This is Technology Bytes, episode 159 for March 22, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
Today I want to talk about iCloud, the service that Apple offers for cloud file storage and sharing and the ability to have things be available from device to device so I can share files between my computers and my iPad and my iPhone, even my watch at some level.
And so having this service, and it’s interesting that I’ve never talked about it before, is crucial to how Apple’s ecosystem works and how the devices work together.
So what is the iCloud service?
It is a lot of different things.
Like I mentioned already, it’s file storage, it’s also photo storage, so there’s photos in iCloud, and we use that as a family to share our photos, especially because my son has two younger children and we enjoy seeing their pictures and being involved in their lives and just having those photos available to share and look at and enjoy, videos, all kinds of things.
It allows, it’s a service that allows files to be shared amongst people.
In my house we have a few shared files, my wife and I share a folder of our tax files, it’s that time of year again.
And then we also have other notes that we might share, like a shared grocery list, we might have some other files that are shared, so lots of different ways to use iCloud.
So how do I use iCloud?
I think I’ve already covered that for the most part, but in my Mac setup there’s a place that says use desktop and documents in the cloud, and so that’s what I do.
I put all of the files that I store in my documents folder, in my home folder, everything that I store on my desktop is now available to every other device to which I am signed into my Apple ID.
And it’s very helpful to do that because it doesn’t matter which computer I’m on, it doesn’t matter which device I’m on, I have all of those files available to me.
And then I think, you know, because of the service that Apple has, and it’s kind of iCloud adjacent, there are things that you can do like shared tab groups, there are the, you know, they call it continuity, where you can have a clipboard that is shared amongst all your devices, and I think that even though they have different names for those, those are all wrapped in in how iCloud works.
You can log into iCloud on any computer, so if you are not near a computer that you use on the regular basis, and maybe you have a computer at a friend’s house, and you can log into iCloud.com, and then you have access to all of your files, all of your photos, you have access to those shared documents and things like that.
And so I use it for all of those things.
And then one question that always comes up is, is iCloud backup?
I guess in the truest sense of the word, you can’t say that iCloud is a backup.
The one thing that iCloud does is if you delete a file from your computer, it’s going to delete it from the cloud.
Now recently, Apple has added some kind of like, I think it’s a 30-day thing, just in case you forget.
But, you know, it’s not necessarily backup.
There’s nothing there.
So especially your photos.
So you have iPhoto in iCloud, or sorry, photos in the cloud.
And while you can pretty much trust that Apple’s not going to lose any of their customers' photos, I guess there’s always a little bit of a risk.
So having that backed up locally.
So I trust a lot of my files to iCloud and don’t necessarily have a backup.
On one of my computers, I have an external drive and I run my photo library off of that external drive.
So it holds all the photos in my library, because that’s the one thing I need to have backed up.
While I trust iCloud and I rely on it on a regular basis, I want to make sure that I don’t lose any of my photos.
Some of the files that I have, while they are important, nothing is as important to me as photos.
So is it a backup?
No.
Does it kind of function as a backup?
In a way, but you have to be a little more diligent and I wouldn’t rely entirely on it, although I probably rely entirely too much on it.
One of the services that iCloud offers is the ability to share files with other people, not necessarily those who have iCloud, but if they do, that’s great, but they don’t necessarily have to.
It’s a little bit like a Dropbox service or one of those, maybe Box, and there are some other ones.
And I don’t do that.
I don’t ever do that.
If I need to share files, while I am doing it because of the service that Apple offers, mostly I do it with my family.
And so I just add them to a share and they get to look at whatever folder that is, whatever file that is.
But sharing with anyone that’s not in the Apple ecosystem, I don’t generally do that.
At work, I don’t use the Apple environment because no one else is on Apple products except me.
So I also don’t use it there.
But from what I’ve heard and other people that use it, some people like it, some people don’t, but I think it serves its purpose.
The last question I had to talk about is the reliability of iCloud.
Now this is an Apple service that they offer on their servers.
And so they have to have some reliable backup as well to protect our data as their customer, as the users of their product.
So I think it’s super reliable.
I’ve really had no issues with it whatsoever.
The interesting thing is years and years ago, and I think now we’re close to maybe 30 years ago, I set up my own Mac Mini running the server software that Apple provided.
And I did all this iCloud type service on my own.
And it was pretty solid, but man, I was glad to get rid of that once iCloud came along.
And I have had no file loss, no data loss, no issues with using iCloud.
So I find it super reliable.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes Microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
