by If you recently picked up a new Mac, iPhone, iPod, or iPad, you may have seen mention of something called iCloud when setting up your device. If you don’t already know, iCloud is a free syncing and backup service from Apple that aims to keep all of your devices—mobile devices running iOS 5 or later and desktop computers running OS X Lion or later, or Windows Vista or later—on the same page, with the same data, no matter which one you’re using at any given moment.
We’ve written before about what you get with your iCloud account. But what if you’re unsure about how to set up iCloud in the first place and how to get it to work on your Mac, PC, iOS device, and Apple TV? We’ll show you.
Sign up for an iCloud account
A few notes before we begin: Although signing up for iCloud is free, you can’t do so just anywhere. You must create an account on either a mobile device running iOS 5 or later or a Mac running OS X 10.7.5 or later. Unfortunately, Windows users have to create an account on one of these platforms before they can log in from a PC.
Apple also limits you to creating ten iCloud accounts per device. You should ever need only one or two, so you’ll probably never run up against the limit; because the limit persists after full device wipes, however, you may see a warning about it if you’ve received an older iOS device or Mac. If you do get an alert preventing you from making a new iCloud account, I suggest going to your nearest Apple Store, where they should be able to help you sort it out.
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