Up until now, Macs have been dependent on others (third party software) for the recovery of stolen or lost Macs, iPhone, and iPads. How to use iCloud to find your device using Find My Mac is easier than ever. Find My Mac is a new feature in iCloud. There are, however, a few drawbacks.

How To Use iCloud To Find Your Mac

You need to have OS X Lion 10.7 or higher, Wi-Fi access, a free iCloud account, a partition installed for recovery; it has to be already set up for iCloud preferences before you can use this new application. A lot of work but it will find your Mac or iPhone anywhere in the world if it becomes lost or stolen. The two apps, Find My Mac and Find My iPhone, are features of iCloud and can be accessed through www.iCloud.com.

Neither are enabled by default, so when you want to use them, before you lose your iPhone, of course, you have to setup the preferences first in System Preferences, then in iCloud preferences, tick the box to use Find My Mac.

Even if you haven’t used Find My iPhone before you’ll see it’s similar to Find My Mac. Both applications work through iCloud to show you where your device is located. How to use iCloud to recover your iPhone or Mac is fairly simple. When iCloud finds your device, it shows you on a map where it’s located. You can send it a “ping” that pops up a window telling the users you know where your Mac is located. It also sends a very loud sonar alert. If you don’t want to send a message, you can lock or format the drive remotely. A very cool feature that stops the thief from using your computer system.

However, once you’ve formatted the drive, and it should be the last thing you do, you won’t be able to find your Mac again. If iCloud can’t find your Mac or iPhone right away, you can setup an alert through email to let you know when it does find it. Then you can smash the thief’s flat with all the power of iCloud.

The recovery partition has to be installed before you can use the power of iCloud to find your lost or stolen Mac or iPhone and iPads. If you’re like some people and used cloning software to load your OS Lion 10.7 or higher, on your Mac then you’re out of luck. The recovery partition won’t be there. You’ll have to reinstall to use Find My Mac and how to use iCloud to recover it should it be stolen or lost.

However, if you did a normal installation then it automatically creates the recovery partition with all the information you need to prevent your stolen device from being used by the thieves.

Macs don’t stay connect to 3G or Wi-Fi when they are in hibernation, so iCloud will have a hard time finding them but iPhone, iPads, and iPod can be found right away. How to use iCloud to find your iOS devices is very slick and should make you feel great about finding your Mac or iPhone should they disappear right under your nose.

See Also

• What is iCloud? Simple To Use And Simple To Setup
• iOS 5 Features You Should Know About
• iOS 5 Features – iMessage – Texting on Apple Devices
• iOS 5 Features To Help With Your Day: Reminders
• How To Use iPhone 4S – Knowing For Beginners
• How To Use iPhone As Modem
• Best Direct Auto Insurance Apps For iPad