If you’re an Apple user, iCloud is important for managing your data across your devices. You’re probably using your iPhone to add contact information when you meet someone new. If you need that contact information later to send an email from your Mac, then it’s there in your Mac address book – magically! You’re probably also using your iPhone to create appointments. So when you sit down at your Mac each morning, you can check your calendar for the day, and all of those appointments that you made on your iPhone yesterday show up on your Mac calendar. iCloud is also great for backing up all of the data on your iPhone and iPad.
Unfortunately, iCloud works better in concept then in reality. You may find that when you sit down at your Mac in the morning, you can’t find that appointment that you know that you made yesterday. It’s not because you’re getting forgetful, or because you’re so busy that you’re not really sure what you’re doing, it’s because the iCloud servers are not always reliable. Your appointments will usually show up, but occasionally the sync process will be slowed by iCloud problems and some appointments will take a day or two to show up. You may also find that some subscribed calendars are not updating properly, and that you end up with duplicate contact and calendar entries because of sync issues.
What about when you have an iMac and a PowerBook, and you what to keep working on a document on your PowerBook that you started on your iMac? You can use iCloud for this, but only if you use iWorks for your documents (and there have been problems with file corruption on iCloud).
Not very useful, you think? iCloud will only improve over time. There are other alternatives, especially if you’re not Apple-only, but if you’re married to Apple and all of your devices will always have that partially-eaten apple logo, then be patient – iCloud is a great service for your needs.
You get 5GB of free storage on iCloud. That should be enough for your iOS backups and your contacts and calendar sync. If you find that it’s not enough, you may need to manage what iOS is backing up to iCloud.
If you need help managing your iCloud or setting up other cloud services, Digital Chaos Control can help! Contact us today.
