Won't iCloud murder my broadband allowance?

gebbel

I have an iPod Touch, iPad 2 and a miserly 10GB per month data allowance with eircom NGB.

Just wondering, with iCloud enabled on both devices and all this wireless uploading and downloading between them....will I greatly exceed this allowance?

Many thanks.

Sad Professor

Not necessarily. The first backup might be quite large, but after that it depends on what kind of app data you have. You can manually manage what is and isn't synced. Things like calendars, reminders, etc, aren't going to take up much bandwidth, but if you take a lot pictures then Photo Stream and camera roll backups certainly will. It really depends on your usage and what you choose to sync with iCloud.

gebbel

Thanks. To be honest I'm having a little difficulty getting my head around all of it. On the iPod Touch, I have 50 apps on it. With iCloud enabled, does this mean those apps are pushed to the iPad? I was thinking also about pictures I take with a camera, I normally put them on the iPad only via the laptop and wouldn't want them on the iPod Touch....but iCloud now would transfer them there anyway?

Apologies if the questions are dumb!

Hobbes

Apple have switched over to an incremental system of updates/backups. Also if you have a time capsule, it is supposed to download any iPad/iPhone updates once and your devices update from that.

As for bandwidth, you have more to worry from the apps on your device.

http://www.troyhunt.com/2011/10/secret-ios-business-what-you-dont-know.html

culabula

gebbel wrote: »

Thanks. To be honest I'm having a little difficulty getting my head around all of it. On the iPod Touch, I have 50 apps on it. With iCloud enabled, does this mean those apps are pushed to the iPad? I was thinking also about pictures I take with a camera, I normally put them on the iPad only via the laptop and wouldn't want them on the iPod Touch....but iCloud now would transfer them there anyway?

Apologies if the questions are dumb!

1) No, it doesn't. Only new purchases are downloaded to all devices and then, only when an equivalent app exists for the devices in your arsenal. Besides, you can always turn the feature off in settings.

2) Pictures are not pushed to your devices. They are out in photostream where the may then be viewed on any or all of your devices. But they are not stored locally there, you are merely viewing them remotely. Again, you may disable this feature, but really, you may as well leave it on.

Gregor Samsa

culabula wrote: »

2) Pictures are not pushed to your devices. They are out in photostream where the may then be viewed on any or all of your devices. But they are not stored locally there, you are merely viewing them remotely. Again, you may disable this feature, but really, you may as well leave it on.

I don't think this is the case. I've just enabled Airplane mode on my iPhone, and I can still view all 398 pictures in my Photostream. So it appears they are stored locally.

Also, when you log into the iCloud website, there's no facility to view your Photostream. It seems that Apple are using iCloud to upload and download the photos, but not to store them (unless they enable iCloud Photostream viewing at a later date, which would be cool).

culabula

phutyle wrote: »

I don't think this is the case. I've just enabled Airplane mode on my iPhone, and I can still view all 398 pictures in my Photostream. So it appears they are stored locally.

Also, when you log into the iCloud website, there's no facility to view your Photostream. It seems that Apple are using iCloud to upload and download the photos, but not to store them (unless they enable iCloud Photostream viewing at a later date, which would be cool).

I meant on any devices which connect to that photostream.

No, you don't view them as such on iCloud. You view them on other devices. Thus, when I take a photo on my iPhone, it is then viewable seconds later on my iPad, in iPhoto on all of my Macs (subject to iPhoto 9.2 update) and on my ATV 2, where I can watch a slideshow on my TV. In the case of the latter, it is clearly not being stored locally.

Gregor Samsa

culabula wrote: »

I meant on any devices which connect to that photostream.

No, you don't view them as such on iCloud. You view them on other devices. Thus, when I take a photo on my iPhone, it is then viewable seconds later on my iPad, in iPhoto on all of my Macs (subject to iPhoto 9.2 update) and on my ATV 2, where I can watch a slideshow on my TV. In the case of the latter, it is clearly not being stored locally.

I should have been clearer. All the photos in my Photostream were taken on by DSLR and imported to Aperture on my Mac, which automagically "photostreams" the last import.

Yet these photos are still viewable on my iPhone when I have airplane mode on. Obviously, I had to have some sort of network connectivity to get them down in the first pace, but once they're there, I can turn off all network access and still see the photos.

I just tried it there again. Use Aperture to Photostream a picture that is on my Mac, but definitely has never been on my phone. It appeared in the Photostream list on my phone in a matter of seconds, but I didn't open it.

Turned Airport mode on, and I was able to go into my Photostream on the iPhone, and open up the image. So it must now be stored locally on my iPhone in some way, as I can view it there with no network access.

gebbel

Thanks folks, so just to finally put this to bed: I have a folder with 350MB of photos on it that I want to put on the iPad. I sync them via the laptop to the iPad, then iCloud uploads them and downloads them straight away to the iPod Touch via Wifi.

Total drain on eircom data allowance = 350 up + 350 down = 700MB or 7% of my monthly quota?

Thanks again.

aidan_walsh

Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream > Off.

Sorted.

Gregor Samsa

gebbel wrote: »

Thanks folks, so just to finally put this to bed: I have a folder with 350MB of photos on it that I want to put on the iPad. I sync them via the laptop to the iPad, then iCloud uploads them and downloads them straight away to the iPod Touch via Wifi.

Total drain on eircom data allowance = 350 up + 350 down = 700MB or 7% of my monthly quota?

Thanks again.

Not necessarily. The photos seem to be automatically resized by Photostream. My camera has a 24 megapixel sensor, so it makes big files. One out of camera JPEG I've checked from it on my Mac is 4.34 MB. The same photo, when I email it from my Photostream on my iPhone at Actual Size, is only 563 KB.

Photostream has a maximum capacity of 1000 photos at any one time. So, to give you an idea, 1000 photos at about 563 KB each would be about 550 MB in total. The same 1000 photos in their original form would take up 4.2 GB on my Mac.

But I suppose it depends on the size of the original photo files that you have. 350 MB would be 81 of my photos. But if your original photos were 1 MB each (so you had 350 photos) I assume theere's less latitude to resize them, so you're not going to get as big a factor of space saving.

I suppose the question is, where are the photos resized? On the original device before they're uploaded to photo stream, or by iCloud after they've been uploaded? All these details are a bit sketchy at the moment.

I only have a 270 Kb upload speed, so it would take ages if my broadband was uploading the full sized images, and I haven't noticed that it is (but I havent done a proper test on it).

Gregor Samsa

Some answers to some of the questions raised here :

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4486

It seems to be a bit more complicated than it first appears. Photos seem to be stored in iCloud in some way, but don't count against your iCloud storage. Photos sent to iOS devices are resized, but those sent to Macs and PCs are not.

This comment is a bit ambiguous:

"Cloud pushes all your Photo Stream photos to your devices and computers and manages them efficiently so you don’t run out of storage space"

What exactly does "push" mean in this instance? Given my experience in being able to view my images offline on my phone, I don't think it means "stream". It seems to me that pictures are stored in the cloud and downloaded locally to your devices - permently to Macs and PCs and for 30 days to iOS devices.