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How to be an iCloud poweruser... if that's such a thing

E

exi

macrumors 6502
Original poster
MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad Air here.

Been thinking about going all Apple for online services. Am a current Gmail user, plus an institutional Exchange account, so that'd mean going to iCloud mail, for better or worse.

Formerly used SugarSync to sync selected folders on my MBP to all devices. With SS no longer being free long-term -- which is fine -- and with me playing with the idea of going all Apple, I'm trying to figure out how to go all iCloud if I were so inclined.

Basically, I'd like to be able to have all sorts of PDFs and other odds and ends available easily and quickly across all devices, including saving them originally on the iPad or iPhone, even if I get them as email attachments. Using iBooks for PDFs seems a little... suboptimal, and I'm unsure if relying on Pages / Numbers / Keynote iCloud syncing is the way to go for Office stuff.

Anyone have any suggestions? TIA.
 
Documents
-Use iWork for iCloud for docs, presentations and spreadsheets
-Remaining PDFs could be placed in iBooks, but won't sync between all devices, best bet might be to use Dropbox

Music
-Put entire music library on the cloud and accessible from all devices with iTunes Match

Photos
-Place all photos on Photo Stream albums in the cloud. These will now be backed up through iCloud and are accessible on any of your iDevices / Macs. There is a 1,000 photo per Photo Stream album limit. You can have many albums though.

Applications
-Download all of your apps through the Mac App Store in order to restore them all from the cloud

Calendars, Notes, Reminders and Safari bookmarks are also backed up through iCloud.

You can put lots of your content in iCloud, but might need Dropbox for remaining files (especially long videos and other file types). Hopefully Apple keeps working on simplifying and improving the cloud experience.
 
Appreciate it. The concern I have with Dropbox is that it's essentially a single-folder system on the desktop -- so I would basically have to make /Dropbox my root directory for all personal data in/as subfolders to have it the way I'd like it, and some of that data doesn't necessarily need to be THAT accessible -- which is what I liked about SugarSync. May end up using SS again, though I'd sooner try an all-Apple approach just to try.
 
I think I know what you mean by the Dropbox issue ... however, have u tried creating links to folder that you want in dropbox to actual folders ... it just might work ... i am gonna try this tonight ...

For example ->

/Dropbox/Data1 (Symbolic link to /Users/xyz/Data1)

So all changes in actual Data1 will trigger the sync to Dropbox under Data1
 
SanjeevRana said:
I think I know what you mean by the Dropbox issue ... however, have u tried creating links to folder that you want in dropbox to actual folders ... it just might work ... i am gonna try this tonight ...

For example ->

/Dropbox/Data1 (Symbolic link to /Users/xyz/Data1)

So all changes in actual Data1 will trigger the sync to Dropbox under Data1
Click to expand...

I do this with my Documents folder. You can use Terminal to create a symlink from ~/Documents to the main Dropbox folder. This way anything in Documents is mirrored on Dropbox.

If you are not savvy with Terminal, the free app MacDropAny will make the symlink for you.
 
MonstaMash said:
Documents...
Photos
-Place all photos on Photo Stream albums in the cloud. These will now be backed up through iCloud and are accessible on any of your iDevices / Macs. There is a 1,000 photo per Photo Stream album limit. You can have many albums though.
...
Click to expand...
PhotoStream is NOT a backup of your photos, it's how you move photos between devices. You still want a backup of your photos if you care about them.

And Apple specifically states PhotoStream is not a backup solution.
 
Weaselboy said:
I do this with my Documents folder. You can use Terminal to create a symlink from ~/Documents to the main Dropbox folder. This way anything in Documents is mirrored on Dropbox.

If you are not savvy with Terminal, the free app MacDropAny will make the symlink for you.
Click to expand...

Probably showing my ignorance on symlinks.

Does this also mean that, if I were to edit a file from Dropbox on my phone or whatever else, and then save it, and THEN open it on my MBP within /documents, it would be seamless?
 
exi said:
Probably showing my ignorance on symlinks.

Does this also mean that, if I were to edit a file from Dropbox on my phone or whatever else, and then save it, and THEN open it on my MBP within /documents, it would be seamless?
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. It really is nice the way it works.
 
I think you haven't heard of being an iCloud poweruser because you can't be a power user of iCloud; it just doesn't have the customization features and accessibility of other services, like Dropbox, and it isn't that reliable IMHO. And it may go the way of .Mac in any case.

Dropbox is the bomb because not only is it reliable, with versioning built in, but it works with everything and can be tweaked to do all sorts of things.

Once you get used to symlinks as a way to access it from, for example, the default saving location of an application, it becomes even more invaluable. But lots of applications integrate with Dropbox by just setting it as the default, like 1Password (although that now has it's own cloud).

I also use SugarSnyc, which works well too. But it isn't quite as simple and easy as Dropbox.

For your uses, where you want to have say one location as much as possible for storing stuff, Dropbox would of course get full fast. The solution to that is to use it more or less as a way station, a place where you keep current projects and frequently used stuff, with regular folders on your desktop being more for archives. I used to link these together with symlinks. But lately I've switched to Spotdox, which is a way to access a remote Mac from a web browser, access ALL your files whether they are, and move what you need to Dropbox from wherever for use on your iPhone, laptop, or iPad. Check it out. I used to have to worry that I hadn't put something into Dropbox I'd need away from the desktop; now I don't have that problem.
 
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