iTunes Match as a service is an abysmal failure. Especially with a mobile device, as only a desktop/laptop will stream, all other devices download the song first then play it. Also upgrading your songs is a long, painful process because somehow apple decided not to include a "download all" button in iTunes....derp derp @ 5000 clicks to redownload all your music.
Maybe iTunes 11 will take care of the issue, but as a whole, iCloud is very annoying to use if you have used any other cloud service before it.
Really? That was one of the few aces Amazon had on them, well that and unlimited music storage for $20... I thought for sure Apple had added streaming later, didn't realize they excluded mobile devices. Must be to appease carriers, alto I dunno what difference it makes with all the other wildly poplar streaming services around.
iOS 5 came around way too late for me... I had a second gen iPod touch (first and last Apple device I've owned) and the combination of iTunes + Apple's slow software updates bugged the heck out of me so I store off iOS and never got an iPhone. I still use the touch for music playback and the occasional game (or so my godson can game on something that isn't my phone), still happy with it, just not Apple's iron grip.
I use Media Monkey to sync it and haven't even updated it past 3.x (since iTunes isn't even installed)... The thing still doesn't have any basic A2DP BT profiles and it still has the same gallery bug it had at launch where any picture saved from a web site/email looks like ass because the Photos app mistakenly opens the thumbnail (they sync at full res tho).
Apple built up a huge two year lead on the mobile market early on, they could have cornered the hell out of it if they were more flexible...