I use a lot of Apple products and, not surprisingly, when iOS5 was released, I upgraded my iPhone and my iPad. One of the big advancements with iOS5 is the integration with iCloud, Apple’s cloud service for synchronising data between devices so, when I took a look a few days later I was a bit confused. From a Windows PC I logged in and saw links for Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Find My iPhone and iWork – all with familiar icons but I couldn’t fathom is where my photostream is. Certainly not visible in iCloud…
It turns out that there is a separate application needed to sync an iCloud photostream with a Windows PC. I installed it, it crashed (something to do with being behind our proxy servers at work, I think) but after a PC reboot and connection to my home network, photos from my iOS devices started showing up in the %userprofile%\My Pictures\Photo Stream\My Photo Stream folder. The iCloud Control Panel for Windows also integrates with Safari 5.1.1 or Internet Explorer 8 bookmarks and with Outlook 2007 Contacts and Calendars).
All I need now is the ability to sync ActiveSync contacts from my iPad (the ones I have in Office 365)… I wish.
All be it long/annoying, if your Office 365 calendar/contacts are in Outlook, wouldn’t that sync via Icloud then… or at least Itunes?
In theory, yes, but I don’t use Outlook on Windows with My Office 365 account and iCloud on Mac OS X (where I do have Outlook) needs me to upgrade to Lion… it’s all a little poorly-thought-through…
Sync your IOS Device with your Office 365 exchange account
That doesn’t seem to (or at least didn’t seem to when I wrote this post last year) do the trick… I’ll have to take another look at this. Regardless, iCloud’s integration with other services is pretty poor (although not alone in that regard).