How does icloud know what to sync? I tried googling for 10-20 minutes and really didn't come up with what I was looking for. For example: 1) Say that I have 200 contacts on icloud. I add 10 new contacts, while deleting 20 contacts, will icloud now have the current 190 contacts? 2) What happens if I then add 10 more, but accidently delete say 180 contacts? Will icloud just show the 20 that I have on my phone and delete the 180 because that's what happened on my iphone? I'm just confused to how syncing works. It's funny that I've owned an iphone for the past 3 years and never really sync'd anything...so I'm a noob! Thanks guys.
iCloud does not "sync" data like MobileMe, your devices sync to what is on iCloud. iCloud is your master list.
If all your contacts are synced with iCloud, whatever you add or delete on your phone automatically adds/deletes on iCloud. You can choose not to sync certain contacts with iCloud, and they won't be affected with the automatic syncing. The main purpose of the cloud is to upload all your information to a central location, so that it can be synced amongst multiple devices. Thus, adding/deleting a contact on your mac or iPad will get reflected on your phone automatically. If you only have an iPhone, you can always "backup" your info to the cloud, but adding/deleting things from your phone also gets added/deleted from the cloud (so, its not a true "snapshot"... its constantly changing).
