understanding icloud...

Oceans12

i am trying to understand the way icloud works in relation to document sharing, i have 2 iphones and a few macs, and ipad 3 and icloud is enabled on all devices , how do i get the icloud to share documents accross all the devices? or do i have to buy extra apps to do this,


thanks

Sad Professor

The syncing is done between apps that support iCloud. So you would have to have the same app on all three devices and that app would have to support iCloud. At the moment, there isn't many apps that sync to their Mac counterparts, even Apple's own. There's no filesystem or folder like DropBox, so iCloud is not really suitable for general document syncing at the moment. Third party developers don't seem to have much use for it.

Oceans12

i just discovered, after reading loads of pages, on apple support.... damn

i have dropbox, and 25gb skydrive


just found the skydrive for mac app works great, problem solved, as skydrive for mac, ipad and iphone are available.

NoDice

Documents in iCloud can be synced across devices using the Apple iWorks apps - Pages (like microsoft works), Numbers (excel) and Keynote (powerpoint) etc. The apps are paid apps but once you buy one for one device, you can download it to the other devices for free. They can be accessed either directly on the devices, or if you dont have them and need access to read or edit you can check them out on icloud.com.

Airdrop is a bit like dropbox.

Dropbox is much handier though as its free and has more storage space!

Sad Professor

The Mac versions of iWork don't currently support iCloud syncing. That's coming in Mountain Lion. But yeah, they will sync documents between iOS devices.

Apple are going to need to add some sort of filesystem or file sharing mechanism that works across all its computers and devices. As it currently stands it's fair to say most of us would be completely lost without DropBox. Apple tried to buy them, but they weren't interested and you can see the huge gap in Apple's cloud offering as a result.

opinion guy

In summary
Dropbox >>>> iCloud

Sad Professor

opinion guy wrote: »

In summary
Dropbox >>>> iCloud

Not necessarily. One doesn't replace the other. They both serve different purposes and there's very little overlap. The advantage to iCloud (for apps that support it) is that you don't have to think about it. You don't have to remember to drop a file into your DropBox folder and then open it on your iPhone. It just syncs across all your devices without you needing to do anything.

What iCloud seriously lacks is a way to share documents with and between your iOS devices independently of apps. This is where DropBox is invaluable. I suspect Apple are tying to figure out a solution to this problem that doesn't involve adding a filesystem.

tubbs26

Is one issue with Dropbox that only 2GB is free and to get anything over that you need to pay €80 for 50GB. I know for me personally I wouldn't have anything like 50GB of data but I would have more than 2GB. Are there any smaller packages you can go for?

Also is it possible to back up photo's on my windows laptop to my icloud account.

Sorry if the questions seem a bit stupid but I'm new to cloud services.

Sad Professor

tubbs26 wrote: »

Is one issue with Dropbox that only 2GB is free and to get anything over that you need to pay €80 for 50GB. I know for me personally I wouldn't have anything like 50GB of data but I would have more than 2GB. Are there any smaller packages you can go for?

You can get quite a bit more space by inviting friends, etc.

Also is it possible to back up photo's on my windows laptop to my icloud account.

No. It will backup the camera roll on your iOS device, and it will push new photos to all your computers/devices using Photo Stream, but it doesn't provide permanent storage for your photo library.

opinion guy

Sad Professor wrote: »

Not necessarily. One doesn't replace the other. They both serve different purposes and there's very little overlap. The advantage to iCloud (for apps that support it) is that you don't have to think about it. You don't have to remember to drop a file into your DropBox folder and then open it on your iPhone. It just syncs across all your devices without you needing to do anything.

What iCloud seriously lacks is a way to share documents with and between your iOS devices independently of apps. This is where DropBox is invaluable. I suspect Apple are tying to figure out a solution to this problem that doesn't involve adding a filesystem.

But that functionality of icloud is no no way attractive to me. I want to actively be aware of what files are where. I don't want files mindlessly shared across devices and actually would take steps to stop that if it was a default feature.

Dropbox gives me the level of control I need. I imagine alot of people have similar mindsets.

Sad Professor

Yeah, but as we've already established in this thread, iCloud doesn't really offer that kind of file sharing functionality anyway. Third party apps have to support document syncing first and most of them don't. So you don't really have any choice but to use DropBox for your documents.

Unlike DropBox, document syncing is a small part of what iCloud is about. It's primary purpose is a way to sync calendars, contacts, reminders, bookmarks and photos across multiple Apple devices. It's also where your backups are stored. DropBox isn't good for any of those things.

Anyway, my point is iCloud is not intended to be a DropBox killer. Everyone seems to assume that because they are both "cloud" services that they do the same thing. They don't. Apple were going after Google and its services, not DropBox.