Which is better to sync, wifi or iCloud?

I heard that you shouldn't sync with itunes and icloud. Which is better, and how do you set that up?

Where did you hear you shouldn't use these?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Wifi sync is a way to wirelessly sync with iTunes on your Mac or PC. This includes content that you've purchased, content that you've ripped from your own CD collection, as well as things like playlists, song ratings, etc. This is just to replace plugging in your USB cable as you've always had to do in the past.
iCloud is a way to store some of your content on Apple's servers and retrieve it on any iCloud enabled device. Note this includes only content you've purchased (music, movies, tv shows) or content you've created using iCloud-enabled apps like Pages, Numbers, or Keynote. iCloud doesn't let you sync "metadata" such as playlists, song ratings, etc. if you add a song to a playlist on your iPhone, it won't show up on that same playlist on your iPad, Mac, or PC because you use iCloud. It only gets moved on those other devices after you sync. iCloud also provides a means to keep calendars, contacts, notes, and reminders the same across multiple devices. Finally, iCloud let's you backup your device to the cloud instead of to your Mac or PC, which is handy feature as you don't have to worry about losing your backup should your Mac or PC fail.
You can choose to use iCloud and not wifi sync, or use wifi sync and not iCloud, or use both or use neither. They are independent of one another and provide different functions.
Personally, I use both. I wirelessly sync so my iDevices are up to date, and I take advantage of iCloud for my backups, calendar, contacts, etc.

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HT204023 which works better - bluetooth or wifi hotspot on iPhone 5?

which works better - bluetooth or wifi hotspot on iPhone 5?

The problem magically solved itself by an accidental drop of my phone on the floor. Maybe you should not try this at home

When i'm trying to download apps from app store, it show a icloud icon, which i do not sync my photo icloud. what should i do now?

i can't download apps , coz it appear an icloud icon instead of "free"

The cloud icon means you've already downloaded those Apps in the past and they are in your purchased history.
For payed apps this would allow you to redownload them without having to pay again.
Just tap on the cloud icon to start the download.

How can I find out which Contact list in my outlook that iCloud is syncing with?

How can I find out which Contact list in my outlook that iCloud is syncing with?

Try the helpful tips in the following link to possibly make Outlook and iCloud play nice with your contacts:
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/icloud-outlook-problems-syncing-contacts/

TS3999 I have a macbook Pro which had Mobileme. I have joined ICloud, but my Calendar does not sync. How do I fix this? I do not see an ICloud Icon on my laptop and the software is updated.

I have a macbook Pro which had Mobileme. I have joined ICloud, but my Calendar does not sync. How do I fix this? I do not see an ICloud Icon on my laptop and the software is updated.

This is the situation with Snow Leopard and existing iCloud accounts:
You will be able to access email and calendars on the iCloud website at http://icloud.com provided your browser is reasonably up-to-date.
You will not be able to sync contacts or bookmarks from a pre-Lion Mac.
You will be able to enter the server settings for email manually in the Mail application and access your email.
You will not be able to sync your calendars directly.
Some people have been able to set up calendar syncing by using the method detailed here - this is an unsupported hack and may not be reliable, and may stop working at some future point.
Address Book won't sync: this page has a convoluted hack to make it sync which has been reported as working (and as not working by others). I've not tried it.
There are a couple of alternative syncing services you might like to consider, though they're not particularly cheap:
Soho Organizer can sync Calendars and Contacts with iCloud on Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. A single user licence (multiple machines allowed) is $99.99.
Fruux syncs Calendars, Tasks and Contacts beetween a wide variety of devices (not using the iCloud server) including Snow Leopard and above, Windows Outlook and Thunderbird, Linux Thunderbird, and iOS and Android devices - see their compatibility chart (click the blue 'i' for a caveat about Snow Leopard). It's free for one user, two shares, two devices; above that pricing starts at €4 per month.
(I have no connection with these firms and have not tried Soho Organizer, though both have had good reports and I've found Fruux to work well.)

My iPhone won't sync calendar to iCloud, only to Google calendar, which I've never used. Events from iCloud sync to the phone and to Google. Huh???

My iPhone 3GS (ios 5.1) won't sync calendar to iCloud, only to Google calendar, which I never authorize or use. Yet when I entere an event on the iCloud calendar, it syncs to the iPhone (and to Google calendar) just fine. Any suggestions?

Welcome to the Apple community.
iCloud cannot sync with Google calendars, so it would seem that you may be using the wrong calendar account. Click on the calendar button in the top right hand corner of the calendar app and check which calendar you are adding your events too.

Can I sync the ipad through iTunes from a different state using wifi or iCloud?

I sync the ipad through iTunes from a different state using wifi or iCloud?

scrapman26 wrote:
i was told it can take between 5 and 72 hours for the carrier unlock is done.
And have you waited that long? If not, then that's why it's not done yet.

Maverick won't permit syncing Address Book or Calendar by USB to iPhone or iPad and permits only syncing by iCloud, which I don't want to use. Any ideas on how to sync without using iCloud?

Maverick won't permit syncing Address Book or Calendar by USB cable from my MacBook Air to my iPhone and iPad and permits syncing only by iCloud. Mountain Lion permitted this via the Info tab on iTunes. I don't want to use iCloud. Any ideas with Maverick on how to sync Address Book and Calendar from computer to iPhone and iPad without using iCloud?

ymcneil - thanks for the work around. But isn't it amazing Apple forces us to do this to maintain our privacy.
I live in Australia where there are good privacy laws protecting citizens. I do not want to be forced to use iCloud when the data sits in the USA with weaker privacy laws and also able to be seen by the US Government under the Patriot Act. Further I suspect Apple will interrogate my contacts and calendar for commercial purposes and I do not want that either.
I chose to synch my calendar and contacts with my iphone and ipad. I have relied for years on carrying around my phone with my diary on it. I can no longer do that.
Whoever made this decision at Apple has to be someone who knows little about the world. I can actually see EU regulators getting very annoyed by this.
I too woud like the itunes mac to iphone/ipad local backup given back.
In the meantime - thanks for the work around

Is it possible to sync iCal with iCloud on Lion machines but still subscribe on pre-Lion machines?

I absolutely love iCal, and have a very complicated system set up such that various individuals/computers can access my calendars. I was thrilled about iCloud, as that mean that I would not have to worry about remembering events until I found myself in front of the "main" machine, but could update iCal from all Lion/iOS5 devices, which are my general working machines.
But, it appears that iCloud has removed my former webcal publishing, and now my pre-Lion machines cannot keep up to date with the calendars. So, I've done a bunch of investigating, and think I have found a work-around, but I still have a concern about it, and am also wondering if there is a better solution.
So, what I want to do is this:
I have two Macs running Lion (laptop, desktop) and an iPhone running iOS5 that I would like to be able to update calendars from and have it show up on all. iCloud neatly accomplishes this (whereas before, I had to wait to find myself in front of the desktop, or remember to sync the iPhone).
I also have a plethora of older Macs, owned by myself, people in my group, and my family, that currently subscribe to various webcal addresses to keep up with "Work" and "Home" calendars, on a read-only basis. The Macs are running anywhere from OS 10.2 to 10.6. Upgrading to Lion is *not* an option -- first of all, they're not all my machines, and second of all, some are truly old (10.2 is running on a G3 -- yes, a G3, still in working order and completely fit for its purpose, with no plans to update until the machine physically stops working, but 10.2 is the most recent OS it can run).
The work-around I found is this:
I set the iCloud calendars to share with "everyone" which provides me with a webcal address that I can send to people and tell them to subscribe to it in their iCals.
My concern is:
I am concerned about the "everyone" sharing: I previously used a prviate, password-protected third party webcal pubishing service. The URLs the everyone-sharing produces look complicated enough that it is unlikely that anyone would "guess" it, but is possible to browse public iCalendars somewhere? The information in the calendars isn't hugely sensitive, but some of it is private enough it would cause a stink if some people blundered across the "Work" calendar, and perhaps some embarrassment if others found the "Home" calendar (especially as work people will know I am using this method). Does anyone know how easy it is to access these calendars if you have not been provided the URL by the publisher?
And finally, is there a better solution? Ideally, I'd have password-protected webcal sharing. It looked to me that the "only with people you invite" choice requires people to both have an iCloud account, and then use an iCloud enabled OS in order to get it into their iCal, which won't work with the pre-lion machines. But perhaps I am wrong about this?

Sharing (not publishing) can be done privately - which requires the recipients to have an iCloud account - or publicly. As you say, this means than anyone who knows the URL can subscribe: but there's no published list of calendars, people who don't know the URL would have to guess it so the chances of them finding it are fairly low.

Which is better for education iPad or Macbook air?

I am a grade 8 student and I walk around quite a bit in school and I would like to know which one is better for me?
Which is better for school, and no I can not get the discount.
Macbook Air or
iPad
If macbook Air which size and specs would you reccomend?
And if iPad which storage option, white or black do you reccomend?
And should I buy the iPad 2 or the new one.

Great question.
Word processing for iOS is fantastic, but not as good for citations and things as on the macbook air, though footnotes will be preserved.
The new textbook options on ipad are compelling. You should find out if any of your school textbooks are on there by searching the itunes store. If so, ipad is your choice.
They are different categories of products. the macbook air is an excellent computer.
But I guess I feel this way -- why don't you buy a desktop for the home. and an ipad for school? If you feel you can get all of your notetaking, paper drafts etc. done on ipad, then you can use mountain lion (coming out this summer) to keep it all in sync when you go home.
I do have to warn you that I tried taking my ipad to work. If you use google docs at all, you may find some limitations sometimes. If you stick within the icloud universe, (pages, keynote, and numbers), you may be mostly happy.

IMPORT OR SYNC CONTACTS TO iCLOUD

HOW DO YOU IMPORT OR SYNC CONTACTS TO iCLOUD? DO NOT MEAN UPLOAD vCARD, BUT SYNC WITH EXISTING CONTACTS LIST

a) Export them to CSV in the googlemail web page, then import this file into Thunderbird's Address Book. Take care to align the data fields.
b) Use an add-on such as Google Contacts or gContactSync to create a live link. I refer the latter add-on; both have to contend with a fundamental mismatch in the way googlemail and thunderbird handle street addresses. This synchronizing approach is much the better way if you are trying to keep multiple address books in synch. I found it worthwhile to create a googlemail account purely for the purpose of associating a phone-related address book with my phone, which doesn't ''need'' all the email addresses, street addresses etc, nor all the contacts for whom I know only an email address but no phone number.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/google-contacts/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gcontactsync/
http://www.ramsden.org.uk/3_How_to_install_Add-ons_in_Thunderbird.html

Calendar sync question with iCloud.

My wife and I have separate apple id's and would like our home calendars to sync across multiple devices. Is this possible with iCloud?

Your profile states that you are using OS X 10.5.6, whereas you need OS X 10.7.2 or better in able to run iCloud on your Mac. As a result your calendars and contacts will be unable to sync with your iCloud account. You will however be able to access your calendars and contacts through your web browser on your Mac at iCloud.com

Address Book doesn't sync UP to iCloud, but syncs back down..

(Sorry, Winston, and maybe Roger, I must be developing Alzheimer's ..I just cannot understand how this iCloud system works..)
I've searched through hundreds of queries and answers, but cannot find a similar problem ..but maybe I simply haven't looked hard enough.
Question on behalf of my good lady ..and I've been tearing my hair out over this for WEEKS..
She has 3502 contacts in her Address Book on her OS X Lion 10.7.4 MacBook Air. She has two iPhones. They're both running iOS 5.1.1. She has enabled iCloud on ALL these three devices, using her @me.com identity and appropriate password.
She updates Address Book contacts ONLY on her MBA - for sync'ing to her phones - and she does NOT update any Contacts info on her phones in order to have them transferred BACK to her Mac. That's how she prefers to work.
The only way that her Address Book contacts will sync UP to iCloud from the Mac appears to be to select 'All on My Mac' within Address Book, and to Export as vcards to a file on her Mac, and then, in the online iCloud Contacts webpage, to Import that file of vcards. All well and good, but that seems to ignore all her various Groups; everything ends up bundled all into one group. (Perhaps each Group in her Mac's Address Book needs to be separately Exported and then Imported, but surely it shouldn't be as long-winded as that.)
(About 402 of these contacts are not accepted by the online iCloud Contacts, although they seem to fall within the requirements of not being too many, not being too large, etc. But that's a separate problem which I'm still investigating ..maybe the names are formatted incorrectly; I'll keep working on that separately..)
Anyhow: by explicitly Importing all those Address Book contacts into the iCloud Contacts, they then immediately start to get distributed - correctly! - to her iPhones ..but also back into the Address Book on her Mac, thereby DUPLICATING them all in Address Book! (They CAN be seen as SINGLE entries by choosing 'All iCloud'.)
I cannot understand the opaque instructions in all of the iCloud documentation. NONE of the documentation which I've studiously read (online, in System Prefs, in every Help file I can find) seems to indicate a DIRECTION for this iCloud sync'ing.
WHERE - if there is such a place - does one specify that contacts should go only UP FROM the Mac, and not BACK DOWN to the Mac?
There seem to be options only to turn ON sync'ing (or off), but not the DIRECTION of sync'ing, or which device(s) take precedence. (..In iTunes - when sync'ing phones to a Mac with a cable - there's a preference to over-write EITHER the host Mac with data FROM a phone, or to over-write an iPhone's data with data FROM the Mac..)
So I'm asking..
(a) Can one specify a DIRECTION when turning on sync'ing for a device?
(b) With iCloud sync'ing turned ON on a Mac, is there any known reason why Address Book contacts should not send themselves UP to the iCould, instead of having to be manually Imported?
(c) Does one Export Groups individually? ..But what if a name is in more than one Group ..does it get duplicated online in iCloud?
(d) Is there not the intelligence within the iCloud facility for the system to NOT distribute back, or duplicate, contacts to the device which is the SOURCE of those contacts? Should it not do a comparison between iCloud and a device, and then recognise that those contacts already exist on the remote device, and therefore NOT distribute them BACK again to the SOURCE? (..Or am I having too high expectations?..)
Many thanks in anticipation, and I'm so sorry to be such a nuisance if this has already been answered a zillion times before.
(Yes, Winston; she has almost as many iPhones as you have AppleTVs!)
All best wishes,
David.

David, nice to hear from you again, hope you are well.
This user tip might help you understand how accounts work with Address Book.
I believe you have duplicates because you have two sets of contacts. "iCloud" and "On My Mac". Once you have created all your contacts in the iCloud account, you should delete them from On My Mac.
You can move contacts simply by dragging and dropping from one account to the other, you don't need to export them all to the desktop (although doind so will serve as a good back up if all goes wrong). You should note that this copies them though rather than simply move them, so you'll need to delete the old set when you are done.
As for preserving groups from the On My Mac Account, you can't but you can simplify recreating them by copying contacts (drag and drop) from an on my mac group to an empty group in iCloud.
Not sure about the contacts that you are struggling to move.
Many aspects of iCloud are difficult to understand, have a mull through what I've said so far and come back if everything still doesn't fall into place.

The calender on my iPhone 4 with iOS 6 no longer syncs with iCal 4.0.4 on my mac OS 10.6.8. However it is syncing with my iCloud account. Can someone help me with this?

The calender on my iPhone 4 with iOS 6 no longer syncs with iCal 4.0.4 on my mac OS 10.6.8. However it is syncing with my iCloud account. Can someone help me with this?

FYI: It seems it was a network problem with my WinXP PC. After complete deletion and new installation of XP and iTunes my iPhone will be recognized correctly, Wifi synchronization works (mostly) fine.

How to sync PC with iCloud after logging off?

OK - I made the horrendous mistake of logging off the iCloud a couple of days ago. I was left with some of my contacts from the iCloud - not all. My groups were there, but no "all inclusive" iCloud Contacts. Also my iCloud calendar was gone. I still had my iPhone and iPad connected to the iCloud - no changes there.
When I went to log back on to the iCloud on my laptop, at first it started to copy my contacts - which were not complete (because of the ones in groups). I cancelled the process.
I spent almost 2 hours last night at the Apple Store Genious Bar. They really didn't know what to do as my laptop is Windows 7 - they only knew how to do things if everything was Apple. The first guy had me delete the iCloud contact folders on my laptop. Then he had me wipe my iPhone clean (why I don't know, as it had stayed with the iCloud the entire time, as did my iPad). Then he sync'd the iCloud to my iPhone, then copied to iTunes. I now have a mess on my iPhone as all the "personalized" touches I've done over the past year are gone.
Another employee came up and tried unsuccessfully to do anything. A third one came up and logged into the iCloud on my laptop (through Firefox) and made a copy of the entire Contacts. He then went into Outlook and tried to import them, but came up with a Windows error (no error number) saying it couldn't be done.
By then my laptop battery was very low, so I went home. I still everything all the way I had it before on my iPad - Yeah!
Today I did a System Restore to my laptop - all my iCloud contacts are back the way they were before I messed with things. Yeah! However, the calendar isn't back. I went into Firefox to log on to the iCloud.com - id that - everything ok there, but how do I make it sync with Outlook in my laptop? I did make a change to one of my contacts in the iCloud contacts in Outlook and clicked on the iCloud Refresh in Outlook (along the top ribbon) but this change did not show up on my iPhone or iPad.
What am I missing? How do I put the iCloud back on my laptop? I really would appreciate any help you could give me - the Annapolis Apple store - they just really don't know how to do things on a Windows laptop.
Please - help? I would SO appreciate it!
ElizaJane

Please - anyone have any ideas? I click on the iCloud Refresh button in Outlook and a time or two I saw a message saying incorrect password. This Refresh button is an Outlook Add In. Anyone know how to delete it and put the correct iCloud add-in on it? I'm SO frustrated - I really don't have any clue what to do.

Which is better to sync, wifi or iCloud?

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