iCloud, a concept that we hear many times in our daily lives with Apple devices, but which we may not be entirely clear. Is it a sync service, is it a cloud service? Is it the same as Apple ID? Let’s talk about all this.
Apple ID > iCloud > iCloud Drive
If a few days ago we were talking about what the Apple ID is, today it’s iCloud’s turn. One of Apple’s core services. A service that is very easy to understand. Before getting into the description, however, we will place it among the rest of the servicessome with similar names, which Apple offers us.
Let’s start with iCloud Drive, which has almost the same name. iCloud Drive is a document synchronization service. Documents only. Here we are going to save our spreadsheets, PDF documents or files from our Mac desktop.
iCloud Drive is part of iCloud. iCloud syncs more than just documents. Contacts, calendars, call history, notes, shortcuts, iCloud history, podcast subscriptions and more are synced.
Finally say that iCloud is part of a larger service, Apple ID. In addition to what iCloud sync takes care of, our Apple ID also syncs and stores app purchases, subscriptions, repair status, Apple Care contact history, devices associated with the account, and a few more. details.
So in hindsight we will say that we have our Apple ID which stores everything that has to do with us and Apple. Inside Apple ID is iCloudwhich takes care of synchronizing information and the content itself, and finally there is iCloud Drive, which only synchronizes files and folders.
So what is iCloud?
Located the service in the cluster of services that make our devices work properly, iCloud is a cloud storage and synchronization service. This means that when we activate iCloud on a device, the information we manage locally, whether it’s changing the time of a calendar event or adding a photo to a note, is moved to the cloud. .
Once there, it is stored and available. That’s why we say iCloud is a cloud storage service. But, we also say that it is a synchronization service, why? Because our other devices regularly request the cloud, is there anything new? If the answer is yes, they upload the new content.
This means that changing the time of an event in the Calendar app went from our iPhone to iCloud, then from iCloud to iPad, for example. So we have a cloud synchronization service.
Thanks to iCloud, our devices function as if they were only one. In addition to the fact that we can brand new a device and, as soon as we put our Apple ID and activate iCloud, see all our content appear, we can also access a large part online. All we have to do is go to iCloud.com and identify ourselves. And it’s all thanks to the cloud storage and synchronization service that is iCloud.
