How does iCloud work? In layman's words please?

I installed it on my computer and iPad,( though not sure if it went through). I thought it is supposed to hold phonebook/calendar/photos/ music/ etc etc.

So far I have to access it by going to iCloud.com and in it I found only phonebook and calendar. On my laptop that is.

On my iPad, no matter how many times I tried to "install" it just doesn't come through.

Am I not doing it correctly?

Thanks.

It's kind of a puzzle to me, so I look forward to other replies. But from what I can see it's not an app that you can download and install, but more of an online service. I back up my Apple devices to the cloud. That works pretty well. But I too have found that the only way to access things there directly is by going to icloud.com. And even the things that are there are hinky. You can't delete photos - or you can but only in a certain way. If you take a video with your iPhone, it won't get shared via Photostream to your Mac through the cloud. You have to plug the phone into the mac and then use something like Preview or iPhoto to download the video from PhotoStream. Ridiculous!

Although this thread is fine in OMNI, we're moving it to a more targeted audience in Travel Technology with a permanent re-direct in this forum.

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Cholula
OMNI Co-Moderator

Have you followed the steps on this page for all your devices?

http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/

Especially number three where you turn on and off individual items?

My experience is the cloud will only "float" music that you have purchased from Apple. Any other music will not be in/on the cloud. All the music you have downloaded from CD's or other sources isn't in the cloud. In my experience.

You need to set up iCloud on your iDevices. There is also a client for Windows PCs. Once you do, your synced music and photos will be available to any of your devices.

If you want to be able to download any song in your music library on any device at any time, you need to buy the separate iTunes Match service from Apple.

The only part of icloud I do not use is the photstream. When it turned it on, it overloaded my iphone with pics from my Mac. The iPhone 4 I have has only 8 GB of memory, while my computer, and iPad have much more memory or disk available. I love using it for backing up, and for the calendar and Keynote presentations.

You need iTunes match for that, a separate paid service, and most of my music is ripped from CDs and most of it was matched.

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Anyway, once you enable iCloud and iCloud backups of things like contacts, mail, calendar etc, you will see a new contact group in Contacts (iCloud), etc, and you should start seeing a complete unified set of contacts, etc on each device. Once it's up and running, you can try it by creating a new contact in that group on one device and see if it shows up some time later on your other iCloud enabled devices.

If you enable the photo stream in iCloud, you will see a new album in photos with the photo stream.

What exactly are you looking for? Did you enable iCloud backup on the ios devices? that's the main thing you want I think, in case you have to replace the device, you can do it anywhere and restore it from the cloud. This setting is separate from the individual items, in Settings/iCloud/Storage & Backup/iCloud Backup, and in that same place you can see when the last backup was or if one is in progress. The first one will take a while.

Anyway, there's really nothing to see when it's working. it's just one of those things that should just work once you've set it up.

Also, they don't show you the photo stream on iCloud.com, if you have a mac, you have to use iPhoto or Aperture to see the photo stream after you've enabled it on the mac. Not sure where it shows up on a PC, but it's supposed to work there also if you set it up.

-David

And I thought that this was meant to be simple! I have absolutely no idea of what any of the above means - but it has persuaded me not to use the Apple Cloud for backing up.... Way too complicated and for geeks only.

Actually, it's probably the easiest solution out there - designed for Mac people who want something that "just works" with no need to understand how it works. If iCloud is too complicated for you, you should probably not have a computer.

It really isn't, it's simple. Just read the articles at the link Cordelli posted above.

-David

Huge mistake if you don't use it. All you have to do is turn it in and decide if what you want to backup, done!

If you lose your phone, on the new one you just login to iCloud and everything since your last backup, even vmails and texts show up. I had my phone replaced and while still in the Apple store everything loaded back on for me.