Apple iCloud "effortless to use" claims cleared by ad regulator

iCloud picture

Apple has been cleared of breaching advertising guidelines by describing its iCloud service as "automatic and effortless" to use on any device.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) was prompted to investigate the claims, which featured in an online ad, after someone complained that iCloud was not "automatic and effortless" to use on Mac computers.

In a statement to the ASA, Apple stood by the advert and said iCloud is automatic and effortless to use once it has been switched on.

"Macs sync data in exactly the same way [as] other Apple devices, once iCloud has been enabled and the document saved in iCloud," said the statement.

Following its investigation, the ASA concluded the advert had not exaggerated the product's functionality or misled users, and that no advertising guidelines had been breached.

The regulator also said the person that complained may have misunderstood how iCloud works.

"The complainant believed...when editing a document on a Mac, users had to first copy the document from iCloud to their Mac desktop, make changes and then upload the amended document back onto iCloud," the ASA stated.

"We understood that this was not the case and that the service was automatic and effortless across all relevant devices once the settings had been correctly configured [and] that the claim was not misleading."

Caroline Donnelly is the news and analysis editor of IT Pro and its sister site Cloud Pro, and covers general news, as well as the storage, security, public sector, cloud and Microsoft beats. Caroline has been a member of the IT Pro/Cloud Pro team since March 2012, and has previously worked as a reporter at several B2B publications, including UK channel magazine CRN, and as features writer for local weekly newspaper, The Slough and Windsor Observer. She studied Medical Biochemistry at the University of Leicester and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism at PMA Training in 2006.