Cloud is a cloud storage service introduced by Apple in 2011. Just over a year on there are over 150 million iCloud users from all around the world. OS Backup and Restore iCloud allows users to back up their iOS devices online rather than the traditional way of backing up to your PC or Mac (although you can, of course, still do this). A great benefit of this is that backups can then be restored to your iOS device without you having to connect your device to your computer.
Find My iPhone This feature allows you to track the location of either your iOS device or your Mac. It will show you a map that tells you the rough location of where the devices currently are. Amazingly, it seems to be pretty accurate from the tests that I've conducted. Photo Stream This service allows users to store their most recent 1,000 photos on the iCloud servers for up to 30 days, completely free of charge.
Email This feature requires you to have an @icloud.com email address for the Email option to show up in iCloud. It is an optional part of iCloud which gives you easy access to your email account online from anywhere in the world, even if you don't have you iOS device with you. Tunes Match iTunes Match is a paid feature of iCloud.
Contacts Contacts can be synced between devices. For PC's running Windows, iCloud will synchronise your contacts with Outlook 2007 or above. For Mac users your contacts will be synced with the Contacts app that comes with your OS. Of course if you aren't using iCloud on a computer this will synchronise with the contacts on your iOS device. Calendar Calendar events can be synchronised to iCloud too, again through Outlook 2007 or above on Windows or through the Calendar program on your Mac.
This easily allows you to add appointments to your calendar using the iCloud website when you are away from your iCloud enabled devices. Fantastic. Reminders will also show up in the Calendar app, synced from the Reminders program in OS X or on your iOS device. Work iWork is a suite of programs available for your Mac which include Keynote (for creating presentations), Pages (for word processing) and Numbers (for creating spreadsheets).
Find My Friends This feature allows you to locate your friends who also have the feature enabled. Waiting to meet a friend for coffee and wanting to know if they are nearby, Just load up the app on your iOS device and it'll let you see their current location. Safari Reading Lists & iCloud Tabs Reading Lists were introduced into Safari from version 5.1 to allow you to add different web pages to your "reading list" to read at a later date.
With iCloud these can be synchronised across your devices to enable the same list to appear on any of the iCloud enabled devices that have Safari installed. Another fantastic feature is that it can also synchronise your open tabs in Safari across devices. Open 3 tabs with different web pages on your Mac and they will all show up when you open Safari on your iPhone/iPad and vice versa.
Each iCloud account comes with 5GB of free storage, which for casual users will be more than enough. Additional storage can be purchased in tiers of 10, 20, or 50 GB. 20, £14, or €16. The most you can buy is 50GB which will give you 55GB in total when you include the 5GB of free space that you receive just for using the service. To create a new account you are going to need an iOS device running iOS version 5 or above or a Mac using OS X Lion 10.7 or above.
Synchronising with a PC will require you to have Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 or Windows 7. From a PC you can sync calendars, contacts and reminders to iCloud using Microsoft Outlook 2007 or above. Sign In With Your Apple ID To set up iCloud you are going to require an Apple ID. If you've bought anything from Apple before then you'll have one.
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