Chapter 20. iCloud
Introduced in iOS 5, iCloud is a set of technologies that allow usersâ documents and settings to be seamlessly synchronized across all the devices that they own.
iCloud is heavily promoted by Apple as technology that âjust worksââsimply by owning a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, your documents are everywhere that you need them to be. In order to understand what iCloud is, itâs worth taking a look at Appleâs advertising and marketing for the technology. In the ads, we see users working on a document, and then just putting it down, walking over to their Macs, and resuming work. No additional effort is required on the part of the user, and users are encouraged to think of their devices as simply tools that they use to access their omnipresent data.
This utopian view of data availability is made possible by several very large data centers that Apple constructed in the early 2010s, and a little extra effort on the part of you, the developer.
Note
iCloud also supports syncing Core Data databases. However, Core Data and iCloud syncing is a huge issue, and implementing and handling this is beyond what we could cover in this chapter. If youâre interested in learning more about this, take a look at Marcus S. Zarraâs excellent Core Data, 2nd Edition (OâReilly).
In this chapter, youâll learn how to create applications that use iCloud to share settings and documents across the userâs devices.
What iCloud Stores
Simply put, iCloud allows your applications to store ...
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