iCloud began life as a synchronization service. It can keep your calendar, address book, reminders, notes, bookmarks, and documents updated and identical on all your gadgets: Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch. Also your web passwords and credit card numbers. And all your photos, too, rounded up from all your Apple gadgets.
It’s a huge convenience—almost magical. It’s one of the great payoffs of living within Apple’s ecosystem of gadgets. It offers both the convenience factor—all your stuff is always on all your gadgets—and a safety/backup factor, since you have duplicates everywhere.
It works by storing the master copies of your stuff—email, notes, reminders, contacts, calendars, web bookmarks, and documents—on the web. (Or “in the cloud,” as the product managers would say.)
Whenever your Macs, PCs, or i-gadgets are online—over Wi-Fi or cellular—they connect to the mother ship and update themselves. Edit an address on your iPhone, and shortly thereafter you’ll find the same change in Contacts (on your Mac) and Outlook (on your PC). Send an email reply from your PC at the office, and you’ll find it in your Sent Mail folder on the Mac at home. Add a web bookmark anywhere and find it everywhere else. Edit a spreadsheet in Numbers on your iPad and find the same numbers updated on your Mac.
Actually, there’s even another place where you can work with your data: on the web. Using your computer, you can log into www.icloud.com to find web-based clones of Calendar, Contacts, and Mail.
Figure 17-8 shows the on/off switches for these sync features. They include these:
Contacts, Calendars. There’s nothing as exasperating as realizing that the address book you’re consulting on your home Mac is missing somebody you’re sure you entered—on your phone. This option keeps all your address books and calendars synchronized. Delete a phone number on your computer at home, and you’ll find it gone from your phone. Enter an appointment on your iPhone, and you’ll find the calendar updated everywhere else.
Reminders. This option refers to the to-do items you create in the phone’s Reminders app; very shortly, those reminders will show up on your Mac (in Reminders, Calendar, or BusyCal) or PC (in Outlook). How great to make a reminder for yourself in one place and have it reminding you later in another one!
Safari. If a website is important enough to merit bookmarking while you’re using your phone, why shouldn’t it also show up in the Bookmarks menu on your desktop PC at home, your Mac laptop, or your iPad? This option syncs your Safari Reading List, too.
Notes. This option syncs the notes from your phone’s Notes app into the Notes app on the Mac, the email program on your PC, your other i-gadgets, and, of course, the iCloud website.
Keychain. The iCloud Keychain keeps all your online name/password combinations synchronized across all your Apple machines, so you don’t have to memorize them or even type them as you log into various sites. Credit card numbers, too. See The Keychain.
To set up syncing, turn on the checkboxes for the items you want synced. That’s it. There is no step 2.