IOS – How to access preview documents saved to iCloud from 10.8 on an iPad

You cannot treat iCloud as some sort of internet filesystem like Dropbox. The only way to place data into the iCloud system is via an iCloud enabled app. There is no generic way to access your iCloud files except via the application that put the files there in the first place.

So, in order to use iCloud, use iCloud enabled apps. Use the same apps on 2 or more Macs, and that is how you share docs/data.

I'm not sure when the Mac iWork apps will get iCloud, I suspect in the next version which is now sorely overdue.

Unfortunately, Macintosh does not (yet) support complete iCloud synchronization for documents. We can only hope that Apple will implement this at some point soon.

In the mean time, go to http://www.icloud.com/ and sign in. You can drag documents to and from the appropriate section on your computer, and it'll work with your iPad. There's still another bug, which involves Mac > Mac syncing, but as long as you just do iPad > Mac or Mac > iPad, it'll work fine. :)

Also, there is a folder located at ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ which contains your iCloud-enabled apps' data. This includes the iWork suite, but unfortunately iWork documents aren't saved as the normal filetypes (e.g. ".pages"), so they can't be opened on their own.