Apple officially launched iCloud merely few days ago, so we are in the early days of this new revolutionary development. While this comes together with iOS5 it will probably shape the future of Apple products, just as iTunes did.

Yes, iCloud is a major technological breakthrough by Apple – on the scale of iTunes.

So what is iCloud? iCloud is not just storage (5GB free, more storage available for purchase if desired), but also complex synchronization, backup, and geolocation system.

One interesting thing is that you cannot setup iCloud simply by going to iCloud.com, but you must setup iCloud on your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) running iOS5.

Let’s go over some typical usage cases for iCloud!

Where is my iPhone, iPad?

If you have location services turned on in your device and in iCloud settings then you can locate where your devices are right now, via iCloud.com! Interestingly, iCloud.com uses Goolge maps for showing where your devices are located. You can also do some stuff with your devices remotely: “Play Sound or Send Message”, “Remote Lock” and “Remote Wipe.” I tried remote message and it works! So if you have forgotten your iPhone or iPad while partying, you may be able to find it if location services are on.

Where’s my cheating husband, my drug addict child?

While not obvious at first glance, the Find My Friends app works only with Apple IDs that are iCloud enabled and is one of the iCloud services!

 

Download the Find My Friends app (it has different name in non-English languages) and then you can see users on the map who have iCloud-enabled Apple ID and who give you access to their location. It’s much better than Google Latitude and other services because you can give temporary access to your location (for example: only when I am in Barcelona) and only to some specific people (only people from my team), etc.

The usability of Find My Friends is very broad and this app can be very useful, for example, when a group of friends is going on holiday. Keep in mind that if it is holiday abroad then you have to remember international data roaming which may be very costly (although inside of EU empire, by EU law, international data roaming fees must be cheaper so you can find cost-effective international data tariffs).

Of course Find My Friends may be used also in family context (is your husband really in a conference in Atlanta and not enjoying himself in Las Vegas?) but also in professional contexts, particularly where visiting customer premises must be coordinated very precisely to save time.

iCloud Photo Stream

One of the most often used features of iCloud is automatically storing photos and screenshots from iPhone and iPad to the cloud.

However, there is one extremely annoying thing about Photo Stream: you cannot just download images from iCloud.com. You need to install client software for images: for Mac OS Lion there’s “iPhoto ’11 (v9.2 or later) or Aperture (v3.2)” and for Windows Vista or Windows 7 you have an iCloud Control Panel (my old Windows XP Toshiba Tablet PC is not supported). It is completely counter-intuitive and annoying, as very often in corporations users don’t have administrator rights to the PC they use, and can’t install anything. And without the ability to download photos via the website this whole Photo Stream iCloud feature is unusable.

Nice thing is though, that if you can install sync software, or if you use iPad and iPhone, then you can quickly browse photos taken on other devices without worrying about synching.

Apple Office apps in the cloud

Like Microsoft Office, Apple has “office” apps and they are called Keynote (PowerPoint), Pages (Word), Numbers (Excel) and they are available both for Mac OS and iOS. With the release of iCloud these office apps are cloud-enabled:

I have tested it: I changed a spreadsheet on my iPad in Numbers, then I opened it on my iPhone and the info I entered on the iPad appeared. So continuos usage is possible.

It is not a replacement for Google Docs because documents cannot be edited in a web-based user environment (via website only). However, it works (although changes don’t appear immediately like in Google Docs – you need to reopen the given doc).

While it’s not perfect it certainly is useful: you can edit stuff on the iPhone and then switch to the iPad and then switch to Mac etc.

Storage for (some) files for (some) apps

The word “cloud” makes you think that you get something like Dropbox or Google Docs (where since recent updates you can upload all file types) or Amazon Cloud, but no: you can push and download iCloud files (mainly) via apps, not via web based user interface iCloud.com. With small exception you can download Apple office (Numbers, Pages, Keynote) documents in one of 3 formats: PDF, Microsoft or Apple:

It is utterly disappointing that you can’t upload to iCloud just any file like it is possible in Google Docs and Amazon Cloud.

email, notes, calendar and contacts in iCloud

With iCloud you can get your own something@me.com email address (although some of the coolest @me email addresses are already taken) and you can send/receive email and save notes, and store contacts and calendar events.

I can imagine many people use Microsoft Exchange and Google Mail (Gmail) as their primary e-mail service, so I am not sure how popular iCloud email will be, but it’s free and uses 5GB free space of the iCloud (together with other apps).

Calendar can be edited via iCloud website so it’s usable.

iCloud notes can be used only if you have .me email account but there are some 3rd party note taking apps already so it is not a problem.

All in all, iCloud is Apple’s solution for almost everything (also backing up and restoring of iOS devices is possible to/from iCloud) except for storing files in any format.

iCloud API but for iOS and Mac OS apps only

Of course there is an iCloud API for iOS and Mac OS apps so we can expect more and more apps storing their data inside of iCloud to facilitate dynamic switching between devices (e.g. playing a game while commuting on iPhone and switching to iPad at home and resuming at the same place), but one thing is for sure: apps can’t just upload any files to the iCloud and these files cannot be simply downloaded in original format, so iCloud is not “file storage” but more “structured data storage” (developers can store either documents in special formats, or key-value dictionaries).

The usability of such iCloud API may be limited because nowadays, for example, some services store app data to their local servers because they want to offer services around this data via web user interface. Such a thing is impossible with iCloud because only iOS and Mac OS apps can access iCloud via iCloud API, but server-based web applications not. So, for example, if some developer would like to make financial tracking app with ability to show tracking data also via website, then he/she couldn’t use iCloud as storage because website couldn’t access data at iCloud via API.

Giving app developers the ability to store data in iCloud will make usability of apps much higher, interoperability between iPhone and iPad high and users will not have to worry that losing their device or that they hard-reset their device (because app data is in the cloud anyway).

I could argue that this ability – iCloud-enabling apps via iCloud APIs – is the main advantage of iCloud.

Note: at the time when I write this, even such very expensive iPad apps ($50 dollars) like OmnigGraffle still don’t have “saving docs to iCloud” feature although developers announced that they are working on it and it’s coming soon – some patience on the side of users is required yet.

Conclusions

Advantages:

* apps can store data (files and key-value arrays) in the cloud

* automatic syncing of photos and several other data

* find your device and find your friends – new highly usable user experience

* free 5GB of storage

Disadvantes:

* VERY VERY ANNOYING: no ability to download photos from “Photo Stream” of iCloud via iCloud.com website (without installing any software)

* no ability to store files of any format, only some formats allowed or app-specific data

* no ability to store music and video on your iCloud

* no storage of ePub files from iBooks app in the iCloud

Conclusions: iCloud has just started and it will improve yet for sure but in current stage it is a bit annoying yet and limited. There is no doubt that iCloud is a major advancement of Apple corporation and it’s massive-scale advancement comparable to release of iTunes many years ago… but full potential will be unveiled only after more 3rd party apps will support iCloud natively.

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