And if you try to edit or share a photo, you get a curt warning from iPhoto that “you must use the version that has already been imported into your library.”

Ugh.

The problem, it seems, is that Apple considers Photo Stream to be the originals of your latest photos—and you’re not supposed to mess with your originals, right? But while iPhoto automatically makes copies of your Photo Stream pictures and puts them in your photo library, getting to those copies is an annoying, multi-step process.

You can create your own, custom Photo Stream album using iPhoto's "Smart Album" feature.

But here’s the the thing: you can create a “Smart Album” in iPhoto with copies of all your Photo Stream images, which you can edit, share, drag, and delete to your heart’s content. Here’s how to do it.

1. Open iPhoto, click the File menu in the top-left corner of the screen, and select “New Smart Album.”
2. In the window that slides down from the top of the iPhoto interface, type “Photo Stream” (or whatever you’d like to call your new album) in the “Smart Album name” field.
3. Next, in the “Match the following condition” section, click the drop down menu that reads “Album” and select “Any Text.”
4. The second drop-down menu should read “contains”; if it does, just leave it—that’s what we want.
5. In the last, blank field, type “Photo Stream,” then click the OK button. Done!

Now, look in the left-hand column of iPhoto, under the Albums section; you should see a new “smart” album called Photo Stream. Click it, and you’ll see all the images in your Photo Stream, past and present, and you can edit or share them in just a few clicks.

Have more Photo Stream questions? Let me know!

The post How to create a “smart” Photo Stream album in iPhoto that you can actually edit appeared first on here's the thing.

Liz writes: So I turned on Photo Stream on my iPhone and it’s filling up with pictures, but I read that the photos in my Photo Stream get deleted after 30 days. What’s the best way to save them before they get deleted?

Hi Liz! Yes, you’re right: the pictures in your Photo Stream will be deleted from your iCloud account after 30 days, while your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch will only keep the latest 1,000 Photo Stream snapshots.

The good news, though, is that saving your Photo Stream images forever is easy—and in some cases, it even happens automatically.

Related: 5 things you need to know about Photo Stream

So, here’s the first thing to keep in mind: whenever you take a photo with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, your snapshot is saved not only to your Photo Stream but also to the Camera Roll—and the pictures in your Camera Roll never get delated, or at least not until you tap the “Delete” button. In other words, if you take a picture on your iPhone, it’ll stay on your iPhone until you manually delete it.

OK, but what if you’re sharing Photo Stream with your significant other and you want to save the snapshots that he took on his iPhone? Here’s how:

1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, then tap Photo Stream.
2. See the little square with the arrow in the top-right corner of the screen? Tap it, then start tapping the photos you’d like to save on your device.
3. When you’re finished selecting photos, tap the Save button to save them to your Camera Roll, or tap Add To to save them to a new or existing photo album.

Just enable Photo Stream in iPhoto to automatically save all your Photo Stream images to your Mac.

And one more thing: if you’re using Photo Stream with iPhoto on your Mac or the iCloud control panel for Windows, all your Photo Stream pictures will be saved automatically—and permanently—to your system’s hard drive.

For iPhoto, you’ll need to turn on Photo Stream sharing by clicking the iPhone menu at the top of the screen; then, select Preferences, click the Photo Stream tab, and check the boxes next to “Enable Photo Stream” and “Automatic Import.”

(Note: I don’t recommend checking the “Automatic Upload” box, since that entails uploading to Photo Stream each and every new photo you import into iPhoto—meaning you could tie up your broadband connection for hours the next time you import, say, a couple hundred high-resolution pictures from your digital camera.)

For Windows users, just download, install, and launch the free iCloud control panel, check the box next to Photo Stream, then select the directory into which you’d like your Photo Stream images to be automatically downloaded.

Got more Photo Stream questions? Let me know!

The post How to save your Photo Stream snapshots before they’re deleted (reader mail) appeared first on here's the thing.

The update, dubbed iOS 5.0.1., “fixes bugs affecting battery life,” according to Apple.

You can download the update directly to your iPhone by tapping Settings, General, Software Update.

The software patch also adds a series of nifty new iPad gestures that had originally been restricted to the iPad 2 (such as a four-finger upward swipe to reveal the iPad’s multitasking bar) to the original iPad.

To download and install the update directly to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, tap Settings, General, Software Update.

The entire process takes about 20 minutes (or it did for me, at least), and you should plug your device into a power source during the installation.

Note: If you tap Software Update but your iDevice claims that your handheld already has the latest software, try again in a few minutes. Another option is to update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch by syncing with iTunes.

I’ve only just started updating my handset to iOS 5.0.1, so I can’t say for sure whether the patch truly makes a difference in the iPhone’s battery life. I’ll post an update with observations a little later.

So, what do you think: has the iOS 5.0.1 update solved the iPhone’s battery problems, or is your device still struggling to make it through a day on a single charge?

Update: If the software update didn’t do much to boost battery life on your iPhone, it looks like you’re not the only one, with All Things Digital reporting that Apple will “continue to investigate a few remaining [battery] issues.”

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The good news is that it’s not too late to get started—and in fact, you’ll probably have a smoother update process than those of us who rushed to update our iDevices on Day One.

Now that we’ve established that yes, you can still update your iPhone or iPad, you might still be asking … why would you want to?

Well, there are at least five good reasons I can think of, including the ability to back up your device on Apple’s new iCloud service, no cables required; the all-new Notifications system, which does away with jarring alert pop-ups that interrupt whatever you’re doing; one-tap access to the camera; your photos, in the cloud; and your music, in the cloud. (Get more details right here.)

The entire update process may take an hour or longer, depending on how much media you’ve got on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, but trust me—updating your device to iOS 5 is worth the effort.

Note: older devices like the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G, and the first- and second-generation iPod Touches don’t support iOS 5. Sorry, folks.

Here’s how to get started…

1. If you have a Mac, make sure you’re running the latest version of iTunes and the Mac OS X system software on your computer. To find out, click the Apple menu, select Software Update, and install any updates that are available. Got Windows? Then download the free iCloud Control Panel, right here. (Note: You’ll need to be running Mac OS X “Lion” on your Mac to make full use of iCloud.)

2. Next, launch iTunes, find your sync cable (the white one, which came in the box with your device) and use it to connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to iTunes.

3. A message that reads “A new iPhone (or iPad, or iPod Touch) software version (5.0) is available” will appear. For now, click the “Download Only” button rather than “Download and Update.”

4. After you’ve accepted the iOS 5 user agreement, click the Sync button in the bottom-right corner of the iTunes interface. By syncing your device with iTunes one more time, you’re creating a fresh backup of your handset’s settings and data—a safeguard in case something goes wrong (like this) during the update process.

Before updating to iOS 5, sync your device with iTunes one more time to create a fresh backup.

5. Once you’re done syncing, and the iOS 5 installation file has finished downloading (it’s a large file, so you might have to wait about 10 minutes or so), you’re ready to begin the update. Select your device in the left-hand column of iTunes, take a deep breath, then click the Update button.

Ready to install iOS 5? Click "Update."

6. Now, time to hurry up and wait as iTunes backs up your device (again), installs the iOS 5 update, verifies that the update is working properly, and then re-installs all your apps, music, photos, and videos. Depending on how much media you had stored on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, this could be a lengthy process (as in an hour or longer), so sit back and relax.

7. Eventually, a message will appear that reads “Your iPhone [or iPad, or iPod Touch] has been restored to its factory settings, and is restarting.” This is normal; just click the OK button to dismiss the message, or wait for it to disappear automatically. And get comfortable—you’ve still got a bit of a wait.

8. Once iTunes is finished syncing all your media back to your device, the progress window will disappear and the you’ll see the Apple logo sitting by itself in the main iTunes display. Go ahead and disconnect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch from its sync cable, and wake it up.

9. You’ll be greeted by a welcome screen that reads: “Your [device] was restored successfully. There are just a few more steps to follow, and then you’re done!” Tap the Continue button, and you’ll be guided through a series of settings, ranging from enabling location services (handy for letting your device pinpoint your location in Maps) to connecting to your home Wi-Fi network.

Just a few final steps to complete...

10. You’ll also be prompted to create an Apple ID, which is the key to accessing your new iCloud account. If you were a MobileMe user, tap “Sign in with an Apple ID” and enter your MobileMe user name; otherwise, tap “Create a free Apple ID” and follow the instructions. (If you already have an iTunes account for purchasing music, videos, and apps, you’ll have to enter that ID later; here’s how.)

You can create a new iCloud account directly from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

11. All done? Tap the “Start using iPad” button, then tap Settings, iCloud, and sign in to your new iCloud account.

12. Once you accept the iCloud user agreement, you can start turning on services that will be synced with iCloud, such as your contacts, calendars, bookmarks, notes, and photos (via Photo Stream).

Thanks to iOS 5 and iCloud, you can share contacts, calendars, photos, and other data with your other iCloud-connected devices.

13. Now, want to share the data on your iDevice with your Mac or PC? Go ahead and click the iCloud icon in the System Preferences panel on your Mac (just click the Apple menu, select System Preferences, the iCloud) or fire up the iCloud Control Panel on your PC, sign in to your iCloud account, and select the data (such as calendars, bookmakers, and contacts) that you’d like to share between devices.

14. Last but not least, I strongly suggest you turn on iCloud Backup, which automatically backs up your device whenever it’s plugged in to a power source and asleep. Just tap Settings, iCloud, Storage & Backup, then switch iCloud Backup to On.

And in case you ever need to restore your iPhone or iPad using iCloud Backup, here’s how.

Still have questions about iOS 5 and iCloud? Let me know!

The post How (and why) to update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to iOS 5 appeared first on here's the thing.

Hi Celia! When it comes to old email and text messages hogging space in your iPhone 4S’s 16 GB (short for “gigabyte”), 32 GB, or 64 GB of built-in storage, you can probably relax.

An average email message without an attachment takes up only about 20 kilobytes of storage space, while a single text message is even smaller—as in a couple hundred bytes, give or take.

Related: How big is a gig, anyway?

How big is a byte? Well, a byte’s pretty small in terms of the total storage on your iPhone. Let’s say you have the smallest, 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S. One gigabyte equals about a thousand (or 1,024, to be precise) megabytes, while a megabytes equals a thousand kilobytes, and a thousand kilobytes equals a byte. (A byte, by the way, consists of eight bits—and a bit is a simple “0” or “1.”)

So if there are about 1,000 bytes in a kilobyte, and an average email is about 20 KB, that means you could cram about 100 text messages in the space needed for a single, text-only email.

And if you were looking to fill the 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S with nothing but email, you’d need … well, about 800,000 messages, assuming my math is correct. (1,024 kilobytes = one megabyte, and 1,024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte.)

Text and email messages don’t take up much space, but photos, music, videos and apps can really add up.

In other words, your iPhone 4S has plenty of storage for text messages; indeed, you could probably get away with never deleting a text from your handset.

The same goes for text-only email messages—although messages with large attachments, like photos, can quickly add up. That’s why you might want to limit the number of email messages stored on your iPhone at one time; to do so, tap Settings, then “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” scroll down to the Mail section, tap Show, then choose a limit between 50 and 1,000 messages. (I have 50 messages selected.)

Now, here’s the thing—your iPhone’s memory isn’t devoted to only text and email messages. You’ve also got the photos in your camera roll, and a single picture taken with the iPhone 4S’s eight-megapixel camera weighs in at anywhere between two and four megabytes. So if you have 100 photos saved in your camera roll, that’s about 300 or 400 megabytes of storage just for your pictures—and remember, there are only 1,024 megabytes in one gigabyte.

And then there’s your music (about 3-5 megabytes a song), your apps (sizes vary wildly, anywhere from a few MB for a small utility to a full GB for the largest games), and your videos (think about 1 GB for a 90-minute SD movie from iTunes).

Oh, and one more thing: your iPhone reserves about 3 GB of storage for the iOS operating system itself.

OK then, how can you tell how much free storage space is left on your iPhone? On the iPhone 4S or any iPhone that’s been updated to iOS 5, tap Settings, General, Usage. You’ll see a summary of how much storage you’ve used, what’s left, plus a break-down of the space used by your music, video, and apps, with the biggest space hogs listed first.

Tap any item to see its details, and in the case of videos and music, swipe to delete. You might want to back up your iPhone to iTunes before you start going on a deletion spree, though. Also, keep in mind that you can always re-download any music, TV shows, or apps that you bought from the iTunes store.

Not listed in the summary, for some reason, are your iPhone photo albums—and like I mentioned above, photos can really add up in terms of storage space, so be sure to prune your collection every once in awhile. You can always transfer your photos to your PC or Mac by syncing with iTunes, or try using the new Photo Stream feature in iCloud.

And what if you have an older iPhone that hasn’t been updated to iOS 5? Well, you can still check how much storage you have left (tap General, About, and scroll down to “Capacity” and “Available”), but you won’t be able to see a nice break-down of how your iPhone’s storage is being used.

Hope this helps—and if you have more questions, let me know!

The post Is my iPhone 4S running out of storage space? (reader mail) appeared first on here's the thing.

Hundreds of iPhone 4S users are lighting up Apple’s support forums to complain about a steady—and mysterious—drain on the batteries, even when their handsets are resting peacefully in standby mode.

Update (11/10/11): Apple just released a software update that supposedly fixes the iPhone’s battery woes; get the details right here.

Says one message on the iPhone help board:

My 80 year old mother just bought a Verizon iPhone 4S, her first smartphone. She lives alone, and takes her phone to bed with her as security and for emergencies. She charges it during the evening, and it now is completely dead by morning. I’ve switched off everything that is known to be a battery drain, but can’t solve the problem.

She was so excited to get an iPhone, as she’s loved her iPad. But this experience has her worried and stressed that if she needs emergency assistance, she won’t have a working phone. She’s ready to go back to a plain basic phone since the iPhone won’t even hold a charge for 8 hours.

It’s also not clear whether only the iPhone 4S is having battery trouble. Many users who’ve installed the new iOS 5 update on their iPhones have also been complaining of poor battery life … and come to think of it, my own iPhone 4 seems to have been running low on juice ever since I updated it.

Users and tech bloggers have whipped up dozens of remedies for the iPhone battery-drain problem, ranging from turning off a feature that automatically sets the iPhone’s clock to the correct time zone (which shouldn’t cause much harm, so long as you’re not boarding a plane anytime soon) to turning off Notification Center support for the iPhone calendar.

But here’s the thing: no one single battery-drain remedy seems to work for everyone. Instead, the likely culprit is something buried in the iPhone’s system software that only Apple can fix—and indeed, Apple has reportedly been quietly working with iPhone 4S users in the hopes of diagnosing the problem.

It’s also worth noting that previous iPhone models have suffered from battery-drain problems that have eventually been solved by a software update—so no, the iPhone battery itself probably isn’t to blame.

My advice: instead of driving yourself crazy trying battery fixes posted on message boards, hang tight until Apple releases an (inevitable) software update. I’ll update this post as soon as there’s any news, and you’ll be able to install the update by either syncing your iPhone with iTunes or (if you’ve updated your handset to iOS 5) by tapping Settings, General, Software Update.

In the meantime, you can conserve power on your iPhone by turning down the brightness of your screen (Settings, Brightness) and turning off “push” email (tap Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Fetch New Data, then switch “Push” to “Off”).

How’s the battery life on your iPhone been lately? Found any fixes that seem to work? Post ’em in the comments below.

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Hi Meg! The typical way to use iCloud Backup is to simply let it back up your iPhone (or iPad, or iPod Touch) overnight, while it’s locked, plugged in and charging. But as you note, you can also start a manual iCloud backup at any time by tapping Settings, iCloud, Storage & Backup, and pressing the “Back Up Now” button.

Now, here’s the thing about backing up with iCloud. The initial backup, which includes your settings, messages, Camera Roll photos, and application data, can add up to a pretty large file—as in hundreds and hundreds of megabytes, or even a few gigabytes, depending on how much data (particularly photos) you’ve got stored on your iPhone.

You can check the status of your latest iCloud backup by tapping “Manage Storage” in your iCloud settings.

That said, subsequent backups should go much faster (think minutes rather than hours), since only changes and additions to your backup data get uploaded to iCloud.

Now, I’ve tried a few manual backups to iCloud on my own iPhone, and they’ve gone smoothly—but those were just backups to an existing iCloud backup file. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how long the initial 500MB-plus iCloud backup for my iPhone took, because it happened while I was asleep.

So Meg, it’s possible that your manual backup isn’t working because you haven’t completed an initial (and quite lengthy, probably) iCloud backup yet.

How can you tell? Easy. Just look at the bottom of the “Back Up Now” button; you should see the time of your last successful backup.

If it reads “Never,” then you still need to complete your first iCloud Backup—and that I’d recommend doing overnight, while your iPhone is plugged into a power outlet. (There’s no need to tap “Back Up Now” before putting your iPhone to sleep, by the way; iCloud Backup should work automatically in the middle of the night.)

Let’s say, though, that your iPhone tells you that there is a backup sitting on iCloud—how can you tell for sure?

Under the iCloud Storage & Backup settings and just about the “Back Up Now” button, there’s an option that reads “Manage Storage.” Tap it, and you should see your phone listed under a heading labelled “Backups.” Tap the button with your phone on it, and you’ll get more details, including the time of your latest backup, the size of the backup file, the size of the next backup, and settings for what gets backed up on your iPhone and what doesn’t.

Hope this helps, Meg. Give it a try, and let us know how it goes. Good luck!

Update: All is well now, Meg reports.

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Yes, I’m talking about the bright red badge on the iPhone (and iPad) home screen that tells you exactly how many emails—work, personal, or otherwise—you haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

Before the arrival of the iOS 5 software update, there was no way to turn the telltale unread mail badge off—well, nothing short of turning off your iPhone email accounts altogether, anyway.

Switch the “Badge App Icon” setting to “Off” if you don’t want to be reminded of all the emails you haven’t read yet.

Thanks to the glorious new iOS 5 Notification Center, though, you can now customize exactly how often you’d like your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to nag you about new email—ranging from pop-up alerts and banners (which you can swipe open from the iOS lock screen) to my favorite new setting: nothing at all.

Any by the way: this trick works for any iOS app listed in the Notifications settings, not just Mail.

So, without further ado … out, damned spot!

• Tap Settings, Notifications to head to your notification settings.
• Scroll down until your find Mail, and tap it.
• Scroll down again and switch “Badge App Icon” to off.
• If you really don’t want to be bothered every time a new email hits your inbox, make sure “Alert Style” is set to “None,” switch “View in Lock Screen” to “Off,” and turn the “Notification Center” setting to “Off.”

Begone, unread mail badge. You won’t be missed—or at least, not while I’m relaxing on the veranda.

The post How to turn off your iPhone’s unread email badge (iOS 5 tip) appeared first on here's the thing.

The iOS 5 Newsstand in action. So, what's wrong with this picture?

Steven writes: Okay, so I can’t get rid of Newsstand. I’ll accept that. How come I can’t put my other newspapers in it? The L.A. Times, Huffington Post, etc. sit in their own folder, yet my New York Times app was automatically moved to Newsstand. Don’t get it. Makes for more steps, rather than fewer. Please explain.

Hi Steven! You’re not the first reader to complain about how Newsstand (the new iOS 5 feature that manages your news apps and downloads) and its seemingly willy-nilly attitude toward magazines and newspapers.

As you say, some iOS news apps—like, say, those of the New York Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Wired, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair—now live in the permanent Newsstand folder, and there’s no way to drag them out and put them elsewhere.

Other newspapers and magazines, though—including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and TIME magazine—don’t place nice with Newsstand, and they’ll refuse to install themselves in the Newsstand icon even if you try dragging and dropping them.

That means that Newsstand isn’t quite the one-stop shop for digital publications that we’d been promised—or not yet, anyway.

Related: Why can’t I move Newsstand into a folder?

So, what’s the deal? Well, newspaper and magazine publishers must agree to Apple’s Newsstand terms (which include a healthy 30-percent share of their revenue), as well as modify their apps to support Newsstand itself.

Now, in some cases, it may simply be a matter of time before a given publication gets its act together and enables Newsstand support for its app. (For example, I can’t imagine it’ll be long before TIME, which was one of the first publications to serve up an iOS app, adds its app to the Newsstand.)

But as the editors at Poynter point out, publishers that are leery of Apple’s terms may decide to take a wait-and-see approach to Newsstand—and indeed, according to TechCrunch, The Economist has already passed on the Newsstand idea.

In other words, we may never see a time when all newspaper and magazine apps live in Newsstand—meaning our favorite news apps might always be scattered here and there on our iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches.

Now, there’s another scenario: perhaps Apple will relent and either a) allow users to pull news apps out of the Newsstand, or b) let us put non-Newsstand apps into the Newsstand.

Don’t hold your breath, though.

The post Why can’t I put all my newspapers and magazines in iOS 5’s Newsstand? (reader mail) appeared first on here's the thing.

Once configured properly, iCloud Backup will automatically make copies of all the settings, accounts, messages, photos, and applications settings on your iDevice and stores them on Apple’s servers. There they’ll wait patiently, in case something bad ever befalls your handset.

The beauty of iCloud Backup lies in how little work is involved on our part.

You just plug your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch into a power outlet, lock its screen, and tuck it in for the night—just like you usually do—and your device will wirelessly transmit its backup files to your iCloud account in the sky, as long as there’s an available Wi-Fi connection.

It’s a great feature for anyone who rarely bothered to dig out their sync cables to manually back up their handsets with iTunes—assuming iCloud Backup works as advertised, that is.

Make sure you’ve got iCloud Backup switched on in the iOS settings menu.

As someone who’s seen his fair share of computers and phones fail on him over the years, I wanted to put iCloud Backup to the test before trusting it with my precious data. So I took my test iPhone 3GS, updated it to iOS 5 (required for using iCloud), and launched into the iCloud restortion process, all in the name of science.

Update [3/16/12]: Check out my new, step-by-step guide on how to restore an iCloud backup of your old iPad onto your new iPad.

The first step, of course, is making sure you have an iCloud backup in the first place. Assuming you have iOS 5 installed on your device and that you’ve signed up for a free iCloud account (if not, you can grab one right here), just tap Settings, iCloud, then scroll down and confirm that “iCloud Backup” is set to “On.”

Look just beneath the “Back Up Now” button to see the last time your iPhone (or iPad, or iPod Touch) backed itself up. If it’s been a few days, or never, you can tap “Back Up Now” to create a fresh backup.

I went ahead and followed those steps for my test iPhone, then took a deep breath (well, it wasn’t that deep, given that there’s nothing all that important on my test phone) and wiped my iPhone 3GS’s memory clean.

Choose “Restore from iCloud Backup” to begin the restoration process.

A few minutes later, I was staring at a gray screen that read “iPhone”—exactly what you’d see if you’d just taken a brand-new iPhone out of its box.

After pick a language (English) for my “new” iPhone and agreeing to a lengthy legal agreement, I was presented with a choice: I could set up my iPhone as a brand-new handset, restore a backup from iTunes, or—here we go—restore an iCloud backup.

I chose the iCloud option, signed in to my account, and a few seconds later my iPhone displayed the online backup that it had found: the very one I’d created only a few minutes ago.

I selected the file, and pretty soon a screen popped up that read “Restoring from backup,” complete with a progress bar and an estimate of how much time I had left to wait. Since my test iPhone doesn’t have many messages or photos on it, the process only took a few minutes; your mileage may vary, however. (You should also make sure your iPhone’s power cable is plugged in during a lengthy restoration.)

There’s the backup for my iPhone, right where it’s supposed to be.

My iPhone restarted itself, and pretty soon, there it was—my old iPhone again, just as I’d left it before, restored wirelessly through iCloud.

Well…almost. A final step involves re-downloading all your apps from the App Store, a process that the iPhone handled automatically.

It also tried to re-download my music, but informed me that the tunes on my phone hadn’t come from the iTunes Store (true), so I’d have to transfer them manually from wherever I’d originally synced them. Fair enough, and easily done. (A $25-a-year feature called iTunes Match will let you sync and store all your music in iCloud, not just songs purchased on iTunes.)

So yes—iCloud Backup works, and it works well.

Again, though, remember that iCloud Backup won’t do its thing on its own. You must sign up for iCloud (it’s free, as long as you keep your online storage under 5 GB) and turn on iCloud Backup in the Settings menu.

It’ll take a few minutes to set up, but believe me—if you ever leave your iPhone in cab or drop your iPad in a swimming pool, you’ll be happy you went to the (minor) trouble.

Have questions about restoring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with iCloud Backup? Post ’em in the comments below.

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