Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Laptops

I appreciate the comment and often desire to avoid using cloud services but would provide a little counter suggestion.

When using an Apple device(s) the iCloud is built into all of the apps and it does bring a lot of benefit. When you setup your user identity on your iPhone/iPad you can use an existing email address (hotmail, aol, gmail etc) or setup a clean account with an Apple iCloud address. This creates the "cloud" point that the machines in the account use to sync and share stuff, as well as backup.

Whilst I will never say your data is safe I do believe that the Apple data protection policies are somewhat better than Google and Microsoft. By using iCloud you do get all the benefits of almost real time backup, sharing of notes, calendar etc. If you migrate to a new (apple) machine like a MacBook Neo it will almost perform a total self-setup and sync with your phone/pad when you enter your account.

I have given up making external drive backups now however the backup application does still exist on MacOS.

Do a Ctrl-Spacebar and type in timemachine and you will find it there - you will need to select backup to local disc. Beware that the drive to USB-C means older drives/cables will need to be changed. It is massively faster and more flexible so worth doing. If anyone needs spare drives I have a bucket of them from 500Gb to 12Tb....500 & 1Tb can be provided for the cost of postage.

I used to use Time Machine to backup to a Time Capsule but once I set up my iCloud account I've never needed to back up anything. Having everything available seamlessly on all devices is truly excellent. You can get an iCloud app for Windows, but TBH I find it's actually better to use Google drive to share stuff between the Mac and the Windows world.

Thanks Alistair. I set up the external drives before going Apple with phones and ipads. I have looked at iCloud and set up an email as start. Not used it yet though. My iphone is suffering some screen damage so will also be updated this year....
A tip....buy shares in Apple. I learned this insider knowledge use from OrangeT.
Looks like a Neo, new iphone and expand iCloud .
I'll still use the W10 laptop for stuff such as some admin I have set up. Utilities monitoring, etc.

A little secret.

When I was an Apple field engineer in 1987 I delayed buying my first home to buy Apple stock when Steve Jobs was bought back in following the Pepsi period. From memory the stock was $26. It paid for the Coupe.

I still have several windows machines and a Sun e420r Server in the pile. Some stuff cannot be done on Mac without becoming a pain.

iCloud, default is only 50Gb of storage, it is worth budgeting £2.99/month to get the 200Gb bump for storage if you have a lot of files, still fairly good value.

The family subscriptions allow you to share your licences among several people (not just family) so clubbing together may occur. You don't share private data or other key stuff but they get access to things like Apple Music, Health etc.