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Anyone else find iCloud unnecessary?

S

sgrrsh26

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 19, 2009
269
0
I mean its a cool idea and everything but if you are going home to a PC every night and dont require a constant backup it's a bit of an unnecessary battery drain.

I guess my phone could deal with it now but when the battery starts to lose its charge? I can see it being a problem thats not worth its value to me.. anyone else feel this way? Can you do without iCloud?

Am I missing some benefit of it?
 
I take a lot of pics so I like the PhotoStream. It lets me delete stuff from my phone because it's in iCloud.
 
I must be missing the benefit too.

I have zero use for it. Then again, I don't trust any auto syncing of anything, iTunes included. I do everything manually and distrust automation. My stuff is organized flawlessly, but I need to be the one doing it to make sure it's correct and know that it's how I want it with no surprises.

But I dunno, I just don't need to store stuff on remote servers and stream it. I've got a 500 gig hard drive with 452 gigs free on my MBP, my iPhone is a 32 gig model with 13 gigs free.

At this point in time, I've no use for it.:confused:
 
It's not using any battery. iCloud backup only runs when you have the phone on AC power. It woks great! Wifi syncing and Photostream are great too. Never a need to plug into your PC.
 
puma1552 said:
I must be missing the benefit too.

I have zero use for it. Then again, I don't trust any auto syncing of anything, iTunes included. I do everything manually and distrust automation. My stuff is organized flawlessly, but I need to be the one doing it to make sure it's correct and know that it's how I want it with no surprises.

But I dunno, I just don't need to store stuff on remote servers and stream it. I've got a 500 gig hard drive with 452 gigs free on my MBP, my iPhone is a 32 gig model with 13 gigs free.

At this point in time, I've no use for it.:confused:
Click to expand...

Ha, you sound like me. I hate synching - I just do everything manually.

And yes, iCloud seems relatively pointless for what I do, other than iTunes Match and PhotoStream seems semi-convenient, but I'm not going to upgrade to Lion and break some of my software just for that.

Backing up to the cloud is neat, but I backup manually nightly anyhow
 
At first I thought it was cool, but then I realised it doesn't actually work the way I thought it did. It's useless to me, but hey, 5 gigs for free is nothing to complain about. It's not as though you are forced to use it anyway.
 
puma1552 said:
I must be missing the benefit too.

I have zero use for it. Then again, I don't trust any auto syncing of anything, iTunes included. I do everything manually and distrust automation. My stuff is organized flawlessly, but I need to be the one doing it to make sure it's correct and know that it's how I want it with no surprises.

But I dunno, I just don't need to store stuff on remote servers and stream it. I've got a 500 gig hard drive with 452 gigs free on my MBP, my iPhone is a 32 gig model with 13 gigs free.

At this point in time, I've no use for it.:confused:
Click to expand...

agreed,
Its not even working right for me, its missing most of the new contacts I just added, but has a few.. odd.

Anyway I'll probably disable it. I can see how business persons who travel might find it useful, then again if it was me I'd be bringing my MBP with me anyway. Oh well.

----------
Givmeabrek said:
It's not using any battery. iCloud backup only runs when you have the phone on AC power. It woks great! Wifi syncing and Photostream are great too. Never a need to plug into your PC.
Click to expand...

It pushes photos, contacts, etc. to and from, how is this not abusing my battery?

----------
blueroom said:
I find having my iCal & contacts in sync pretty handy. No complaints here.
Click to expand...

cant you do that by hooking up your phone to the computer when you get home?
 
sgrrsh26 said:
I mean its a cool idea and everything but if you are going home to a PC every night and dont require a constant backup it's a bit of an unnecessary battery drain.

I guess my phone could deal with it now but when the battery starts to lose its charge? I can see it being a problem thats not worth its value to me.. anyone else feel this way? Can you do without iCloud?

Am I missing some benefit of it?
Click to expand...

You are missing the entire concept...

The backups only occur when your phone is "plugged in, locked, and connected to Wi-Fi."

The Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Bookmarks, Notes, Documents/Data and Photo Stream all function on push technology just like every other email account you use... they are just baked directly into the phone.

Find My iPhone... well that one is kinda DURRRR...

As for the iTunes Match... well that one is essentially streaming, for people like me with 80+ gigs of music its the only way to have access to all of my music all of the time. Sure, I can use Spotify, but then I have to build playlists for 12,000 songs...

As for the store automatic downloads... well you can certainly turn them off, but I prefer the convenience...
 
I should also note that I backup to a time machine hourly, so the online backup is not necessary since I already have a backup.
 
In theory, 5 gig of free storage and automatic backups would be wonderful, but... Apple completely botched the multiple Apple IDs issue, when it's enabled on my iPad 1, it slows to a crawl and apps frequently crash, and it has messed up my Safari bookmarks horribly, making 50 or so copies of every folder I have and some I deleted months ago. So far, epic fail, though clearly not everyone is having the issues I am.
 
I love it, the idea that we can move away from requiring OS X/Windows to manage our iOS device is a wonderful idea in my mind. I do like the fact that iTunes does a great job syncing media if you want, but I also like the choice to have the device stand on its own.

I always hated getting an iOS device then having to wait until I was at a computer to begin using it.....no more!
 
Amnesia87 said:
You are missing the entire concept...

The backups only occur when your phone is "plugged in, locked, and connected to Wi-Fi."
Click to expand...
this cant be true because I havent met those "requirements" once today and icloud has SOME of my contacts, my reminders, and calander events.
 
puma1552 said:
I must be missing the benefit too.

I have zero use for it. Then again, I don't trust any auto syncing of anything, iTunes included. I do everything manually and distrust automation. My stuff is organized flawlessly, but I need to be the one doing it to make sure it's correct and know that it's how I want it with no surprises.

But I dunno, I just don't need to store stuff on remote servers and stream it. I've got a 500 gig hard drive with 452 gigs free on my MBP, my iPhone is a 32 gig model with 13 gigs free.

At this point in time, I've no use for it.:confused:
Click to expand...

It sounds like you understand the point... You just have OCD like a crazy person.

The BEST part about iCloud is that you never have to worry about forgetting to back your device up, or having access to it...

Say I'm on Vacation in New York... I don't own a Laptop... I drop my iPhone stepping off the subway... Before I would be stuck with a blank phone till I get back home, plus, I lost all the pictures I took during the first week of my vacation.

Now I can walk into an apple store. Get a replacement phone. Sign in with my Apple ID, and 30 minutes later my phone is almost completely restored save the last few text messages I sent that last day.

iCloud also saves actual app data, like game saves.

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sgrrsh26 said:
this cant be true because I havent met those "requirements" once today and icloud has SOME of my contacts, my reminders, and calander events.
Click to expand...

:eek::eek::eek:THOSE AREN'T BACKUPS:eek::eek::eek:

That's push sync, just like my GMail account does, or my Exchange account, etc etc etc.

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richpjr said:
In theory, 5 gig of free storage and automatic backups would be wonderful, but... Apple completely botched the multiple Apple IDs issue, when it's enabled on my iPad 1, it slows to a crawl and apps frequently crash, and it has messed up my Safari bookmarks horribly, making 50 or so copies of every folder I have and some I deleted months ago. So far, epic fail, though clearly not everyone is having the issues I am.
Click to expand...

Why would anyone use multiple AppleIDs??
 
I have yet to use it. Left it disabled when I first set-up my 4S. Never needed it for my 3GS, don't need it now.
 
@Amnesia87

Ok so think about it, you got your phone pushing contacts, calender, reminders, notes,photos, apps, etc. Plus your gmail pushing to the phone. Plus any notifications being pushed, and some of these guys are wondering why their battery is dying so fast?
 
Even if you're going to be home and near a PC every night - why would I want to connect my phone to my PC to backup my info if it can do it wirelessly while I sleep?

If you don't understand the benefits of iCloud, you really don't deserve an iPhone.
 
No, I like it. I can access my contacts anywhere. good especially if my phone's dead and i need to get in touch with someone.
 
sgrrsh26 said:
@Amnesia87

Ok so think about it, you got your phone pushing contacts, calender, reminders, notes,photos, apps, etc. Plus your gmail pushing to the phone. Plus any notifications being pushed, and some of these guys are wondering why their battery is dying so fast?
Click to expand...

Ummm... The photos I will agree with, though I still gladly take the little hit each time I take a picture... But all the other stuff is either 1 time or intentional...

Your phone is smarter than you apparently. Push uses whats known as differential sync.

It doesn't upload a copy of all your contacts each time, it only uploads changes.

I don't know about you, but I don't spend all day adding/removing/changing contacts.

Keep in mind, the actual content of a contact/reminder/note could quite easily fit in a text message most of the time.

So yes, I will take the battery hit equivalent to sending a text message to back up my reminders and notes and NEW contacts.

As for the apps... I download apps on 3G all the time anyway, but I'm doing it intentionally. But I fail to see what the issue is with auto downloading apps... The only time I ever download apps using anything other than my iPhone is when I am at home on my computer. In which case my phone is on wifi and 85% chance is plugged in. So unless you have given out your appleid to some other people and they decide it would be fun to download a bunch of apps to waste your battery, that's not really an issue.
 
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