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Syncing iCloud iPhone With Snow Leopard Mac

Hi Gary, huge fan of your podcast. Here’s my question. I have just purchased the iPhone 4 but have NOT upgraded to OS X Lion because I have an older piece of financial software that I haven’t been able to find anything I like better. So my question is, if I upgrade my iPhone from mobile.me to iCloud (not even sure if I can do that without upgrading my desktop to Lion) will my phone synch my content on iCloud but still allow me to synch my content from my desktop? Any guidance you can provide me with would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.
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Jeff Felter

Comments: 8 Responses to “Syncing iCloud iPhone With Snow Leopard Mac”

    12 years ago

    You can upgrade your iPhone to iOS 5 and then sign up for iCloud there. Then you can still sync with your Mac using iTunes as before.
    But you will not be able to use any of the iCloud services on your Mac. So once you upgrade your MobileMe account to iCloud you won't have access to those contacts, calendars, and email on your Mac anymore. Well, you can do it on the iCloud web site, but not the normal way.
    I would suggest finding a replacement for that one piece of software and moving to Lion before you convert your MobileMe account to iCloud.

      Jeff Felter
      12 years ago

      Thank you for your responses. Unfortunately I'm more confused than before. To confirm, if I sign up for iCloud with my phone, my phone will synch with iCloud but my non-Tiger computer will not receive that information. If I connect my iphone to my computer, that information will synch BOTH my computer and my iPhone-correct? And once it's on my iPhone, my content will be on iCloud-yes?

      What WON'T happen is that the content on my computer will NOT be synched to iCloud unless I first synch my iPhone. (Although my computer will be synched with MobileMe until July.

      Am I understanding all this correctly?

        Jeff Felter
        12 years ago

        Sorry-please replace 'non-Tiger' with 'non-Lion'. Thank you.

          12 years ago

          It gets complex because there are many different things that MobileMe and iCloud do. So don't look at it as a whole, but look at each individual thing. Like, take your calendars for instance. Once you upgrade your MobileMe account to iCloud, your calendars will be in iCloud. Since you can't use iCloud on non-Lion Macs, I'm not sure how you will have access to your calendar then.
          But if you look at things like music and apps, they don't have much to do with iCloud and should still sync between your devices as before.
          Bottom line: DON'T upgrade your MobileMe account to iCloud until you move to Lion on your Mac. Just stick with MobileMe for now and try to solve your other problem (accounting software) so you can move to Lion and then move your MobileMe account to iCloud then.

    Dirk
    12 years ago

    But you can still use MobileMe till july on both your Mac and your iOS5 device.

      12 years ago

      Right. Just make sure you don't choose to upgrade your MobileMe account so it stays a full MobileMe account. Once you choose to upgrade to iCloud, you can't go back.

    Andy Suhaka
    12 years ago

    I have iPhone 4 & iPad 1 on iCloud, but Mac mini & MacBook Pro on Snow Leopard. What seemed to work for me was to turn off iCloud on the iPhone before synching to the Mac and then turn iCloud back on and let iCloud sync my iPad to my iPhone.

    Agnes
    11 years ago

    Stupid question for Andy: how do iturn off the phone ICloud? Also: does it matter that after the last sinc I upgraded the OS to snow leopard and the 4G got onto the ICloud?

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