Cloud-based internet accounts
These days, most internet accounts are cloud based. A ‘cloud’ internet account stores a copy of your data, including email, in ‘the cloud’.
Apple (iCloud), Google (Gmail), and Microsoft (Outlook) are all providers of such accounts.
Basic, free features included with these accounts are: email, contacts, calendars, notes, and cloud storage.
Microsoft | Apple | ||
Product name | Outlook.com | iCloud | Gmail |
Productivity apps that integrate with ‘the cloud’
In order for any office to function, each computer will need the following applications, at the very least:
- a word processor, for writing letters..
- a spreadsheet app for accounting
- An email ‘client’ for managing, sending and receiving email
- a calendar app
- a presentation app, for presentations during meetings
Apple, Google, and Microsoft each have their own apps to meet these needs:
Microsoft | Apple | ||
Word processor | Word | Pages | Docs |
Spreadsheet | Excel | Numbers | Sheets |
Outlook | Gmail | ||
Calendar | Outlook | Calendar | Calendar |
Presentation | PowerPoint | Keynote | Slides |
Apple and Google provide their productivity apps for free. Microsoft, although they provide free, web-based versions of their apps, the full-featured desktop apps are subscription based.
Services for business & enterprise
Google and Microsoft also provide accounts aimed specifically at business & enterprise.
Provider | Product name | Details & Pricing |
Google Workspace | https://workspace.google.com | |
Microsoft | Microsoft 365 | https://products.office.com/en-gb/business/office |
Google’s G Suite, and Microsoft’s Office 365 are subscription based services that offer business email (allowing use of custom domain names, such as @yourbusinessname.com), access to a suite of business / productivity applications, increased cloud storage, and employee / team collaboration features.
Email, office productivity apps, cloud storage… are usually highly integrated, and accessed through a single account (or, Internet Account).
For example, I could pay Microsoft about £10 per month, per ‘user’, which would give me an @howtouseamac.com email address, and entitle me to use Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity apps. Also, I would have significant cloud storage for my files, allowing for easy sharing and collaboration with other @howtouseamac.com users.
But for home users, and many small businesses, a basic, free email account, and Apple’s free productivity apps are more than adequate.
The point is, an internet account can be many things. If everyone in the world just used one ‘platform’, either Apple, Google, or Microsoft, then we’d use one account to log into everything, and collaborating with someone on the other side of the world would be a simple matter: they’d be using Apple’s platform, and there’d be no need for any ‘translation’.
But the reality is, we mix and match to get the best of the available solutions and, in order to be compatible with others, we each end up with multiple ‘internet accounts’.
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