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iCloud (O_o)

HankHowdy

HankHowdy

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Dec 2, 2012
3,501
392
Victorville CA
I'm not too iCloud savvy. I just started using it and I wanted to know what is the difference to using iCloud on my iPhone vs iCloud back up? The only reason iCloud interest me is if it saves all my calendar, contacts, notes and reminders in the cloud and if I need to restore change my device, then I can just log into cloud and retrieve my data. Or is that what iCloud back up is for. Thanks with any insight.
 
iCloud

Save all of your Notes, Calendar events, Contacts, emails and more.

Backup (to iTunes or iCloud)

Saves your phone settings, your home screen menu, your apps, your music and videos.

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If you don't backup, if you restore your phone, everything will be reset including your home screen. That means no apps.
 
the-prophet said:
iCloud

Save all of your Notes, Calendar events, Contacts, emails and more.

Backup (to iTunes or iCloud)

Saves your phone settings, your home screen menu, your apps, your music and videos.

======

If you don't backup, if you restore your phone, everything will be reset including your home screen. That means no apps.
Click to expand...

So then iCloud is useless and I should be only using iCloud back up?

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If they're in a cloud, then why can't I have access to that when ever I want? Why do I have to keep a back up file on my device? I thought the purpose of a cloud service was so that I didn't have to keep data on my device to save storage.
 
I just deleted my iCloud account from my iPhone and also told it to delete all the associated data with iCloud and as expected all my contact, calendar and emails were gone, but when I signed back into iCloud it all came back, so that works for me and I have no need for iCloud backup.
 
HankHowdy said:
I looked at this and I didn't see any thing that made me feel like I needed it. iCloud seems to save every thing I need.
Click to expand...

iCloud backup would back up things like system settings, photos, apps and app data (including game data), etc.

Contacts, calendar and email accounts are saved in your iCloud account and will populate when you sign in.

An iCloud backup is good to have in case for some reason you need to restore your phone, or get a new one. In this case, you'll have a quick way to restore your phone as it was before.
 
HankHowdy said:
I just deleted my iCloud account from my iPhone and also told it to delete all the associated data with iCloud and as expected all my contact, calendar and emails were gone, but when I signed back into iCloud it all came back, so that works for me and I have no need for iCloud backup.
Click to expand...

The iCloud, like any cloud service, has the main purpose of syncing all your contacts, calendar, notes, reminders, and mail across all Apple devices. (Also Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents if you have any). This is the best and main purpose of iCloud. To see what actually automatically syncs, you can go to iCloud.com from any computer and see for yourself. You have access to this data (contacts, calendars, notes) from any computer

The iCloud also has an optional "iCloud Backup" that literally backs up your entire system. (this includes app data, game data for some 3rd party apps, pictures; stuff you dont see on icloud.com). I dont like/use this feature because iCloud backup has limited space, and my backups are fairly large. I would suggest leaving iCloud backups off, and backup you data in iTunes (which it does automatically every time you sync it). iCloud backup is just a way to have a full system backup and not need a computer to do it.
 
Tyler23 said:
iCloud backup would back up things like system settings, photos, apps and app data (including game data), etc.

Contacts, calendar and email accounts are saved in your iCloud account and will populate when you sign in.

An iCloud backup is good to have in case for some reason you need to restore your phone, or get a new one. In this case, you'll have a quick way to restore your phone as it was before.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the very thorough explanation and now I have all the info I need.

I don't play games or have apps that have data that I can't live without.

I don't mind setting my phone up from scratch. I do restore my phone a couple times a year and set up as new just to keep things fresh. I'm not really big on taking photos and if I do it's nothing that I really need.

Thanks again for the reply and I'm convinced now that I really don't need iCloud backup.

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sonicrobby said:
The iCloud, like any cloud service, has the main purpose of syncing all your contacts, calendar, notes, reminders, and mail across all Apple devices. (Also Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents if you have any). This is the best and main purpose of iCloud. To see what actually automatically syncs, you can go to iCloud.com from any computer and see for yourself.

The iCloud also has an optional "iCloud Backup" that literally backs up your entire system. (this includes app data, game data for some 3rd party apps, pictures; stuff you dont see on icloud.com). I dont like/use this feature because iCloud backup has limited space, and my backups are fairly large. I would suggest leaving iCloud backups off, and backup you data in iTunes (which it does automatically every time you sync it). iCloud backup is just a way to have a full system backup and not need a computer to do it.
Click to expand...

When I has using a Blackberry I would back up to my PC all the time, but since we have the cloud I don't think I need to back up at all. I have nothing on my phone that I would miss if it was wiped or lost.

Thanks for the reply.
 
I just started using iCloud a few days ago and the backup feature seems like it might be useful, so I have it enabled. I have a 32gb phone that is almost full of iTunes stuff. Only a small part of that is purchased content, so the rest isn't backed up on the cloud, and that's fine because I have my own backup(s).

But iCloud saves all my settings, text messages and voicemail. When my old iPhone 4 finally dies, seems like this will be a handy way to get up and running quickly, before I have a chance to do a full sync from my computer.

I am using the free 5gb of storage and am in the process of switching to iCloud as my primary e-mail since it gives me push notifications and my other accounts don't do that - I have forwarded my other e-mail accounts to iCloud in fact. Very happy with this setup so far, and I have only used 100MB of the free 5GB storage so I should be good to go for quite some time. :)
 
I've been an iCloud user from the start - the very start when it was called iTools and they gave you a .mac email account. Ever since then, they've slowly improved the features (sometimes one step forward and two back) At this point is a nicely integrated environment that offers decent features though the storage is meager compared to its competitors.
 
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