Apple’s iCloud service has been around for several years, but many iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users don’t really get it. Taking a few minutes to set up the service on your mobile devices and your computer could save you a significant amount of time and effort in the future.
What is iCloud?
It’s simply a service that keeps information in sync across all your devices. In other words, you can share information between an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and a computer. The information for each device is automatically updated to ensure that the most up-to-date information is available on all devices. The service is free, works wirelessly and runs in the background, requiring no special action from the user.
For example, you can go out with friends and take some photos with your iPhone. Those photos are automatically available on all your other devices. There is no need to manually transfer photos from your iPhone to your computer. The photos are automatically available on your computer.
In addition to syncing photos across multiple devices, it also syncs other information like: iTunes purchases, contacts, calendars, notes, documents, reminders, and Safari bookmarks. Provides the ability to back up your device or locate a missing device.
The sync service works by securely storing your information on a remote server. This online storage capacity is also known as “cloud” storage. By securely storing your information online, you can access this information from any device, at any time.
Create an account
To get started, you must first create a free account. Usually, your account can be the same as your Apple ID. If this sounds a bit confusing, your Apple ID is the email address you used when you signed up for iTunes. You use your Apple ID and password to download apps or music. To keep things simple, you can also use the same Apple ID when creating an iCloud account. However, if you have more than one person sharing the Apple ID, you may want to create a separate account.
Setup on an iOS device
As part of the process of setting up a new device, you were asked to enter an Apple ID and set up iCloud. You may have an active account and not realize it. Even if you chose not to enable the service as part of your device’s initial setup, you can enable it at any time by opening the Settings app on your iOS device and selecting iCloud. If the service is not enabled, you will be prompted to enter your Apple ID and password. Once you’re signed in, you’ll see options to enable synchronization of various types of information. Set the slider to ON for each item you want to sync across devices.
Setup on a computer
On a Mac, select iCloud in System Preferences and sign in with your Apple ID and password. If you have a PC, you will need to download a control panel item from the Apple website http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1455. Once it’s installed on your PC, open the icon in Control Panel and sign in with your Apple ID and password.
Trying to manually keep information up to date across multiple mobile devices and a computer can be a challenging task. With iCloud, keeping information in sync across all your devices has never been easier.