What good is the cloud hanging over my iPhone? All it seems to have done is some sort of backup, using up icloud space but not completing, so the backup is useless. Even if my iPhone is able to get the entire working backup up there, how is that useful if my iPhone needs to be restored, it’s because it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t work how is it going to retrieve the backup from the iCloud.
In the past I did a full restore off of my computer, which you put your iPhone in a special mode to do it, this makes sense, but does a restore from the iCloud have any chance of being useful if there is a serious restore issue?
I though it would help sync things on my laptop to my iPhone, though since I don’t use Outlook, it does nothing. There is some photostreaming to the iCloud, but again I don’t see any photo’s in the iCloud.
The idea is to remove the necessity to periodically connect your iPad to a workstation for backup and updates. If this all pans out (and we won’t know for sure until the first IOS 5 update), future updates can be done over the WiFi or cellular link.
As I understand it, the iCloud backup (I ran my first one last night) will protect your data. If something goes flooey, you will have to re-install your purchased apps from the Apps Store, and then restore your documents, pictures, tunes, etc., from the cloud.
All in all, this is probably a good thing. The necessity for periodically connecting to a workstation isn’t much of a problem for individuals, but posed problems when managing a fleet of devices, as, for example, in a company or school.
It’s pretty useful in the case that both your iPhone and the computer backup stop working at the same time due to something like fire, flood, or theft.
You can then get all your personal data back on your new iPhone.
The more Apple products you have, the more benefit you get from iCloud.
For example, I set a reminder on my phone, and I get an alert on my computer. I put a calendar entry into my iPad while at home, its on my phone when I am out-and-about. I buy a song while on the road, it shows up in my itunes library. etc, etc.
All of this happens without me doing anything.
Every feature may not work perfectly right now, but give it time and they will get the bugs out.