iCloud

As part of deciding whether to switch to mac, I'm trying to get my head around iCloud. I've read various things about it, but am still unclear on the model. Am I right that this is fundamentally a "document in the cloud" model like SkyDrive, as opposed to a "sync doc to your PC from the cloud" model like DropBox?

E.g., does iCloud maintain a local copy of your docs? Can you access your docs when you're disconnected from the internet?

Thanks!

 

From what I have read, Yes it does and gives you options to load into other macs and devices (iPad, etc). You actually control which documents are kept on the cloud.

Not supported on older macs. And I'm not updating to loose some programs not supported.

 

Thanks blue!

Is there anyone who has actually used iCloud who can confirm how it works? I found the official pages on it to be short on actual practical details...

 

all it does for me is keep bookmarks and contacts in sync.. and lets me back up my iPhone to it. Can you actually store data or documents to it? I thought that was a "coming soon" thing. I still use Dropbox for most things.

 

You can "store" documents but then they have to be done in iworks. There is no really great substitute for dropbox, though it is nice that your photos get synced to your computer automatically from an ipod / iphone unless you are trying to avoid the cell data charges. I don't sync my contacts as my main contacts are in yahoo / gmail and I have yet to port them over to apple, but the syncing of bookmarks is great as well.


I'd say that think of iCloud as more of a syncing service than dropbox which actually lets you access any file in the cloud. It would have been nice if iCloud's 5 GBs were like dropbox, but how would it be apple if they didn't try to make life a little hell and screw you out of some money in the process?

 

+1 for dropbox.

 

Uh, you're direction is wrong here. It's actually Dropbox that's doing the screwing. . iCloud's 5GB doesn't include your iTunes purchased songs, Photostream, bookmarks, movies, TV shows and books so basically it's just your stored documents, bookmarks, contacts, calendars and Mail that use your 5GB's. Docs and Mail hardly use up any space.

With Dropbox they only offer 2GB free and if you want to add more they charge and insanely high price.

I do love the fact that I can backup my iPhone 4S to the cloud. For us dot Mac users we get 20GB free space plus the free 5GB from iCloud until the end of June.

 

But iCloud is very limited when you compare it to the versatility of Dropbox as far as file access in the cloud is concerned.

 

i have an 18.x GB dropbox account through the referral system... it's a pretty sweet deal

 

hmmmm time to get work

 

20GB free space? Where is it? I can't find it What is dot?

Greetings
Julian

 

it ends in 3 months so what's the use?

 

I beg to differ.

My free Dropbox account:

 

how'd you get that last 6GB or so of dropbox space? mine is 18.xx

 

They were offering up to 5 GB to help beta-test the Photos upload feature.

 

Good times before, because now it says about to 8 gbs.

 

Would you care to share with us how you managed to achieve so much free space well above what DropBox offers for free? Your case must be special because they only offer 2GB free and so far nothing has changed from what I can see. Also your picture doesn't prove that you have a free 25GB account.

If you're a dot Mac user (Apple cloud storage before it was changed to iCloud) then you already get 20GB free space to store anything. Unfortunately after June 30th we'll lose the dot Mac service and the 20GB free space. Until then Apple allows dot Mac users to upgrade to iCloud and maintain their free 20GB of free space plus the 5GB free space of iCloud for a total of 25GB. It's a win win, at least until Juen 30th.

 

How is it going to be a total win when it is ending?

 

I didn't use the term "Total Win", you did.