[willheim]

Erm... no. Apple announcing iCloud is kinda like Palm announcing WebOS a couple of years ago, streaming music from LastFM (though iCloud doesn't stream), getting your pics up and down from Flickr, and working on GDocs/Gmail/GCal/Office365.

Windows is an OS. iOS is an OS. Mac OSX is an OS. The iCloud service is designed to allow you to shuffle from one to the other seamlessly but not to replace those machines altogether. Kinda like using dropbox.

Now, is the OS becoming less important in comparison to the services available? Absolutely. Not for everyone but for the average user it certainly is. Will iCloud suceed? Surely it will, but only for those who wish to be tied into Apple products (unless I am mistaken and you will be able to share iCloud uploads with Android or WP devices).