Stay synced with iCloud
Hey everyone, I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com.
Steve Jobs recently announced Apple's new service at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
It's called the iCloud and it finally let's you wirelessly sync your music, books, and apps across all your devices.
The full version of iCloud won't be available until fall, but you can start using
some of these features right now.
The whole point of iCloud is that music and other media you purchase on one iDevice can be automatically downloaded unto all your other devices as long as you're using the same iTunes account.
To get started using iCloud, you'll need to set it up on each device you want to keep synced.
So, gather up all your iDevices like your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
First, go to Settings, then Store.
Here you can set your device to automatically download new music, books, and
apps you've downloaded unto other Apple devices and Mac or PC.
Apple is letting you connect with up to ten devices.
Just switch the different content categories to on and automatic downloading will be enabled.
If you're on an iPhone or iPAd with a limited data plan, I suggest leaving the option to use cellular data off because if you turn this option on, automatic downloads will be counted against your data plan.
If you leave this option off, automatic downloading will then only work when you're connected to
Wi-Fi.
Now, change the iTunes settings on your computer.
iCloud requires iTunes 10.3 or later and you can download it by going to apple.com/itunes.
Once you have it, go to Preferences then Store.
Here, you have the same options as your iDevices and you can check the items you want to keep sync.
So, never to have these settings enabled if I download a song in iTunes, it will also start downloading on my iPhone or if download a song on my iPad, it will be added to my library
on my computer.
But if you're like me, you don't have a lot of stored space left on your device.
For my iPhone, I left the automatic downloading off but since my computer has lots of storage, I kept automatic downloading on for everything.
On my iPhone, I manually download new content.
To do this, go to iTunes, then purchase.
You'll see a list of all the songs you bought on any device.
To download them, just hit the Cloud Download button.
You can also view songs you purchase but haven't put on
your device by going to the tab on the right.
The same goes for books and apps.
For books, open iBooks and head to Store, then Purchase.
For apps, go to the Apps Store then Updates then Purchase, except on the iPad where Purchase gets its own button.
To manage your content in iTunes, go to the iTunes Store, then purchase in the right side bar.
In the screen, you can download previously purchased items at no extra cost.
For now, iCloud only supports music, books, and apps but Steve Jobs explained that the rest of the features like calendar, mail, and photo syncing will come in the fall and we'll get you caught up with these features when they arrived.
For cnet.com, I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interwebs.
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