Chapter 6. iCloud Syncing

iCloud is an umbrella term used to refer to a broad range of technologies. If you want to leave your music, movies, or TV shows on the iTunes servers, downloading them only as you need them, that’s iCloud. If you want to automatically stream your photos to your Apple TV, that’s iCloud. If you want to back up your iOS device wirelessly to the cloud, that’s also iCloud.

However, when developers talk about iCloud, we’re really talking about Documents in the Cloud, or—to step away from Apple’s marketing language—iCloud syncing. This is the only part of iCloud that we, as developers, can touch.

The idea is simple enough. Users should be able to access their data on all their devices. They can start writing a letter on their ...

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