How Does iCloud Function?

[Ringfinger]

Specifically, I use iCloud. somewhat. When I click on iCloud, I have Photos>on and find my iPhone on. That's it. No notes, calendar, safari, calendars, contacts, etc. Everything seems fine. Everytime I plug in my phone and am on wi-fi, it does a back-up. (I also have the iCloud Backup on).

I have restored from it when I got a new phone, or have had to do a wipe out and restart so to so, and all seemed fine.

Why would I "turn on" mail, contacts, calendars, etc? Is that to "sync" across multiple iDevices? I can remember someone I worked with having the "contacts" turned on and when they restored, they lost all of their contacts, however when I turned it off, all their contacts came back.

Am I making sense?

 

[Fausty82]

Specifically, I use iCloud. somewhat. When I click on iCloud, I have Photos>on and find my iPhone on. That's it. No notes, calendar, safari, calendars, contacts, etc. Everything seems fine. Everytime I plug in my phone and am on wi-fi, it does a back-up. (I also have the iCloud Backup on).

I have restored from it when I got a new phone, or have had to do a wipe out and restart so to so, and all seemed fine.

Why would I "turn on" mail, contacts, calendars, etc? Is that to "sync" across multiple iDevices? I can remember someone I worked with having the "contacts" turned on and when they restored, they lost all of their contacts, however when I turned it off, all their contacts came back.

Am I making sense?

iCloud | iMore

For contacts, calendars, documents and email, anything that is synced to your iCloud account "lives" in the iCloud space - meaning you can log into your iCloud.com account and "touch" it - edit it, delete it, add content, etc. Any devices that you sync with iCloud contains copies of that data, synced across the iCloud space and any other devices that are connected. Typically when you disconnect a part of the data - for example, you edit the settings on your phone to remove iCloud contacts, the automatic sync is "broken", and you are prompted as to whether you want to keep the copy on your device or delete it. If you delete it, those contacts are gone from your device (but not iCloud). If you keep the contact data, you now have a separate, non-synced copy of that data on your device. If you then turn iCloud sync back on for contacts on your device, I think you end up with two copies - an iCloud copy and your old formerly-synced-but-now-disconnected copy.

 

[Ringfinger]

I understand. So, since I do not use any other iDevices that I need to to sync to, the way I do it now should be sufficient? Should I be using iCloud for some of these things that I am just not aware of?

iCloud is backing up my settings, contacts, photos, app data and I should be all set? I just want to make sure I understand. Thanks!

 

[Fausty82]

I understand. So, since I do not use any other iDevices that I need to to sync to, the way I do it now should be sufficient? Should I be using iCloud for some of these things that I am just not aware of?

iCloud is backing up my settings, contacts, photos, app data and I should be all set? I just want to make sure I understand. Thanks!

Pretty much. There are two parts to iCloud. There’s the part I mentioned above - the contacts/calendars/mail/etc... and there’s the "backup to iCloud". Apple gives you 5gb of space, and you can buy more... and you can use this space for the aforementioned stuff as well as to do device backups. But the world grinds to a halt when you run out of space. So if your 32gb iPhone is crammed full of stuff, the odds are poor that you will be able to do a backup to iCloud. But you can still effectively get a backup of stuff like mail, contacts and calendar stuff by syncing it with iCloud. Confusting? Hopefully not... but it can be.

But wait, there’s more... The photos part. The photos thing is a bit trickier. iCloud does NOT store pictures. When it comes to photos, iCloud is only a "transport mechanism" for lack of a better term. Only the most recent 1,000 photos are available in iCloud... and then, only for 30 days from the last time they were accessed. So using PhotoStream and sending your photos to iCloud doesn’t really buy you much IF your iPhone is the only device to which you are syncing photos... Follow me for a second here. You have PhotoStream enabled on your phone - the only device that you have using PhotoStream. You take a photo. It gets saved to your camera roll and to your PhotoStream. You can see in in both "albums" on your phone. The PhotoStream presence of that photo means that it goes to iCloud for other devices accessing this PhotoStream to get it. (But in this case, there aren’t any). So the photo now only exists on your phone and the iCloud space. In 31 days, regardless of the number of photos you’ve taken or how much iCloud storage you’ve used... the photo gets deleted from iCloud. Now there’s only one copy of that photo. Three days later something terrible happens (your phone is stolen, your phone gets broken, you phone just quits working)... that photo is gone forever. No getting it back. Ever. (unless you had a backup somewhere).

See the issue?

 

[Ringfinger]

Gotcha, so, what can I do to make sure I don't lose photos besides copying them to a safe location (home computer, google drive, etc) on a regular basis? iCloud does no back-up my photos then?

I see photos taking up space on the cloud, what is that then?

 

[Fausty82]

Gotcha, so, what can I do to make sure I don't lose photos besides copying them to a safe location (home computer, google drive, etc) on a regular basis? iCloud does no back-up my photos then?

I see photos taking up space on the cloud, what is that then?

I’d definitely back them up somewhere else... my point was simply that while they may be there for a while, iCloud is NOT the solution for photo backup, like it may be for contact and calendar info.

 

[Ringfinger]

Oh, so my pictures are safe in that regard from my phone then as far as being backed up?

 

[Fausty82]

The iCloud backup does backup your Camera Roll this is subject to your 5GB free or more if you paid.

PhotoStream is not included in the 5Gb and as you said is limited to 1000 pics/30 days.

Oh, so my pictures are safe in that regard from my phone then as far as being backed up?

They are (thanks for the correction, Karen)... but remember, a back up is an "all or nothing" thing. There is no selective restore.

 

[Ringfinger]

I take the photos off of my phone almost as quick as I take them so I am not worried.

 

[Good OL MC]

I take the photos off of my phone almost as quick as I take them so I am not worried.

That'll work. If you have a PC you can also use the iCloud Control Panel to make a Photostream folder that will use the "transport mechanism" to bring Photostream photos down to your desktop. It works well.

Otherwise do what you're currently doing or back up to a storage system like Dropbox or Google+ (full resolution backups coming soon!)

EDIT: Sorry, didn't mean to surface such an old post. Tapatalk had it on my front page.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk