As Steven Troughton Smith discovered earlier this morning, Apple is testing a new beta iCloud portal that resides at beta.iCloud.com. The new beta version of iCloud was likely established to test additional features that will presumably launch alongside iOS 6.
Similar to last year’s iCloud beta site, this year’s is clearly branded with a familiar “beta” tag. The predominant difference between the new site and the existing one is that addition of two new icons behind the login fields. The public iCloud site displays icons for Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Find My iPhone, and iWork, whereas the beta portal adds Notes and Reminders in addition to retaining previous icons.
After the beta.iCloud.com portal was discovered, the domain developer.iCloud.com was discovered and hosts a similar beta-style portal.
Moreover, these recent findings came just days after Apple was found testing a web-based notification system of sorts on the public iCloud site.
Unfortunately, login attempts on both of the newly discovered iCloud sites fail and access to the domains appears to have been cut off.
Could Apple be preparing for a massive iCloud update to be announced at this years World Wide Developers Conference (more commonly known as WWDC) next month? Stay tuned for full coverage on the event to find out!
