Use iCloud Like DropBox (Sort of...)

Apple may have done something unintentionally when they launched their free iCloud service. iCloud automatically synchronizes files between devices using the same iCloud account. The only problem is knowing where to put files and how to get to them once you do. On your Mac it's simple. Just locate your ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder. Remember, the ~/Library folder is hidden by default in Lion. (See previous post) So, in Finder simply navigate to your ~/Library folder and drag the /Mobile Documents folder to the sidebar.

Now, any files you save to the Mobile Documents folder will be synchronized to all devices using your iCloud account similar to the way Dropbox works. Accessing these files on your Mac is the same as files in any other folder. This applies to any type of file, not just iWork documents.

I haven't figured out how to make these files available to iOS devices yet and there's no way I can see to even save iWork documents from your Mac and make them visible on your iPad or iPhone. When you save iWork documents on an iOS device, Apple formats the documents entirely differently than in OS X. If you've done so, just have a peek into the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder. There's a separate folder created for each iWork app and each document is saved as a folder containing a .plist file, a .db file and a .jpg preview. There's some voodoo going on here that I haven't figured out yet. Sufice it to say that saving a .pages document to this folder gets you nothing on your iOS device. I would expect Apple to make this process seamless across all of its devices at some point, but it ain't there yet.

So, if you want to share documents between Macs and have them sync automatically then the /Mobile Documents folder is there for your exploitation.