Overview
iCloud is probably the biggest thing to happen to Online Backup in a long time, offering Limited Free Storage for exisitng iPhone, iPad and iPod users. iCloud will certainly intorduce more people to Online Backup, but how does it stack up against the industry leaders?Features
As with all Apple products, iCloud syncs seemlessly into every day life, and will certainly give the "I dont know what i did without this before" factor, to standard users. An icredibly easy to use tool allows effortless backup of important apps and documents. But in terms of flexibility it does not score so well. Backing up large files does take time, and it can be clunky and hard to use for Windows customers.Not having to sync your iPhone again is an excellent feature.
Summary
To an outsider it's easy to think that most will view iCloud as a pretty basic service. Yes, It's free and useful, However we dont see it as the glittering future of everything, but is a step in the right direction.It may one day be the MAin stay for the industry but at the moment it has a long way to go to impress us, and the general public. C+
Support
If you want complete support iCloud may not be the product for you, if you have been using Apple prodducts alot of what it offers and does is brilliant, to an outsider or a newbie to the market we would highly recommend a more thorough service. The step by step guides are very good, but only if you know how Apple works.Specials
If your willing to give it time, iCloud does have a few tricks up its sleeve, offering worry free backup and almost instant sycronisation of your calender, emails and important documetns, however this does require setting up with can take some time, to us though it is worth the effort.What it does do well is bring everything together under one umbrella, it could be better but the idea is very good, although with more dedicated Backup companies, you do get a lot more for your money.
Reliability
As with anything Apple, 99.9% of the time it simply works, however, its when it doesnt work that may be the problem. In the few weeks we have tried the product everything is running fine, so we can only hope that it stays the same. We dont want "Siri" going off on one with our contact anytime soon"Ease Of Use
When i used the service i found it to be very easy to use, however if you hand the service over to someone who has grown up around Blackberry phones and service, suddenly it isd a different story. To those in the know this could be perfect.All apps are simple and do the majority of what you want it to.
Value For Money
Although Apple claim that the Free 5GB will go along way, we are not so sure, especially for 16GB and 32Gb users of their services.If you break it down, the additional storage is very over priced and will put people off, especially those music lovers out there.
5GB is free
15GB is $20/year
25GB is $40/year
55GB is $100/year
It doesnt scream value to us, and to anyone looking for unlimited storage and space, then we would strongly advise to look elsewhere.
