How does the iCloud work?

[ryan482]

Hi everyone,

I'm curious to how exactly the iCloud is programmed to work. To ask quite simply, does the iCloud store your data in a server somewhere. Or does it just store meta data for your data somewhere, and keep the original data on whatever drive it came on.

An example of what I'm asking...

I have a picture on my macbook at work. I put it into the cloud and then open it on my computer at home. Does the cloud pull the data from my work computer and relay it to my home computer using meta data, or is the entire file sent to my home computer from an apple server somewhere.


Sorry if this is a dumb question. Just curious to how iCloud works. I have no programming experience.

 

[alphaod]

Your data is copied from your computer, phone, and whatnot, to Apple's servers.

Then when you need to access it, you are accessing what is stored on Apple's servers. This why you can backup your iOS devices to iCloud.

In fact this is how most cloud services work, either it be Dropbox, iCloud, Skydrive, Amazon S3, etc.