iCloud for Beginners

iCloud is something that Apple doesn’t talk a lot about but is perhaps their biggest service. It’s estimated that nearly 850 million people use it. The thing about it, however, is many people don’t even know they’re using it.

What exactly is it? If you are familiar with Google Drive, then the concept is something you probably already understand. It’s an online storage locker. But it’s more than that. It is a place where you can store files, and it also syncs everything—so if you send a message on your iPhone, it appears on your MacBook and iPad. If you work on a Keynote presentation from your iPad, you can continue where you left off on your iPhone.

iCloud has become even more powerful as our photo library grows. Photos used to be relatively small, but as cameras have advanced, the size goes up. Most photos on your phone are several MB big. iCloud means you can keep the newest ones on your phone and put the older ones in the cloud. It also means you don’t have to worry about paying for the phone with the biggest hard drive—in fact, even if you have the biggest hard drive, there’s a chance it won’t fit all of your photos.

This short book will help new users navigate their way around the cloud service.