That was to be expected, webmail, contacts and calendar online is a MUST today if they want to keep up with th competition.
Since when does Apple "keep up with the competition?"
You could have said that the iMac had to have a floppy drive to "keep up with the competition".
You could have easily said that you'd have to put an FM radio and a voice recorder in the original iPod to "keep up with the competition"
Or that they'd have to give control of the iPhone to the carrier to "keep up with the competition"
Or that the iPad would have to have a full fledged version of OsX to "keep up with the competition."
I think, at this point at least, that it should be fairly obvious that Apple doesn't do stuff to "keep up with the competition."
They take an existing product - and take a unique look at it - and then make it their own way - and the way that they think will be best.
I'm sure Apple looked at all the file sharing services available out there (Dropbox, Google Docs, SkyDrive, etc.) and said - lets look at this completely different, and come up with our own take on it.
If you think about it for a minute - you can see their logic.
What's the point of being able to access a web service from your iDevice - if iCloud can do the same thing in the background - and you don't even have to think about it. Instead of having your data/files in the cloud - and you access them through the internet - you have them on your iDevice - and they get synced in the background.
Even better - you go somewhere that you don't have access to the web - and guess what - your files/data are still on your iDevice, and you're not tied to the web. Then, when you get back to civilization, your iDevice syncs wirelessly - and updates your files/data with your other iDevices.
The way it looks to me - Apple has removed the need to access the web to do these things- and does it for you in the background. End result - as long as you have your iDevice, you always have access to your files/data.
