Im not trying to rant or anything but I do not really see iCloud as a real usable tool. I wanted to post as maybe I am missing something and someone here can change my mind
What I do not want to use is the backup because of privacy issues. I don't want my text message database and notes sitting in a apple server.
The photos are synced thou wifi sync no need for photo stream.
I use drop box for documents.
I use google exchange for all my email/cal/contacts
and music is all sync thou my wifi sync now.
I don't see why they would make two services with wifi sync and icloud and release them at the same time.
If you guys maybe point out a flaw in my play where I can get better results from the iClould please let me know, because I want to use it but having trouble figuring out how to.
wifi sync and iCloud are 2 totally seperate things, wifi sync only works when you are at home at your own PC. iCloud works anywhere. what if you were away for a few days and broke your phone, you would have to rely on a backup that's days old when you fix it. Photostream has the same analogy, plus camera roll doesn't really sync over via wifi sync, only as a backup, you still have to plug in to get stuff off via camera roll, but with Photostream, it's done automatically wherever you are. Just last week i was visiting family, taking lots of photos, my PC at home was on the whole time, so when i got home at the weekend, in the photostream folder on my PC, all my photos were there already downloaded.
i also love that if i have to get a new iPhone, for whatever reason, the initial setup screens ask for my Apple ID and i can restore from an iCloud backup, so it will start restoring my phone (whilst still being usable whilst it does so), all my contacts are there straight away and apps will automatically download, in the exact folders i had before, without me having to do anything manually. no having to wait until i had gotten home, which until recently, a journey from the apple store to home was about 2 hours.
yes there are seperate products that do some of this already, but this is fully integrated, simple 1 step things. None of this may appeal to you, fair enough, just sharing some things that some people will find useful for this.
I'm looking forward to see how third-party devs use iCloud... it's entirely possible that I misunderstood the introductions, but I'm under the impression that iCloud (in terms of being a system to keep multiple devices in sync) can be used by devs as well. So an app like Evernote or Simplenote can use iCloud to keep iOS and OS X devices all in sync. Being able to restore a device and have all of my game data saved and restored will be great as well. I've have MobileMe since it was Dot Mac so the cal/contact/email I'm less excited about (though for new users it will be great).
yea, there are iCloud API's, it'll be interesting to see how apps are going to use this, the first thing of which has to be game saves, as this doesn't happen via iCloud yet, so i think it needs devs to use the API, hopefully applies to cross devices, tho obviously not to games that have seperate HD versions i would assume