Is iCloud useful?

[Samtb]

I've never used it before. Is it better than Dropbox? What do you use it for? Can you select what goes to iCloud if space is limited on some of your devices?

[Weaselboy]

Originally Posted by Samtb

I've never used it before. Is it better than Dropbox? What do you use it for? Can you select what goes to iCloud if space is limited on some of your devices?

iCloud is great for syncing contacts and calendars, but IMO pretty limiting for syncing documents and not nearly as good as Dropbox for this purpose.

I use iCloud for contact and calendar sync as well as email, then Dropbox for document sync.

If you exclusively use Apple apps like Pages and Numbers on bot OS X and iOS for documents, then iCloud is okay.

[Samtb]

Originally Posted by Weaselboy

iCloud is great for syncing contacts and calendars, but IMO pretty limiting for syncing documents and not nearly as good as Dropbox for this purpose.

I use iCloud for contact and calendar sync as well as email, then Dropbox for document sync.

If you exclusively use Apple apps like Pages and Numbers on bot OS X and iOS for documents, then iCloud is okay.

Cool. What about photos?

[Weaselboy]

Originally Posted by Samtb

Cool. What about photos?

I don't sync photos so don't have any suggestions. I do use iCloud's Photostream to sync photos taken on my iPhone OS to OS X iPhoto and that works well for just those photos.

[Giuly]

The most amazing feature of iCloud is the ability to restore the state of any device from a recent state, even if you never bothered to make an iTunes backup. It's also faster than iTunes and doesn't bother to physically save Apps, but only their data and redownload them from the iCloud as needed.
Photo Stream also works reasonably well, because it integrated with the way iOS loads pictures into apps.

[joegullo]

iCloud is very basic. You can sync documents, photos, email, contacts and your calendar. If you're looking to modify documents using iCloud, you're going to be disappointed.

It's pretty seamless when adding contacts, calendar events, etc. on the website.

I've found it pretty limiting when comparing to Google or other services.

[Dor Levy]

It's good when you have multiple Apple devices, but the technologies and the limitations, like the lack of file-based storage, makes it not the best out there, which is a shame. I hope that Apple will upgrade this soon.

[technowar]

I'm really having fun with my bookmarks which I believe is really handy.