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To this day, I'm still a little confused as to what iCloud is...

A

applefan289

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 20, 2010
1,705
8
USA
I just updated to iOS5 and 10.7.2, and I just pressed "ON" for everything that I could for iCloud. But I did it without really knowing the use for it.

The only use I see for iCloud is my email and contacts for when I need to use the web email.

What is the point of all these photos and stuff to the cloud? WTF?!
 
yes, someone please explain or link to a detailed site with icloud info. i'd greatly appreciate it
 
To my knowledge:

iCloud is two parts. One is the normal @me.com email address and webmail, the other is the Find My iPhone/iPad system for finding lost or stolen devices.

The other part is both backing up and syncing your photos, notes, contacts from and to your devices.

Let me give you an example:

You are on your iPhone and you created a contact. That contact will be sent to iCloud and synced to your iPad and Mac without you having to plug your phone into iTunes. It'll just be there.

Another example:

You take a gorgeous photo with your iPhone and you want to see it on your nice big iPad display. This is where iCloud will sync photos between your two devices and it'll appear in your photo list without you having to email it or sync it manually.
 
Did you try reading about it? http://www.apple.com/icloud/what-is.html

Basically, if you're not familiar with what "cloud software" and all this stuff is, it's basically the storage of your data on servers elsewhere so that they're accessible from all your devices. Apple has rolled out iCloud, which will store contacts, calendar, reminders (from the iOS 5 Reminders app), photos, and more (including game save data if games support it), etc. It also offers an email service and a Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod touch service.

iOS 5 and iCloud offer something called Photo Stream. Whenever you take a photo on your iOS device, it will be uploaded to iCloud (when you are connected to WiFi, and if you're not, it'll wait until you connect to a network). These photos will be pushed to your other iOS devices (visible in the Photo Stream section of the Photos app) and your Mac or Windows computer so you don't have to transfer them over anymore. Of course, iCloud only stores 1000 photos max or the last 30 days worth of photos. The photos (on the server, not your devices or computers) will be deleted if they become older than 30 days, or you exceed 1000 (not all of them, just the oldest one). You can choose which photos you'd like to keep by saving them manually onto your iOS device or computer.

The music portion is regarding purchased music from iTunes. You can re-download previously purchased songs onto any of your iOS devices (or your computers), as well as have it so that a song purchased will automatically download to all of your devices.
 
Last edited:
FetalSage said:
To my knowledge:

iCloud is two parts. One is the normal @me.com email address and webmail, the other is the Find My iPhone/iPad system for finding lost or stolen devices.

The other part is both backing up and syncing your photos, notes, contacts from and to your devices.

Let me give you an example:

You are on your iPhone and you created a contact. That contact will be sent to iCloud and synced to your iPad and Mac without you having to plug your phone into iTunes. It'll just be there.

Another example:

You take a gorgeous photo with your iPhone and you want to see it on your nice big iPad display. This is where iCloud will sync photos between your two devices and it'll appear in your photo list without you having to email it or sync it manually.
Click to expand...
What happens if the iPhone is on a different iCloud account than the iPad?
 
applefan289 said:
What happens if the iPhone is on a different iCloud account than the iPad?
Click to expand...

Then the data doesn't sync together and your iPad and iPhone data will be different. So photos taken on your iPhone won't be visible on your iPad's Photo Stream view in the Photos app.
 
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