The iCloud login page should look familiar to former MobileMe users. The big difference: Linen.
You can be forgiven for thinking this interface looks just like Mail on iPad and Mail in OS X Lion.
As mail layouts go, we think iCloud is one of the best looking web interfaces for any mail service.
Like Mail, the Calendar app in the web version if iCloud looks almost exactly like Calendar for iPad and iCal for OS X Lion.
The calendar syncing tools are top notch, we just wish it could also suck in our other WebDAV calendars, like those attached to Google accounts.
Aperture 3.2 and iPhoto 9.2 for Mac OS X support the new Photo Stream feature. With Photo Stream, the last 1,000 photos taken with an iOS device (or manually synced via Aperture and iPhoto) are accessible across devices. Think of it as easy-access to your last month of photos. Anywhere.
When I open up Keynote on the iPad, all of my presentations created or edited on my iPhone or iPad are instantly accessible.
Likewise, Pages for iPhone pulls documents I have created or edited on the iPad.
Unfortunately, iCloud doesn't integrate well with the full versions of iWork. Rather than getting easy access to these files within the apps themselves, users have to upload or download documents to sync with iCloud.
To edit a document started on the iPad or iPhone, I must first download the file from the web.
After downloading the file, I can make edits. However, if I want those edits saved across the cloud I must upload the file back to the web browser.
Anyone who thought iCloud could be a replacement for Google Docs (or even Dropbox) was sorely mistaken.
With iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud, you can easily access your full music library even if those tracks are not on your local PC.
Songs and albums show up like normal files, can be added to playlists and smart playlists and played. If you want to download a playlist, album or selection of tracks for offline and permanent listening, that's easy to do.
For $25 a year, iTunes Match may be one of the best services out there for music lovers with large collection of music and lots of Apple devices.
iCloud requires OS X Lion or Windows Vista/7. A new panel in System Preferences controls the various iCloud features.
iCloud is free for 5GB of storage. Additional storage is $40 a year for 20 additional GB and $100 a year for 50GB.
This pricing is in line with what Dropbox charges. iCloud, however, is no where near as feature rich (at least now).
Along with iOS 5, Apple officially released iCloud Wednesday. The successor to the much-maligned MobileMe, iCloud is Apple’s first major attempt at unifying its product lines with online storage.
Unlike MobileMe, iCloud is free to anyone with an iOS 5 device. It’s also available for OS X Lion — and yes, that means you have to spend $30 on the upgrade if you’re on Snow Leopard, a fact some have compared to aMac user tax. On the PC side, both Windows Vista and Windows 7 are supported.
Could iCloud be a Dropbox or Google Docs killer? Here’s the skinny.
Mail, Calendar, Reminders and Notes
If you’ve used MobileMe, the email, calendar and notes component of iCloud will be old hat. Apple is giving users a free me.com email address and lets them keep calendars, contacts and email synced across devices.
iCloud is designed to work with Mac OS X Mail and Outlook on Windows, but you can also access email, calendars and contacts directly at iCloud.com.
For iOS users, the syncing aspect of contacts and calendars is fantastic. Apple has updated the web interfaces from the MobileMe days, making the mail, calendar and address book apps dead ringers for their iPad and Mac OS X brethren.
Unfortunately, iCloud cannot subscribe to a Google calendar. Using the website to view my calendars, I only see the ones associated with iCloud, not the others that are accessible on my phone, iPad and Mac.
All iCloud users get 5GB of free storage; that includes your email inbox.
Photos
Photo Stream is an iCloud feature that will publish every photo that you take on an iPhone or iPad and store it in the cloud for 30 days. Up to 1,000 recent photos are accessible across your devices.
This means that accessing a photo I took on my iPhone or iPad no longer requires emailing that image to myself. Likewise, I can now get all my iPhone shots imported directly into my Aperture library on my Mac. Photos are automatically downloaded to the Pictures folder in Windows or in your library in iPhoto or Aperture.
Photo Stream isn’t permanent; the photos only remain accessible for a month. The stream can be manually reset, but individual photos cannot be removed. Users need to save an image to their camera roll for permanent storage and editing.
It would be nice to have a web component to Photo Stream, so you could view snaps from someone else’s computer.
Documents and Data
iCloud can also store documents and data files. Users can choose to backup their iOS devices, including app data, to iCloud. This is instead of a traditional iTunes-based backup.
Some programs have exceptionally large data stores. Fortunately, in iOS, you can choose what programs to back up. If an app is downloaded on another device or reinstalled on an existing device, the settings and data appear as they did before.
Apple has touted iCloud’s integration with its iWork apps, which led some to think this might be a competitor to Google Docs or Office 360. Unfortunately, it’s not. It isn’t even close.
From a pure iOS play, the way that iWork integrates with iCloud is quite brilliant. Users have access to any files they create in Pages, Keynote or Numbers for iOS on another iOS device. That means I can start a document in Pages for iPad and finish it up or edit it in Pages for iPhone.
I can also view the file on the web — though I have to download it, and can’t edit it online.
Here’s where iCloud integration falls apart: Mac apps. With iWork ’09, iCloud integration is simply pitiful.
In order to access a document I started on an iOS device, I must download it from a browser, open that file in my Mac application, and then save the changes and upload the file back to iCloud.
Meanwhile, iOS apps that use Dropbox work seamlessly on the desktop. If I open that file on my Mac and save it back to my Dropbox folder, changes are automatically linked within those iOS apps.
Music and Video
I’ve already discussed iTunes in the Cloud, but it bears repeating that this is one of the best features of the entire product.
Having easy access to songs and TV shows you’ve already purchased is a dream. Even better, iTunes Matchwill make libraries accessible across devices, without the need to carry around a full iPhone or iPad.
iCloud vs. MobileMe
MobileMe launched alongside the iPhone 3G in 2008. Doomed almost from the start, the service suffered embarrassing bouts of downtime that forced Apple to give customers months of free service.
Eventually, MobileMe became a more stable product. Unfortunately, its price of $99 a year didn’t justify many of the features that competitors like Google offered for free.
I was a paying MobileMe user because of the Find My iPhone feature. Apple eventually made Find My iPhone free; a good decision. The rest of the features — save iDisk and iWeb publishing — have made the migration to iCloud.
I was willing to pay for MobileMe even after Find My iPhone became free because of the MobileMe Syncfeature. MobileMe Sync allowed users to keep their settings, keychains and mail rules consistent across Macs. What this meant was that a change I applied to my MacBook Pro, in terms of a serial number for an app I purchased or a password to a website, was automatically synced on my iMac.
Unfortunately, this feature is not part of iCloud. There is no word on whether it will get added in the future.
Current MobileMe customers need to convert their accounts to iCloud. To compensate, Apple has given those users an additional 20GB of storage for their files, data and backups through June 2012.
iCloud vs. Dropbox
I was hoping iCloud would be Apple’s answer to Dropbox. In its current state, it isn’t even close. Clearly it was built with only one OS in mind: iOS.
This is in stark contrast to Dropbox, which was built to be device-agnostic. With Dropbox, I have a folder in Finder that I can add things to or access. In iCloud, I have to rely on supported apps like Mail, iTunes and iPhoto.
Conclusion: Does iCloud Live Up to its Promise?
As a free service, iCloud is absolutely worth it for the contact and calendar syncing alone — as well as Find My iPhone/Find My Mac and the ability to do cloud-based iOS backups. The $24.99 a year iTunes Music Match service is worth its weight in gold.
When it comes to the desktop, iCloud is a step back from MobileMe. This was clearly a product designed for the mobile OS alone. In spite of requiring Mac OS X Lion, iCloud interacts with Mac OS X at a very minimal level.
We might be in a post-PC era, but we aren’t there all the way. If Apple wants developer and platform support for iCloud, it needs to make the service useful to those of us that use a regular computer.
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