Moving your photos, videos and documents between your different Apple devices can be a tricky balancing act: How do you remember where everything is and keep it all in sync? In an era that probably seems much longer ago than it actually was, you may have relied on CDs, SD cards or other peripherals to move your stuff around. While these options remain popular, it is more challenging to use them effectively today as your iPhone doesn't have an optical drive and even the 11-inch MacBook Air lacks a built-in SD card slot.
But there are a lot of ways to move files between devices using just software. Cloud storage services, many of which are free for a basic plan, can be used to upload, transfer and access files on any of your iOS devices or MacBook. The easiest option to use may be Apple's iCloud, according to The New York Times contributor J.D. Biersdorfer.
iCloud: How do I make it work?
Although virtually all Apple devices are compatible with iCloud, you may need to follow some simple setup procedures to get it up and running. Apple itself recommends updating to the most recent version of iOS if you're installing iCloud on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. You'll then need to register or sign in with your Apple ID and manually enable iCloud. Since iCloud works differently with each of your apps, you'll also have to pick which apps you'll use it with.
Once you have it enabled, it can keep track of documents such as text files that you make in Apple's Pages application. Pages is available for both iOS and Mac, and its documents can also be accessed from the iCloud website. An additional ability of the iCloud is that it can both import and export documents to Microsoft Word format so that you can more easily share them with others.
Some alternatives to iCloud include Dropbox, SkyDrive and Evernote. Dropbox, for example, grants 2.0 GB of free storage and has a desktop folder that can sync your files directly from your MacBook, according to a review by Chris Wiles in V3.co.uk.
Keeping track of your files may be easier now that you've got iCloud or another service up and running, but are you monitoring' the health of your devices, too? If something happens to any of them, bring them in to iResQ. We're experts at iPad repair and MacBook repair and we can help! And stay tuned for the second part of our file management series, coming soon.