Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

More iCloud Features

Not all of iCloud’s goodies are represented as checkboxes in System Preferences→iCloud. Don’t forget that iCloud’s online hub is waiting for you—available from any computer, tablet, or phone—at iCloud.com (Figure 10-16).

And even that’s not all there is to iCloud. For example:

Automatic backup

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, iCloud can back it up, automatically and wirelessly (over Wi-Fi, not over cellular connections). It’s a quick backup, since iCloud backs up only the changed data.

Continuity

If you have an iPhone, and it’s running iOS 8.1 or later, you’re in for a treat. The set of features Apple calls Continuity turn the iPhone into a part of the Mac.

Continuity’s write-up starts on Screen Sharing with Non-iCloud Accounts.

Books, Music, Apps, Movies: The Locker in the Sky

Apple, as if you hadn’t noticed, has become a big seller of multimedia files. It has the biggest music store in the world. It has the biggest app store, for both i-gadgets and Macs. It sells an awful lot of TV shows and movies. Its ebook store, iBooks, is no Amazon.com, but it’s chugging along.

When you buy a song, movie, app, or book, you’ve always been allowed to copy it to all your other Apple equipment—no extra charge. But iCloud automates, or at least formalizes, that process. Once you buy something, it’s added to a tidy list of items that you can download to all your other machines.

Here’s how to grab them:

• iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch. Open the App Store icon (for apps), the iBooks ...