What is iCloud?

From the series of Apple Inc products and services like iPhone, iPad, iPod, iOS, iTunes, iAd, iBookStore here come up with the new one iCloud, free cloud service for his customers.

Advantages of iCloud:

Nowadays it’s hectic to keep all your data updated across all your devices. iCloud helps to keep your data updated automatically to all your devices. This can be done by wirelessly either in Wi-Fi or 3G (based on user configuration). So users no need to worry about plug-in or transferring data between devices like iPad, iPhone and iPod. Changes made to your data in one device will automatically update to your other apple devices. For example photo which taken in your iPhone will be pushed to your PC automatically.

iCloud provides free storage space about 5GB to store user data and synchronize data between devices between our other devices like iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac or Windows PC. And also it allows us to configure up to 10 devices for each user. Moreover space required to store the  music, books, apps purchased from apple are not included in this 5GB, hence user will get dedicated 5GB storage to store their personal Mail, Documents, and Backup data. In the case of user need more storage space for their use, and then they can extend their storage space by paying extra price.

The various types of data we can synchronize with our devices using iCloud services are:

iTunes with iCloud, user purchasing music will automatically appear in all of his devices. iTunes Store keeps list of all music purchased by user in past, user can download to any device if its not available. All history of user purchased list will stores in iTunes Store, no matter through which device user brought that music. Along with iCloud, ‘iTunes Match’ service also releasing, it help to keep user whole music collection. Music collection may included music ripped from DVDs/CDs, purchased somewhere else other than iTunes. Even this other music also shared between all device, your music file will be uploaded to iCloud, if your own music file match with iCloud music library of 18 Million music collections, you can use from iCloud itself, only you have to upload which doesn’t match. If it matches user can listen to iCloud music which gives 256Kbps iTunes plus quality, even user had low quality file. iTunes match is not a free service, so it available in $24.99 for a year. Pre-requisite to use iCloud with iTunes is need to have iTunes 10.3 version. It is available to download free for Mac and PC.

Contact, Calendar and Mail – With Apple former service MobileMe, user can share the calendar with the person whom they want to share as well as instant mail in all iOS devices and PCs. This iCloud service with Contact, Calendar and Mail enables the user to access their Contact book, Schedule and Mail from any place. It will avoid the problem of carrying our laptop to access our data wherever we are going, in case we are keeping all the records in our laptop. And also if any change done by one of the member who included in the group, will automatically update to all other member’s schedule.

Documents – As Apple given iWork apps to all developer to make their application work with iCloud, all application which your brought from third party vendor will be used along with iCloud. So you can create documents in all iOS device and check your work from anywhere, all changes made to documents will be automatically moved to all devices. So you can check your office documents in iPhone even during vacation.

Apps Store, iBook Store – It enables the user to install/use any of their purchased apps & books from any of his iOS devices. Store will keep the history of entire user purchased list, we can download from the store, in case if apps or book is not available in our device. iCloud also pushes newly buying apps to all other devices. For example user can view the books in PC which are available in their iPhone. Even book mark, highlighted text , comments made and the page which left when closing the application everything will be updated to all other devices through iCloud service. For example, if the user reading a book in iPod, and he closed the application at page 36, thereafter he can able to access the same page where he left at last( that means at page 36) whenever he re-open the same book from MAC or PC.

iCloud Backup - It helps to take the backup of all the devices automatically and securely in daily manner. It takes backups of all music, apps, apps data, books, camera roll (picture and video), device settings, home screen, app organization, Text messages, MMS, even ringtones. The backup data will be safe always; even though anything happened to our device accidentally. In this case we can recover the data which are in backup from our damaged device to our new device by just giving our Apple User name and Password. iBackup takes quick backup of only altered data not from scratch every time.

Photo Stream in iCloud – By using iCloud service, user can transfer the data from iPhone to any other devices, and also no need to worry about limit on taking photo/video. iCloud Photo Stream features helps to move our photo to our PC picture folder. Except PC, all devices only stores last 1000 photos as it has space constrain. And also iCloud will store all photos for 30 days in iCloud itself in the case of, if we did not connect any other device to icloud.

Pre-requisite to use iCloud feature:

• iTunes 10.3
• iOS 4.3.3
• Mac OS X Lion
• Window Vista or Window 7
• Outlook 2007 or 2010