Is iCloud totally worthless?

It is very simple to place a value on something that is free. If the something works for what is needed, then it is useful. If not, it is without value. The cost has nothing to do with value.

In this case, the iCloud has been touted as a place to store up to 5G of files free, with more storage available at a modest price. This has been widely reported in various news articles; Apple Store employees told me explicitly that even though iDisk would evaporate, the iCloud will work as well. So I bought into Lion [not free, by the way], and I find that I cannot easily upload a Word document to iClouid.

iGuess that Microsoft Office may be updated with access explicitly to iCloud. But at present, this does not work. The iCloud is currently without value for the purpose of storing, for example, a Word document.

All I know is that I have an iphone,....not Mac computer. I pourchased pages and numbers with the idea of storing my files on icloud. If I restart my iphone, however, all of my iworks fiels are deleted....gone...from both the iphone and on icloud.com

As far as Macs are concerned, iCloud is all hype and no bite!

5 gig of storage free, 🙂. Oh wait, it is only usable with

Apple apps 😟.

5 gig of storage free, 🙂. Oh wait, it is only usable with Apple apps 😟.

Well, duh! It's quite obvious that Apple's own apps would be the first to use iCloud storage, since Apple created the system.

Apple have implemented the programming API's to allow third-party apps to use iCloud storage, but things do take time to program. Third-party apps don't suddenly and magically program themselves to use it the instant the service is launched...

Be patient and I'm sure we'll see lots of non-Apple apps using iCloud.

As far as I'm concerned, iCloud is of little value unless you have an iPhone/iPad and not much email.

The mail sync isn't very useful as it only syncs mail to/from a new @me.com email address. I don't need another email address. I've already got like 10, 4 of which are pretty active. I need a way to sync the Mail app on my iMac with the Mail app on my Air. This might be the push I need to move to IMAP.

iCloud sets the Address Book and iCal groups as read only, so my options are:

• Let iCloud sync iCal and Address Book between my iMac and my Air (good) but give up on my phone (bad). Since the groups are read only, Missing Sync can't sync with my iMac.
• Or I can create local calendars to sync with my phone (good), but not iCloud so my iMac and Air are out of sync (bad).

Apple seems to have given little thought as to how this would be used in the real world. Not everyone has an iPhone. iCloud sounded good, but now appears to be lacking in big ways. I'm turning it off so that at least (I hope) I can get my phone and iMac talking to each other again. My Air will just have to be out of the loop until Apple gets iCloud up to speed.

Less than useless since it takes away the great functionality of the real "cloud" computing feature of iDisk where a user could easiy store ANY file and access it from any device. There were files I was ONLY storing on iDisk when it was suddenly wiped out. Thanks to this forum (no thanks to Apple), I was able to find where Apple dumped the files and get them back. The functionality is gone. I certainly won't be paying for iCloud in future while I was willing to pay $100 a year for MobileMe JUST for iDisk.

Lion and IOS5 have been backward steps for this new to Apple user. Prior to this the Apple "just works" worked. Now it's clear that Apple has lost that advantage.

Thank goodness learned that lesson before getting an iPad. Kindle Fire, Amazon and Google's REAL cloud file storage and synchronizing will be next steps. Apple is over for me.

I'm not ready to give up on Apple by any means. I'm just saying iCloud 1.0 is lacking.

Version 1.0 seems to be for those only using Apple devices and Apple software. So if you're syncing Macs and iPhones and iPads and using iWorks, iCloud might work just fine. If, like you and I, you're using non-Apple devices/software (I have a BlackBerry, you're obviously using non-Apple software to work on files on iDisk) it falls short. For me, the miss is calendaring and email with my BlackBerry. For you, it's iDisk.

I'm pretty confident upcoming versions will add functionality for non-Apple devices (the first iPods were Mac only), but it ain't happening right out of the gate. As for Amazon and Google and others, there are just as many horror stories about their services as Apple's. Every technology choice has pluses and minuses. We're all looking for the best way to hook up our various devices and data sources.

Best of luck!

Apple's is dangerous at this point.

I nearly lost the iDisk files and have lost the iDisk functionality.

In removing mail accounts from iCloud, it wiped them off of AppleMail so all those accounts, years of emails, are gone. Fortunately they were gmail accounts and I can retreive the data. Google's default is save your data. Apple's default is delete your data.

Calendar data wiped in moving to iCloud.

NY Times lost a $400 a year paper subscriber over ISO5 hijacking my NY Times iPhone app into the user unfriendly "Newstand" system folder.

What synching Apple does is a failure since it says "Will result in duplicate entries" which is not "Synchronizing" that is copying and adding. Sheesh....my old Palm actually SYNCHRONIZED with my desktop and Apple can't figure it out.

Canning the MacAir and/or Ipad purchase for an Android or Windows (Windows as more reliable than Apple...who'd have imagined THAT?) tablet or Notebook and moving to Google's cloud immediately for Contacts, Calendars, Docs and emails before any more data loss.

The people who need "luck" are those sticking with Apple at this point. iCloud is intrusive and dangerous and, to coin a phrase, just doesn't work.

I feel sorry for so many of you. Why is it so difficult to understand that in this area there will always be progress that leaves older products behind. It has been like that since the dawning of the computer age. As much as some manufacturers may desire to force customers to buy new products all over again, I don't believe that is Apple's basic philosophy. But, one has to be realistic here. At some point, the old stuff has to be discarded. It is impossible to maintain backwards compatibiltiy forever. Annoying though it may be when you realise you need to buy some new hard or software, it can hardly be a surprise. And let's face it, Apple have always made their software updates available for a very reasonable price (try and buy a new copy of Windows for $30).

I just don't see the problem with iCloud. It "does what it says on the tin". I have 2 Macs and 2 iOS devices and they all sync exactly what they've been told to sync. Yes, I will lose iDisk, but for heaven's sake, that has been subject to MASSIVE criticism in the past and iDisk was never anything to do with the 'Cloud'. It's just filesharing, with access to a shared network volume that Apple host on their servers. If that's what you want, go use DropBox or equivalent. That's not what iCloud is all about. iCloud is about seemless sharing of what's important (without faffing about in the filesystem, as mentioned elsewhere) and that is what it currently provides FREE for me and anyone else who cares to use it. OK, so document sharing for Macs is not there yet, but iCloud is the FACILITY to do so and requires the apps to take advantage of this. As Julian has pointed out, this will take a liitle longer.

The Mac, iPhone and iPad are simply brilliant pieces of kit and iCloud can link them all seemlessly. If you think you can achieve all that with Windows, Google, Dropbox and a Kindle, go ahead. Good luck.

I think that much of the criticism to Apple concerning iCloud is exaggerated. First of all, I had absolutely no issue when I transfered my MobileMe account to iCloud. And this is probably true for a majority of people.

Second, iCloud does what Apple claimed it would do. Many people complain about the fact that Documents in the Cloud does not sync the files automatically to the Mac. But that was known. Apple's description of iCloud on their website clearly explains that the automatic synching only occurs between the moblie devices and that you need to download and upload the files with a web browser on your Mac and PC. During the keynote, automatic syinching with the Mac was never mentioned either. So it was known.

Besides, even after switching from MobileMe to iCloud, it's still possible to use iDisk until June 2012 to share files.

One more thing about the comparison to MobileMe - that and iCLoud are based on different concepts. MM attempted to copy the local data of one client and replicate that to other clients and this client-centric approach lead to much criticism of MM, with it being dubbed a failure by many (despite what the apparent dovotees who've crawled out of the woodwork are now saying). Even Apple admit to not being proud of it.

iCloud OTOH is entirely server-centric, like IMAP for mail. By this I mean that the data is based in the Cloud (i.e. on a server). That is the primary copy and the clients just sync to that and maintain a local CACHE of the data. This process is easier to control than that used by MM, as evidenced by the basically troublefree use of IMAP by many users over many years.

This is a very real reason why iCloud is likely to provide a far more robust service than MobileMe ever could.

EaglesPDX wrote:

Less than useless since it takes away the great functionality of the real "cloud" computing feature of iDisk where a user could easiy store ANY file and access it from any device. There were files I was ONLY storing on iDisk when it was suddenly wiped out.

iDisk continues until 6/30/12, you have that long to find an acceptable sustitute.

Ah...that explains the 60 MINUTE CURRENT WAIT time for all the people who have had their computers crashed by iCloud.

Massive problems with iCloud is the reality and mostly from people not using MobileMe.

Now iTunes won't synch with iPhone. Reason is you must have a Apple@me.com account and attach to iCloud if you are Mac user. Apparenty Windows and Android customers are not similarly punished. iCloud is part of OSX 10.7 (aka Lion) so it is a operating system problem now. Ironically, Apple is only causing problems for those on Apples since iCloud is really part of the Apple OS.

As for people who say "It worked for me so no one else has any problems", pointless comment as millions try and get their data back or devices working again as evidenced by the massive wait times.

A huge stumble by Apple, lost me as future customer. Moving everything BACK to Microsoft Outlook and Google as online synch.

Silly & dramatic. Progress? Drink on the Koolaid.

Meanwhile, I feel sure Apple will "grow" iCloud into a worthy service including all aspects of cloud computing. But to assert that "iCloud is about seamless sharing of what's important" when what iCloud presently shares is contacts, calendar, email (if you haven't already moved your email to Gmail or equiv), and bookmarks is to have a real curious idea of "what's important."

As I say, Apple will get there, and this thread is silly with people screaming this and that rather than stepping back and seeing what Apple has offered so far, and imagining what Apple might offer in future.

It does seem odd, however, that Apple has REMOVED from iCloud the one feature of MM that was actually useful to subscribers (and remember, subscribers were paying for the privilege). Anyway, that's what all the lowing is about. And with BOX now offering 50GB free, well, who needs MM?

I think no one is saying that nobody has problems. There are people who do have problems with iCloud, for whatever reason. That's obvious.

But it is probably a small part of the 20 million people who opened an iCloud account. When you say that "millions" are struggling to get their data back, where do you have that figure from?