Chaos!

[miguelacho]

I currently have a mess and have gone into "analysis paralysis" in looking for a solution. I have 4 different gmail e-mail accounts. One personal and the others are work related. I have an old MobileMe e-mail account as well which has now been converted to iCloud. My Apple ID is linked to my personal gmail account. I have all Apple ecosystem hardware. I would love to convert fully to Apple (de-Google) but I am not sure what is the best way to go about it. My MobileMe e-mail name is not my favorite and would love to create a simpler email address with iCloud. Create one iCloud with Aliases and switch from Google? Have the Google e-mails forward to iCloud account? I am also concerned about calendars and contacts. As it stands right now I have several multiples in both contacts and calendars.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Miguel

 

[r0k]

I currently have a mess and have gone into "analysis paralysis" in looking for a solution. I have 4 different gmail e-mail accounts. One personal and the others are work related. I have an old MobileMe e-mail account as well which has now been converted to iCloud. My Apple ID is linked to my personal gmail account. I have all Apple ecosystem hardware. I would love to convert fully to Apple (de-Google) but I am not sure what is the best way to go about it. My MobileMe e-mail name is not my favorite and would love to create a simpler email address with iCloud. Create one iCloud with Aliases and switch from Google? Have the Google e-mails forward to iCloud account? I am also concerned about calendars and contacts. As it stands right now I have several multiples in both contacts and calendars.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Miguel

I'm in a similar situation. I have several gmail accounts, one of which is "really old" and I have used over the years to "aggregate" all my emails in one searchable folder. I also have a .mac email address. I have 2 Apple ID's. One is for sync of my contacts, etc and the second ID is for purchasing stuff on iTunes as well as for my developer account. The thing that is holding me back from going all in with Apple right now is the cost of iCloud storage. I have 300 GB of photos on a third party photo storage site which I pay for. I'm already paying for 25 GB of iCloud storage just for a fraction of my email, some iCloud document storage and some photostream and it's 80% full so there's no way I'm ready to shift everything over to iCloud... yet. If Apple finally offers unlimited photo storage for free, that would be part of the answer. I get pretty frustrated with the ongoing login problems I have on my Mac and iThings getting logged in consistently to my gmail accounts.

One thing I don't want is for my .mac or gmail email address to fall into the hands of my friends and they start using that address and mess up my elaborate forwarding and searching thing thing I've got going on. Some day when Apple finally cheapens iCloud enough for me to bring over all my email, I won't mine my .mac email address becoming my only email but for now I pay for my own domain and have it forwarded to iCloud and gmail. For now.

For your situation, I don't think dumping gmail is a great idea... yet. It depends on how much email you have sitting in gmail. If there is a lot, I suggest keeping it there. Another factor is searching in iCloud is not as fast or reliable as searching in my gmail inbox. To me that's an incentive to keep gmail around even if iCloud storage gets cheaper or free.

 

[Hayakuro]

I currently have a mess and have gone into "analysis paralysis" in looking for a solution. I have 4 different gmail e-mail accounts. One personal and the others are work related. I have an old MobileMe e-mail account as well which has now been converted to iCloud. My Apple ID is linked to my personal gmail account. I have all Apple ecosystem hardware. I would love to convert fully to Apple (de-Google) but I am not sure what is the best way to go about it. My MobileMe e-mail name is not my favorite and would love to create a simpler email address with iCloud. Create one iCloud with Aliases and switch from Google? Have the Google e-mails forward to iCloud account? I am also concerned about calendars and contacts. As it stands right now I have several multiples in both contacts and calendars.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Miguel

I have a similar setup with my Gmail addresses as you. Are you just planning on de-Googling your personal email? iCloud doesn't offer any hosted domain or business email services like Google does.

If I were in the situation that you described, I would just use your Apple ID to create a new iCloud account with whatever email address you want, then you can create extra aliases (up to 3) to use as you see fit. Then just set your Gmail to forward to your iCloud in the Gmail web client settings. You'll still get all your email, and if you really want to cut all ties to Google for whatever reason, you can inform your contacts of your new iCloud email address and just start sending emails out from that one.

I don't like straddling multiple cloud services, so I would recommend collecting your calendars and contacts in your iCloud account as much as possible. If you have business-synced contacts and calendars tied into Google, you may not be able to do much with that. Exporting contacts and calendars from your personal Google account will allow you to import them directly into iCloud and prune redundancies from there.

I'm in a similar situation. I have several gmail accounts, one of which is "really old" and I have used over the years to "aggregate" all my emails in one searchable folder. I also have a .mac email address. I have 2 Apple ID's. One is for sync of my contacts, etc and the second ID is for purchasing stuff on iTunes as well as for my developer account. The thing that is holding me back from going all in with Apple right now is the cost of iCloud storage. I have 300 GB of photos on a third party photo storage site which I pay for. I'm already paying for 25 GB of iCloud storage just for a fraction of my email, some iCloud document storage and some photostream and it's 80% full so there's no way I'm ready to shift everything over to iCloud... yet. If Apple finally offers unlimited photo storage for free, that would be part of the answer. I get pretty frustrated with the ongoing login problems I have on my Mac and iThings getting logged in consistently to my gmail accounts.

One thing I don't want is for my .mac or gmail email address to fall into the hands of my friends and they start using that address and mess up my elaborate forwarding and searching thing thing I've got going on. Some day when Apple finally cheapens iCloud enough for me to bring over all my email, I won't mine my .mac email address becoming my only email but for now I pay for my own domain and have it forwarded to iCloud and gmail. For now.

For your situation, I don't think dumping gmail is a great idea... yet. It depends on how much email you have sitting in gmail. If there is a lot, I suggest keeping it there. Another factor is searching in iCloud is not as fast or reliable as searching in my gmail inbox. To me that's an incentive to keep gmail around even if iCloud storage gets cheaper or free.

Apple did announce significantly cheaper pricing for iCloud at WWDC, which I'm guessing will take effect around the launch of iOS 8 and Yosemite. I believe the announced rates were 20 GB for $1 a month and 200 GB for $4 a month. The downside is that the new iCloud photo storage system will use that pool of storage as well.

 

[impaler]

If Apple finally offers unlimited photo storage for free, that would be part of the answer. I get pretty frustrated with the ongoing login problems I have on my Mac and iThings getting logged in consistently to my gmail accounts. /QUOTE]

Threre has been no indication Apple intends to offer any unlimited storage, whether free or not. Looks like the new pricing (up to 1TB) will intend to store your stuff in iCloud, for a price. Since there are no ads to support their cloud storage (thank God), expect to pay for it. Companies will need a ROI for fixing away their space, always. For them, ecosystem lock in is a huge part of using iCloud to tie in their devices and apps.

 

[r0k]

If Apple finally offers unlimited photo storage for free, that would be part of the answer. I get pretty frustrated with the ongoing login problems I have on my Mac and iThings getting logged in consistently to my gmail accounts.

Threre has been no indication Apple intends to offer any unlimited storage, whether free or not. Looks like the new pricing (up to 1TB) will intend to store your stuff in iCloud, for a price. Since there are no ads to support their cloud storage (thank God), expect to pay for it. Companies will need a ROI for fixing away their space, always. For them, ecosystem lock in is a huge part of using iCloud to tie in their devices and apps.

I am paying for photo storage right now with a company that specializes in such things. I will need to wait a while to see the details what Apple offers before I consider switching from the service I use now to whatever Apple offers with Yosemite/iOS8.

 

[aidenh37]

I'm in a similar situation. I have several gmail accounts, one of which is "really old" and I have used over the years to "aggregate" all my emails in one searchable folder. I also have a .mac email address. I have 2 Apple ID's. One is for sync of my contacts, etc and the second ID is for purchasing stuff on iTunes as well as for my developer account. The thing that is holding me back from going all in with Apple right now is the cost of iCloud storage. I have 300 GB of photos on a third party photo storage site which I pay for. I'm already paying for 25 GB of iCloud storage just for a fraction of my email, some iCloud document storage and some photostream and it's 80% full so there's no way I'm ready to shift everything over to iCloud... yet. If Apple finally offers unlimited photo storage for free, that would be part of the answer. I get pretty frustrated with the ongoing login problems I have on my Mac and iThings getting logged in consistently to my gmail accounts.

One thing I don't want is for my .mac or gmail email address to fall into the hands of my friends and they start using that address and mess up my elaborate forwarding and searching thing thing I've got going on. Some day when Apple finally cheapens iCloud enough for me to bring over all my email, I won't mine my .mac email address becoming my only email but for now I pay for my own domain and have it forwarded to iCloud and gmail. For now.

For your situation, I don't think dumping gmail is a great idea... yet. It depends on how much email you have sitting in gmail. If there is a lot, I suggest keeping it there. Another factor is searching in iCloud is not as fast or reliable as searching in my gmail inbox. To me that's an incentive to keep gmail around even if iCloud storage gets cheaper or free.

When iOS 8 is realeased, 20GB is $1/month (super cheap) and 100GB is also pretty cheap! Wait until then to upgrade, like I hope to.

EDIT: also, it's hard to get away from Google when you've been with them for so long!