Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's take a look at some iCloud basics.
iCloud has been around for a while now but many new Mac users, and also some Mac users
that have been using Macs for a long time before iCloud existed, have some basic questions.
I thought I would do a video on some of the basics.
Exactly what is iCloud.
The easiest way to see that is to go into System Preferences and go to the iCloud section.
Here you basically get a list of exactly what features iCloud has.
You can go through them one by one to understand what iCloud is.
It starts off here with iCloud Drive.
iCloud Drive is the ability to store your files in the cloud.
This means when you save a file on one machine, let's say you have a Mac and a MacBook.
A desktop and a laptop.
You save a file on your desktop Mac and then you look on your laptop Mac and since they
are both logged in to the same account here in iCloud and you have iCloud Drive checked
here the file will sync across to both.
So the file appears to be in both places.
In fact, the main place the file is is Apple's iCloud server.
But copies of it live on both your desktop and your laptop.
In addition if you have iOS devices, like say you have an iPad and an iPhone, and if
you have an app that corresponds to that file, say it's a document for Pages, you will see
that document appear for Pages on both the iPhone and the iPad.
So by creating the document on your desktop Mac you now have access to it on all four
of your devices because it is synced through the iCloud server.
Even more exciting than that is the fact that you can add new devices to this.
Say you get rid of that laptop and you get a new one.
You go into System Preferences and login to your iCloud account or more likely you do
it when you setup the MacBook.
Those files that were saved in iCloud Drive, the Pages documents for instance, would then
instantly be available on your new device.
You did not have to do anything.
You didn't have to migrate or copy files across.
They are just available on all your devices as long as you are signed in.
Now what about the rest of what we have here.
Let's jump over Photos for a second and let's look at Mail.
Well Mail is a special service in iCloud where you get an iCloud.com email address.
Some Mac users may have older accounts that have Mac.com or Me.com email addresses.
They are all just the same basically as iCloud.com.
You turn that on here and in the Mail app you will have access to your email.
You will have access to that same email on all your different devices as long as you
are logged in.
Then you've got services like Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Notes.
These four are very similar in that if you have them turned on then anything you create
or edit on one device will show up on the others.
For instance you add a Contact on your desktop Mac.
Go over to your laptop Mac and you will see that the contact now is in your contacts there.
On your iPhone it is there as well.
The same for Events, Calendars, Reminders, and Notes you create.
Now Contacts, Calendars, and Notes all predate iCloud.
So it is possible, for instance, in Calendars to have accounts that are setup on different
services.
So, for instance, you can set it up on Goggle or Yahoo calendar.
You can also have calendars that are just local calendars stored on your local drive
that aren't part of iCloud.
A lot of times when people have trouble with Contacts, Calendars, and Notes it really boils
down to the fact that they've got some of those things saved locally to a pre-existing
kind of local file and you haven't moved it over to iCloud.
It is really hard to diagnose and fix those problems unless you know what you are doing.
If you are experiencing that you may want to visit the Genius Bar and have somebody
help you migrate those things over to the iCloud accounts so they are available everywhere.
Now you have a few other things down here.
You've got iCloud Keychain.
Keychain stores things like passwords and all sorts of other things.
Certificates for developers.
Things that you used to just keep on your one local computer but now the great thing
is with iCloud you can sync them across multiple devices.
So you log into a website say that needs some sort of security certificate and you do that
on your desktop Mac.
You don't need to do it on your laptop Mac because iCloud Keychain has synced those across
those devices.
I don't have it checked here because this is a test account that I use for making these
videos so there is no need.
But I do use it on my main account.
Back to My Mac is a very specific service that basically allows you to access the files
on your Mac from outside on another computer somewhere else.
Basically like file sharing except that you don't have to be on the same local network.
You Mac will basically tell its location to iCloud all the time so that if you are somewhere
else and you want to log into it to access those files through file sharing you can.
Find My Mac is another service too that will basically allow you to locate mostly iOS devices
like iPhone or iPad if it is lost.
But also very useful for MacBooks that can also get lost or stolen and can report their
location back to iCloud and you can use this service.
So some different services here that have been tacked on to iCloud.
Now I skipped over Photos because Photos is going to be changing very soon.
Right now you've got two services.
You've got My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing.
One or both of those is going to be replaced by the new iCloud photo service that Apple
will introduce later this year.
So we will hold off talking more about that as things are going to change.
You have some options here on the right for some of these services like iCloud Drive.
So here you can disallow or allow different apps to store things in iCloud.
Now just because you are allowing it, like for instance Pages here, doesn't mean you
can't store documents locally.
You just have the option to do either one.
To get an even bigger picture of what iCloud is doing you can take a look here at the storage
at the bottom and see how much space is being.
You can also click on Manage for more details.
You get a list of apps here and what space they are using.
It is useful to go through this.
On my real Apple ID account I found a few games that I'd finished playing that had stored
their game data and I was able to go and select and delete those as I no longer needed that
data.
But you can look and see what other apps are storing here and how much space they are using.
You can also see backups that several of my iOS devices were backed up and had stored
data there and I can see those and perhaps if I don't own that device anymore I can delete
the backup from that.
You can also buy more storage and we'll have to see how this changes when the Photos app
comes online later on because a lot of people are definitely going to need more storage
to store all their photos in iCloud.
It remains to be seen whether Apple changes how these plans work or most of us are probably
going to have to jump above this 20GB level to store lots of photos.
So we will have to see how that plays out.
Now as you can expect Apple provides a lot of information about what iCloud is and it's
very easy to read through and get to know more.
This there is this great page here but you can also just search for What Is iCloud and
it is the first one to come up.
They go into detail about these links to individual items.
So you may want to check out this document and begin reading more if you want to know
more about iCloud basics.