Apple Device Tip - What's an iCloud ID and Why Do I Care?

The more time I spend straightening out my clients' Apple-related accounts, the clearer it’s become that there’s some major confusion (among young and old, alike) regarding what an iCloud ID is and what it does and doesn’t do.

iCloud ID vs Apple ID
First things first. An iCloud ID is NOT the same as an Apple ID. An Apple ID is the email and password combination – in association with a credit card – that gives you access to the music, movies, books, music, etc on the iTunes online store and the apps on the Apple App Store.

An iCloud ID is a different email and password combination that Apple uses to associate your identity (Get it? ID) with your personal data. An iCloud ID is what makes it possible for you to view (and sync) your photos, contacts, calendars, reminders, Safari bookmarks, Passbook, and iCloud Drive data between your Apple devices and Apple's iCloud website. In fact, it’s the iCloud "cloud" that is the conduit for this activity.

What About Mail and Notes?
Note that I didn’t mention “Mail” or “Notes” as part of the laundry list of data areas that you can share among devices and access through Apple’s iCloud. If you’ve looked at the iCloud settings page on either your mobile device or your computer, you’ll see those two content areas are listed but – likely – are set to the off position. In order to turn on these data sources, you need an iCloud email address.

But I Already Gave Apple My Email Address!
Here’s where it gets confusing, because most people assume that the email address they provided when they set up their iCloud ID is their iCloud email address. It isn’t. An iCloud email address MUST end in @iCloud(dot)com to qualify. (To further confuse matters, if you have a legacy Apple email address ending in @apple(dot)com, @mac(dot)com, or @me(dot)com, you can just swap in @icloud(dot)com and you’re done.)

Hopefully, you’re still with me, because here’s where I bring it home, and where Apple closes the loop. Your:

Apple ID let’s you buy stuff.
iCloud ID let’s you sync everything EXCEPT Notes and Email (iCloud) with your Apple devices.
Your iCloud email account lets you sync your Notes and Email (iCloud) with your Apple devices.

Once you have an iCloud email account, it works just like any other email account (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.). You can add it to the Mail app on all of your Apple devices to send and receive email associated with your @icloud(dot)com address. Any email stored in this account is stored in your iCloud account, and can be viewed on icloud.com by signing in with your iCloud ID – NOT your iCloud email address! You don't have to use this email account if you don't want to, but it must be enabled in order to sync Notes with your other Apple devices via iCloud.

It’s All About the Notes.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the whole purpose of this post was to show you the hoops you need to jump through to use and sync the Notes app across your Apple devices. In addition to being free and completely integrated into the Apple ecosphere, Notes is a simple, no-nonsense app with a minimum of bells and whistles that I've come to depend upon. In combination with Apple’s Share capability (The little square with the up-facing arrow that appears on many of Apple's application screens) and the extensions functionality added in iOS 8, it’s at the top of my list of daily go-to apps. If you’re willing to jump through Apple’s hoops, try it for yourself.

** Sorry for all the (dot) references in the URLs but without them, every reference showed up as a link. I figured less blue ink and fewer useless links was preferable to the alternative.