Why use iCloud?

iCloud is, essentially, Apple's version of Google's services. You get an email address, calendar syncing, and contact syncing, just like with Google. iCloud offers some things specific to Apple devices, however. Find My iPhone/Mac, Back to My Mac, Photo Stream, document syncing, and bookmark syncing. You're correct that Photo Stream and WiFi Syncing overlap. Photo Stream is nearly instant, though. The reason to use iCloud is for the simplicity of having all of your info under one account and to have the name@me.com address. I don't know if iCloud is a replacement for Dropbox.

I think a big part of iCloud is the mail/calendar/contacts which you have decided to use Google instead. So maybe not a good choice for you. I currently use MobileMe and I really like all of the Apps on my Mac and iPhone and iPad that work very nicely with it. I assume iCloud will work just as nice for most of the things I use MobileMe for. I am disappointed about loosing some of the other sharing functions of MobileMe that appear to be dropped. I only have 1 Mac now but plan to have more in the future and was looking forward to all of my Mac Settings being shared across all of my computers. I will upgrade my MM Account to iCloud as soon as it is out of Beta.

Regarding all of the other iTunes Wifi Sync for Pictures, Music etc. I tend to agree about that. Not sure I will use iCloud for that if no real advantage. But the option will be there if needed.

Really appreciating this thread, especially Nielsenius' post. I am fairly new to Mac (25 years as a PC user ended when I went Mac last October) and also to the whole magic of syncing. Currently I am a Mobile Me customer so you might think obviously I should switch to iCloud when it gets out of beta. But, so many people are happy with Google, and it's been around longer, that I want to look before I leap.

I have an iMac, iPad 1 and come fall will finally get an iPhone. I want to sync contacts, calendars, bookmarks, documents and emails (two accounts, one IMAP and one yahoo, neither ending in me.com). I also have a large music collection but it is so vast I am not sure any cloud service is the right solution...maybe a big external?

Anyway, O Excellent Denizens of the MacRumors Forum,

What would be the case for choosing iCloud?
What would be the case for choosing Google?
What would be the case for mixing services, such as Google for calendar, dropbox for documents and photos, iCloud for music and bookmarks?

To be honest icloud will do what both mobileme and google does.
socbrian: you looks like you have already sorted yourself out with google - thats good.
SpiceGrrl - you are already on mobileme - thats good.

Integration is the only important thing here. If you are all using one or more macs, then I think mm/icloud is the way to go, as it says it will seemlessly sync email/contacts/calendar/bookmarks/settings as soon as you sign up.

If you are using a multitude of OSes (linux and windows), then google is a good way as their services (with a bit of configuring on each computer) will get you want you want. I have yet to find a way of getting my MM calendars on any machine other than an apple one.

If storage is your issue then you can still use icloud AND dropbox. There is nothing stopping you from doing so.
If photo galleries are an issue, then you can post to Flickr and Picasa, again, nothing stopping you.

I've used cloud based things for years, yahoo first, then Google, and a mixture of services, xmarks, dropbox, sugarsync, zumodrive, cloudme - and to be honest I am currently using MM.
Google is good mind, but I'm not quite firmly in the Mac camp, so it seems logical to use their services over the others.
I still use Dropbox, and xmarks to sync to firefox from safari and I still will when the changeover happens. My days of Windows and Linux are, for the personal use part, over.

For me MobileMe/iCloud will suit my PIM functions, pictures and storage via picasa and dropbox.
But as I said at the beginning of this post, if you have yourself established somewhere, then there is no real need to move.

It's called competition. If you're already using Dropbox, Google exchange, etc. you don't need it unless you just want to change. I had all these and am changing anyway. Why not, it's free.

There was konfabulator, Apple copied and released dashboard, then those become iOS apps.
There was cover flow, Apple bought it for iTunes.
There was carbon copy cloner, Apple made Time Machine
There was ubuntu one and dropbox, Apple copied and made iCloud.

Well, I dunno, but iCloud is part of OS X so why no just use it? it's supposed to save you time as to share and backup your files

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True. Horses for courses.

TheGenerous said:

There was carbon copy cloner, Apple made Time Machine
There was ubuntu one and dropbox, Apple copied and made iCloud.

Click to expand...

Uhh, CCC is only vaguely similar to Time Machine in that they are both backup tools. Time Machine is much more similar to version control systems like CVS, which can recover old versions of files in addition to keeping a backup of the latest version.

iCloud might be a "copy" of Dropbox plus a whole bunch of other Google services- but then again, .Mac and MobileMe offered (or tried to) most of the same things even before Dropbox and Google.

socbrian said:

The photos are synced thou wifi sync no need for photo stream.

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Photo Stream offers a few key advantages over plain WiFi syncing. Perhaps the most obvious is that it works from anywhere- not just when your iDevice and the computer you sync with are on the same WiFi network. The other is that it is instant and will work to sync with other iDevices. So if you are out traveling and taking pictures with your phone, they will be ready to look at on the iPad that you left in your hotel room when you get back

Does anyone see the irony of the computing 'circle of life'?

IBM brought us the mainframe and Steve and Bill thought we might want our own computers...time passes...then they bring us the ~cloud~ and maybe we don't want our own computers anymore after all...

wolfpackfan said:

It's called competition. If you're already using Dropbox, Google exchange, etc. you don't need it unless you just want to change. I had all these and am changing anyway. Why not, it's free.

Click to expand...

Can I ask, without meaning offense, did you opt to use these services before, rather than MobileMe, because they were free?

socbrian said:

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.

[snip]

I use google exchange for all my email/cal/contacts

Click to expand...

Have you really considered the privacy implications of storing your entire email/cal/contacts information with Google? Apple's revenue stream is dependent on keeping people like you and me on-side, buying their hardware and software. Google's revenue stream is built on them creating a product out of me to sell to advertisers, based on data-mining whatever data I chose to upload to them. I would suggest that if you are concerned enough to be unwilling to upload your personal data to Apple, you should really consider whether uploading all your personal data to Google is something you want to be doing. On the other hand, if you are happy to have Google data mine your entire life to sell to advertisers, what difference will letting Apple have a go at it too make?

Manually syncing is not that big of an inconvenience for me so I don't anticipate wanting to use iCloud.

I don't like the idea of my stuff being copied on some server that belongs to someone else either. Is it another step toward mass surveillance? I don't know, but IF people in power did want to have that kind of advantage over the masses... well... the means and apparatus is in place for it.

Is it really that big of a hassle to manually sync stuff? I almost never need to transfer stuff between devices anyway.

Loving this thread. Thanks to all who have posted. Especially appreciate the analysis of Google's business model versus Apple's business model. That plus other postings have clarified things for me. If I have all Apple devices, and am already a Mobile Me customer, and place a high value on smooth syncing across devices (oh yeah), then I should go with iCloud, and if I need extra storage, either use Dropbox or better yet, purchase additional storage from iCloud. That way I will get better syncing and will be participating in a business model I believe in: the good old fashioned "you give me money, I give you products and services" model.

Many many thanks.

Spicegrrl

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).

socbrian said:

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.

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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.

JonHimself said:

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).

Click to expand...

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

A bit off topic, but didn't want to make a dedicated thread for a small question.

When released, will "Documents in the Cloud" automatically sync all of my existing documents to iCloud/iWork.com, or will i have to open them all individually and sync them like i would at the minute, by pressing "Share to iWork.com"?

Thanks in advance

Tom8 said:

A bit off topic, but didn't want to make a dedicated thread for a small question.

When released, will "Documents in the Cloud" automatically sync all of my existing documents to iCloud/iWork.com, or will i have to open them all individually and sync them like i would at the minute, by pressing "Share to iWork.com"?

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Once you've updated to the new iWork apps all your docs should automatically sync

How long will the @me.com address be around for? I can't use my @mac.com address to send anymore

Edited to say this must have been a glitch as I can not send from my @mac.com address

thunderbunny said:

Once you've updated to the new iWork apps all your docs should automatically sync

Click to expand...

Thanks very much.

So, do we think iWork.com will finally come out beta almost 3 years after it was initially rolled out?

macgrl said:

How long will the @me.com address be around for? I can't use my @mac.com address to send anymore

Click to expand...

for as long as apple decide they want to keep it.... there's no timescale.