If you're like many of us, you've got hundreds, possibly thousands, of photos stored on SD cards, portable hard disks, maybe a few DVDs you've burnt, but you haven't really got a one-stop place you can definitively say "here's all the photos from 2009".
Sure, you can hook up a file server at home, maybe connect it to a media server, and bluetooth your favourite photo to your phone for printing out, but there's still drawbacks. You need to make sure you have redundancy in your system or at least make regular backups. Those backups should be stored outside of the house if you're serious about preserving your memories. But all of this requires some level of tech know-how, lots of cables, hard disks and plenty of time and money.
So what is the iCloud that everyone is talking about and can it really help you? Can it really eliminate the need for so many different types of physical media storage in your home? Is it secure and how much can I store in it?
A relatively recent phenomenon, Apple's iCloud is aimed at everyday consumers wanting to improve and organise both their online and offline experience. By this, I'm referring to how you view, store, print and send media whilst you're online, and how you might find the same data when you're offline, or without internet availability.
To understand what the iCloud is, think of it as your own personal storage space which is intelligent enough to not only backup your media, but also push your media (photos, documents and music) to all of your devices! iCloud is an exclusively reserved storage box for you, and it seamlessly pulls and pushes your precious data between all of your iPhone/iPad apps without you even needing to know it's there.
No cables, no SD cards, no USB flask disks, no MMS, no email attachments, no worries! If you've got an Apple TV, you're also fully iCloud ready!
Put simply, iCloud can give you immediate access to your most recent photos using Photo Stream, and give you unlimited access to purchased music (including music you already own) on any device that recognises iCloud! Even if you only have an iPhone and a Windows PC, you have all you need to try it out.... and at 5GB on the free plan, this is plenty for most. If you're willing to spend a little more (still a fraction of that high tech file server idea you're still tossing around in your head) you can rest assured that there'll be nothing you can't fit in the iCloud. In its favour, its interface is so user friendly and geek-free you'll be using it and relying on it before you even realise. It just works.
So whether you're on your European holiday, in the backyard with the kids, in the car, in the office or in your loungeroom, iCloud is there at your beck and call - a contemporary storage solution to those pesky hard disks, DVDs and flash drives of yesteryear.
