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Opinion: Has Apple finally promoted iCloud from a hobby to a serious service?

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I wrote a piece last month arguing that it was time for Apple to up its iCloud game, showing that the company is serious about cloud storage by focusing more on fast, reliable syncing, and by matching the functionality, storage capacities, and pricing of Google Drive.

In the WWDC keynote, Apple did exactly that. MobileMe may not, in Steve Jobs’ words, have been Apple’s finest hour, but it did at least include iDisk – an online drive we could access directly to store anything we liked – not just documents created in Apple’s own apps. It’s been a long time coming, but iDisk is finally back in the form of iCloud Drive.

The new iCloud pricing, too, looks set to be exactly what I asked for – comparable to Google Drive… 
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How-to: Setup and use Dropbox to manage and share photos, files

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Before Dropbox became popular, there was iDisk, which was Apple’s cloud storage system. iDisk allowed you to store documents, pictures, QuickTime files, and PDFs in one cloud-based “drive.” This was accessible on all of your Apple products as well as at me.com on a PC. It was practically like having your most important files in Finder on your computer – but everywhere.

Then iCloud came out. iCloud dropped support of iDisk, which meant there was no longer a way to access all of your files in a Finder-like cloud system. This paved the way for third party apps like Dropbox to become even more popular.

Dropbox is free. Dropbox works on any platform: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage space for free and they offer incentives to increase your allocated amount of free storage space.

There are two different ways to set up Dropbox:


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Microsoft: ‘iCloud might not be enough for you’

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=agth2M00lvk#!]

We covered the release of Microsoft’s new SkyDrive for Mac and updated iOS apps last month, and today the company is once again trying to convince iCloud users to make the switch. On the Office for Mac blog and SkyDrive blog, Microsoft posted a video today titled “iCloud not enough? Try SkyDrive,” alongside the following three reasons to choose its cloud service over Apple’s:

Access files and Office docs, anywhere:

With iCloud, you can only access certain files across devices—like iWork files or photos you take on your iPhone.

With SkyDrive, you can access or manage any file from anywhere. It doesn’t matter whether the file is a document, photo, video, PDF, or anything else—just drag files to theSkyDrive folder on your Mac and they’ll automatically be available on youriPhone, iPad, or PC. If you don’t have your devices with you, you can still access, view, or edit any file by signing in to SkyDrive.com on any browser.

Share and work toegether with anyone:

With iCloud, you can only collaborate with people who have the right software.

But with SkyDrive, you can share any type of file—even big ones up to 2 GB—with anyone. SkyDrive works seamlessly with Office. Anyone you share with can view or edit Word,PowerPoint, or Excel files using Officefor Mac, Office for Windows, or withOffice Web Apps in their browser (it’s free!).

Your notes, everywhere:

With iCloud, you can access notes across your devices but can’t share them.

SkyDrive and OneNote, both free, are integrated so you can take notes, track to-dos and lists all in one place, and share your lists with friends and family so they can coordinate shopping or other tasks you’re working on together. You can share and keep your lists automatically updated from any device.

Microsoft also linked to a page with instructions for moving from iDisk to SkyDrive.

iCloud icon revealed, looks familiar

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Douglas Bowman (via MR) had a peak into Moscone West and saw an iCloud icon.   Looks familiar, no? Oh yes, we detailed this just a few months ago:

A 9to5mac reader writes in telling us he/she’s found some interesting files in Lion.  These files are labeled “MobileDocumentsFolder.icns, Mobile Documents 32.png and SidebarMobileDocumentsFolder.icns” and show new types of icons for a Cloud file system.  Clearly, this would seem to be the successor to iDisk and is probably shows a more transparent interface between the desktop and the Cloud, perhaps a little more like Dropbox. We’re also thinking there is an iWork.com component as well since these are “documentsFolders”.

– here’s the new sidebar icon.

Update: In fact, it looks a lot like a mix of iDisk and iSync (which makes a lot of sense)

 

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