, for users are ultimately accessing Cloud Player's Web interface via Safari as opposed to an iOS-specific design or, better still, an actual application for Amazon's service. This makes it bit more difficult to navigate one's song directory and perform various actions. And users looking to upload songs from their Apple devices to Cloud Player are still left in the dark as a result of the Flash/iOS incompatibility issue.
Nevertheless, being able to play songs from Cloud Player on an iOS-equipped device is a strong step by Amazon. There's no indication as to whether Amazon plans to continue building increased support for iOS into its Cloud Player. However, it would be worth the company's time should it have any plans to go toe-to-toe against Apple's rumored iCloud service. After all, Amazon still has a pretty steep hill to climb to compete against a cloud-based player that's intertwined with iOS itself.
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