One thing that many new users of an iPad have asked me is how do they get the documents, photos, and other items they create on their iPads (yes Virginia, the iPad is for “content creation”) and onto their PCs/Macs or distributed out into the world at large?

Well, there are basically three answers to that question: iCloud, Dropbox, and iTunes. I’m going to address just the first two as the last, iTunes, can be tricky and confusing and is no longer even Apple’s preferred method of transferring files from an iPad.

The first thing I would say is that I highly recommend that, if you use an iPad, unless you have serious issues with the privacy concerns involved in “cloud” storage solutions, you should absolutely sign up for BOTH iCloud and Dropbox. iCloud comes from Apple and is included with every Apple device for free. There really is no reason (barring any privacy or security concerns) that an iOS user should not use iCloud. But it is not a complete cure-all, so that is where Dropbox comes in, as Dropbox offers several important features not (yet) found on iCloud and it is also integrated into more apps than iCloud is at this point.

iCloud serves to store, backup and sync your Contacts, Calendar entries, iCloud email (mac.com, me.com and icloud.com addresses), Photos through Photo Stream, and more, between all your iOS devices, Macs (those on OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion) and even PCs (with the proper software installed). As such it is an invaluable tool, even if you have only an iPad and no other Apple products. The idea behind it is for it to be seamless and nearly invisible to the user. Your “stuff” is simply automatically sent “up” to iCloud as soon as it is created. And that includes word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations created in Apple’s iWork apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote. You can even access those Pages, Numbers and Keynote files from a Windows PC (or Mac) through a web browser at www.icloud.com where you can sign in and then see your iWork files and download them to your PC if you wish. You may have to convert them to MS Office compatible formats first, but they are accessible.

Dropbox, on the other hand, serves as a common file vault in “the cloud” – not to be confused with the “iCloud”… don’t worry about it, just keep reading – for files and documents, and even photos, from any one of a number of apps and is easyily accessible from your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, PC, or any one of a number of other devices, inncluding Android. It is a true cross-platform cloud storage solution and indeed is one of the oldest and most widely supported. And while otthers have entered the field of cloud storage, including Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Google Drive, and Box.net, Dropbox remains perhaps the most popular. From the perspective of an iPad user, other than Apple’s own iCloud, Dropbox is easily the most widely uedd solution by the many iPad apps out there.

More to come… including more on the cross-platform benefits of Dropbox….