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iCloud?

P

puma1552

Suspended
Original poster
Nov 20, 2008
5,559
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So I've never actually used iCloud, but I'd like to for two reasons:

-Find my iPhone
-Would like access to a few spreadsheets from any device without putting them on the devices.

Question is, this is really ALL I want to do; the thing I'm most worried about is my music. I keep my music stored locally on my devices and the last thing I want is a music mess from iCloud, creating duplicate songs on my iPhone and trying to show me all the stuff in the cloud. Basically, I want music to be COMPLETELY separate from iCloud altogether. I've got way too many hours invested in manually managing my music to have it messed up by iCloud.

Is this possible? I want full manual control of iCloud, I hate automatic syncing etc.
 
You could use Dropbox for your spreadsheets, and a lot of other files.

You're stuck with iCloud for FMP, though, but you could uncheck the rest of the iCloud options if you set it up, and use iCloud strictly just for FMP.
 
iCloud has nothing to do with your music library. You would have to buy iTunes Match ($25 a year) before you would have to worry about messing up your music, and even then it works through iTunes - not iCloud.

You may be confusing iCloud with the iTunes/App Store auto download feature which can download iTunes purchased music on all devices sharing the same Apple ID (which may, or may not be the same Apple ID used for iCloud). This feature can be disabled in settings -> iTunes/AppStore.
 
Thanks guys, this actually works really well. I have Find my iPhone set up, and I also turned on iCloud drive to access spreadsheets from my MBP on my iPhone and iPad.

I did have two question though -

1) When I have a spreadsheet on my iCloud drive, when I download it onto my phone with Numbers, it also downloads it onto my iPad, which isn't really necessary. Is there a way to set it so that if I pull a document from iCloud drive onto a device, it only pulls it onto that device and not onto all devices that are using iCloud drive? Probably not a huge deal since whatever changes I make to the document on the iPhone - including deleting it from my phone when I'm done looking at it - will propagate to the iPad copy and that one will delete too, but just curious.

2) When downloading a document from iCloud drive onto my iPhone or iPad, is there any way to require a passcode prior to downloading it onto the device? Doesn't look like it, and this is presumably because you would expect to have a passcode to get any initial access to the phone at all, so with that there should be no way for anyone to even get far enough into the phone to potentially download something from your iCloud, but just checking.
 
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puma1552 said:
Thanks guys, this actually works really well. I have Find my iPhone set up, and I also turned on iCloud drive to access spreadsheets from my MBP on my iPhone and iPad.

I did have two question though -

1) When I have a spreadsheet on my iCloud drive, when I download it onto my phone with Numbers, it also downloads it onto my iPad, which isn't really necessary. Is there a way to set it so that if I pull a document from iCloud drive onto a device, it only pulls it onto that device and not onto all devices that are using iCloud drive? Probably not a huge deal since whatever changes I make to the document on the iPhone - including deleting it from my phone when I'm done looking at it - will propagate to the iPad copy and that one will delete too, but just curious.
Click to expand...
Think it as a cloud-based thumb drive, i.e. all or nothing with a single "copy". If you place something into the Drive, it replicates to all the associated devices. If you delete a file, it is removed from every instance of the iCloud Drive.

2) When downloading a document from iCloud drive onto my iPhone or iPad, is there any way to require a passcode prior to downloading it onto the device? Doesn't look like it, and this is presumably because you would expect to have a passcode to get any initial access to the phone at all, so with that there should be no way for anyone to even get far enough into the phone to potentially download something from your iCloud, but just checking.
Click to expand...
You can of course set passwords on individual iWork documents, but no "passcode prior to downloading it". Either you encrypt it at file level as an extra layer of protection, or it is unprotected in the app but by the system passcode, Touch ID and your own access control of your device.
 
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Trahearne said:
Think it as a cloud-based thumb drive, i.e. all or nothing with a single "copy". If you place something into the Drive, it replicates to all the associated devices. If you delete a file, it is removed from every instance of the iCloud Drive.


You can of course set passwords on individual iWork documents, but no "passcode prior to downloading it".
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's kind of what I figured. I do just want to clarify though - I'm probably just misinterpreting what you said here - you mentioned if I place something into the iCloud drive, it replicates across all associated devices; this of course only happens when I use an app to download that file, correct? As far as I know iCloud drive is a singular instance (as it is the cloud itself) where all my documents are, and then once I download a document from iCloud drive to a device, only then are multiple copies created, one onto each device. But until I use a device to download a file, that file only exists as a singular entity in iCloud drive, correct?

This is really slick, I should've done this years ago.
 
puma1552 said:
Thanks, that's kind of what I figured. I do just want to clarify though - I'm probably just misinterpreting what you said here - you mentioned if I place something into the iCloud drive, it replicates across all associated devices; this of course only happens when I use an app to download that file, correct? As far as I know iCloud drive is a singular instance (as it is the cloud itself) where all my documents are, and then once I download a document from iCloud drive to a device, only then are multiple copies created, one onto each device. But until I use a device to download a file, that file only exists as a singular entity in iCloud drive, correct?

This is really slick, I should've done this years ago.
Click to expand...
The iCloud owns the main copy of your documents, and every incremental change you made to a document is sent to iCloud and will eventually be recognised by the other devices under the same Apple ID with a particular app enabled. In other words, if you have turned on iCloud for Numbers on all your three devices, any new documents, any changes to the documents or any deletion of documents will be downloaded and synced automatically upon opening the app anyhow.
 
I may be wrong about this but I believe the spreadsheet you see on your iPad wont be taking up memory space until you actually open it in Numbers. It's not "really" downloaded unless you need it. Once opened though, a copy will be living somewhere inside the iPad. Anybody know if this in fact the case?

In any event, compared to music, photos or video, a spreadsheet is a teeny, tiny file. I wouldn't worry about it. As for the passcode, you're right: the whole phone is secured with a passcode. Anything more would be redundant.
 
Longkeg said:
I may be wrong about this but I believe the spreadsheet you see on your iPad wont be taking up memory space until you actually open it in Numbers. It's not "really" downloaded unless you need it. Once opened though, a copy will be living somewhere inside the iPad. Anybody know if this in fact the case?

In any event, compared to music, photos or video, a spreadsheet is a teeny, tiny file. I wouldn't worry about it. As for the passcode, you're right: the whole phone is secured with a passcode. Anything more would be redundant.
Click to expand...

Pages, Numbers and Keynote would download and sync the files upon opening the app, regardless of whether you have tapped on the files or not. The only exception is when your phone starts running out of space, iOS will start to eject rarely accessed files in your iCloud Drive from your phone to free some spaces. In this particular case, it will work in the way you said.
 
Awesome, thanks.

Now to look into Apple Pay, AirDrop, and Continuity/Hand Off...

...crawling out of my cave slowly.
 
So now that I'm out of the house at work, I'm trying out Find my iPhone with my iPhone 6.

Back home I've got an iPad Air 2, and a mid-2010 MBP running Yosemite 10.10.

It seems to have no problem finding the iPad right away, but it has trouble finding the MBP; it takes a while for it to find the MBP and update the location and show the Yosemite home screen. Usually it's just a black screen on the MBP and takes a long while to update.

Is this just because the MBP is old and crappy and potentially not fully compatible even on OS X 10.10? Seems to find it eventually, but it takes a good while compared to the iPad and iPhone which are pretty much instant.
 
I'm guessing your iPad is equipped with a GPS chip. That makes it much easier for FMP to locate... same thing with your iPhone. Your MBP doesn't have GPS and so must use wifi. Most wifi signals have GPS metadata encoded. I believe the computer can actually triangulate nearby wifi signals to determine a location. This takes a while and is less accurate but still gets the job done. None the less, no wifi - no location info.
 
How long is "a long while"? It's not that uncommon for the find my phone to refresh a few times over a couple minutes until all the devices show up.
 
Longkeg said:
Most wifi signals have GPS metadata encoded.
Click to expand...
Nope, Wi-Fi has no such thing. Instead, Wi-Fi networks are crowd-sourced into Apple's database of locations via GPS-enabled devices which happen to see the network ... they don't even have to connect, an iPhone just has to detect the Wi-Fi presence and report what it found, along with the iPhone's current location.

I believe the computer can actually triangulate nearby wifi signals to determine a location.
Click to expand...
No, the computer cannot "trianglulate" Wi-Fi signals as it has no A-GPS (assisted GPS) capability. Instead, it knows its location because it knows the router it is connected to, and the router is in Apple's database of locations.

The OP's Mac is probably off-line, so Find My iPhone will (eventually) discover that and report it's last-known location, thus the delay.
 
It can take a while to find the pro, maybe even 10 minutes? I do notice that if I'm sitting here at home with the MBP not sleeping, it finds it instantly. But if I'm out of the house with it sleeping, that's when it seems to have trouble locating it, though it eventually does find it, and it seems to have no trouble picking up the sleeping iPad right away.

If it's just a matter of the MBP not having GPS and taking longer to find it based on wifi networks, that's fine, I was just curious.

EDIT: So I suppose the difference here is that since the phone and iPad have GPS chips, they will always be able to be instantly found, but since my MBP doesn't, if it were to be stolen and in someone's car cruising down the highway, it's not going to be able to be found until it connects to a wifi network, specifically one that is in Apple's database (e.g. so there's a possibility it actually would never be trackable)?
 
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