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»Unlabelled » iCloud Revisted

Saturday, April 14, 2012

iCloud Revisted

5:20 PM  High Tech House Calls, Expert Computer Consulting  

iCloud was launched October 4, 2011. How is iCloud doing for you?

Here is a list of some of the bumps in the road:
  1. It is not supported with the Microsoft Win XP Operating System. Win XP is an old, unsupported, operating system, but it is stable and reliable. If you want your laptop or workstation to be part of  iCloud, you will need to change to Windows 7. Remember, you cannot upgrade from Win XP to Windows 7 directly. You will need to do a clean installation meaning all your applications that you were using for Win XP will need to be reloaded for Windows 7. Run the Windows 7 Advisor to see if your current hardware can support Windows 7. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/upgrade-advisor If not, you need to buy a new computer. Start searching for your installation media now and remember to have a good backup of all your users data (documents, pictures and emails).
  2. If your Apple computer is not running Lion (10.7), you will need to upgrade. You must be running Snow Leopard (10.6) to upgrade to Lion. If you are not running Snow Leopard. So you will need to upgrade to it first. Snow Leopard software DVDs were withdrawn from retail outlets by Apple. You will need to buy a Snow Leopard software DVD from Apple's online store.
  3. Many of my clients were not able to upgrade to Lion because Intuit's Quicken for Mac 2007 release did not work on Lion. Buy Intuit's, released last month, Quicken for Mac Essentials instead, which does run on Lion. http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance-software/mac-personal-financial-software.jsp
  4. Running Microsoft Office for Mac 2004? It is incompatible with Lion. You will need to purchase Microsoft Office for Mac 2011.
  5. Lion also requires that your hardware be running an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor. Find out if your current Mac has one of these processors by clicking the Apple icon at the top left of your screen, then choosing About This Mac. If you're not running any of these processors and you want to run Lion, you will need to buy newer hardware running one of the above mentioned Intel processors.
  6. Do you have multiple Apple computers you use to access email? Here is a newly discovered scenario. You have a G4 Laptop and a brand new Macbook Pro. The G4 is running the Leopard release of the Apple Operating System. The G4 cannot be upgraded to Snow Leopard or Lion because it does not have an Intel CPU chip. You migrate from MobileMe to iCloud successfully on your Macbook Pro. Email works on the Pro and your iPhone, but not on your G4. If your G4 was able to run Snow Leopard, you could change the email profile in Mac Mail or Outlook to get it to work without being part of iCloud, but don't meet the requirements for the upgrade. Therefore, your .MAC and .ME email not longer works on your G4. One way around this is to forward your iCloud email to your Gmail account and use Gmail on your G4 laptop. This is a less than desirable solution, but may be the only one available if you want to use iCloud and still use your G4 laptop.
  7. If you use either Entourage or Outlook on your Apple computer, you will find that neither of these applications works with iCloud directly. Syncing Entourage/Outlook is complex and requires additional third party software.
  8. If you iPhone or iPad is not running at least iOS 5.0, you cannot support iCloud on your iPhone/iPad. iOS 5.0 is available as an upgrade when you sync with iTunes.
  9. If you share an Apple ID that you use to buy media from iTunes, this may cause problems when using iCloud. iCloud uses the Apple ID to identify devices that are part of that iCloud. iCloud will merge all contacts and all calendar events for all devices that are using the same iCloud ID. If you were keeping separate contacts and calendar events and want to continue keeping them separate, you will need to create another iTunes ID. Expect complications with purchases made with the old ID on devices using the new ID.
Do you need to be using iCloud?
  1. Do you currently have a way of syncing your contacts and calendar events across all your devices? If you are happy with this solution, why change to iCloud?
  2. The only email address iCloud will sync is a new iCloud email address. If you were using a .MAC or .ME email address through MobileMe, please be aware that MobileMe is being discontinued June 30, 2012. You  must change to iCloud to continue using your .MAC or .ME email address.
Carl Thorne
Expert Computer Consulting 


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