How To: Back Up Your iDevice with iCloud

I’ve always been a firm believer of running backups your important documents and other data like photos, music, and videos.

Over the years, Apple has done a good job enhancing iCloud to automatically take care of this for you on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. With last night’s little iOS 6.1 upgrade disaster, knowing that I had a recent backup of my iPhone meant that I was only going to have to deal with the reloading my backup and not have to worry about lost photos, text messages, and all the rest.

Here are a few quick steps to make sure you have iCloud backups turned on and how to run an immediate backup if you want to – like just before an iOS upgrade.

Turning on iCloud Backups

Step 1: To get started, tap on Settings from the Home screen.

Step 2: Tap on iCloud on the Settings page.

Step 3: Sign in to your iCloud account if you haven’t already done so.

Step 4: Scroll down to the bottom of the iCloud page, and tap ‘Storage & Backup’.

Step 5: Near the bottom of the page, set the ‘iCloud Backup’ option to ‘ON’.

Step 6: Tap the ‘Back Up Now’ button at the bottom of the page to start a backup immediately.

Bonus Points: At the very bottom of the ‘Storage & Backup’ page, will be a message telling you when the last time a successful iCloud backup was completed.

Earlier this week, Apple sent out invitations to an invitation only special event relating to education from Apple in New York City, also known as “The Big Apple.”

The event will be held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum at 10:00am. It has been rumored that Eddy Cue, Apple Senior Vice President of Internet Software, will be involved in the event, however, there has been no confirmation from Apple on this point. You’ll recall that the iTunes Store, the App Store, the iBookstore, the iCloud and iAd services are all under Mr. Cue’s supervision.

The speculation is that with an education focus, Apple is gearing up to make an announcement around electronic text books, iTunes U, and the iPad for all sorts of educational opportunities.

As a parent, and an active member in my children’s school community, I personally, would love to see advancements in the area of text books and supplemental content. Year after year, my children’s backpacks are loaded up with hard and soft cover books, library books, and binders of notebooks. Lugging all of that back and forth to school every day can’t be good for their backs. I think a little Apple ingenuity is just what the educational market needs.

[Via Barron’s Tech Trader Daily…]