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Toltepeceno

Suspended
Jul 17, 2012
1,807
554
SMT, Edo MX, MX
My family is setup with OneDrive and there isn't a better deal out there.

$99/year for FIVE users to have 1TB (each!) of **real** cloud storage... PLUS Microsoft Office on each of our mac and ipads? Can't beat it!

Its so odd, I love OneDrive... but hate PCs... ha ha

Bingo. There are 5 of us and we each have 1 tb each, plus I get an hour of skype international each month and we all have microsoft office. It's the best deal out there for storage alone.
 

jetjaguar

macrumors 68040
Apr 6, 2009
3,553
2,319
somewhere
i just want a service that is seamless .. and gives me a space to backup my photos .. store any documents .. pics .. videos or music and be accessible from anywhere .. is one drive it ? Currently I am subscribed to 200gb iCloud plan .. but thinking of canceling
 

GlenK

macrumors 65816
Aug 1, 2013
1,448
892
St. Augustine, FL
Just went back to DropBox because it's so reliable. I don't have that much but it's really important files and I've seen to many issues reported to take the risk.

May try iCloud drive again after a few updates.
 

mattjohnson78

macrumors member
Aug 6, 2014
71
4
Southern California
I am all about OneDrive and Office365. For $6.99 per month I get Office on my MacBook Pro and on my iPad. Also Microsoft made OneDrive with unlimited cloud storage for those on Office365. They plan to take out other cloud providers because none of the other cloud providers will come close to what Microsoft offers.

As for iCloud Drive yes it sucks and Apple is making it hard for developers to use it in their apps. I am on the smallest plan for $.99 just for device backups and the few things it's good for. Might cancel it but do know if it never improves I will never upgrade.
 

jennyp

macrumors 6502a
Oct 27, 2007
632
274
Onedrive storage is now unlimited. Kind of impressive.

The storage is unlimited? You mean unlimited space?

When I look at OneDrive storage plans it looks like 15GB free, 100GB for $1.99/month, 200GB for $3.99/month, and 1TB for $6.99/month (which includes Office 365).

Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "storage is now unlimited" ?
 

BingoBlue

macrumors member
Sep 9, 2014
52
1
Philly
The storage is unlimited? You mean unlimited space?

When I look at OneDrive storage plans it looks like 15GB free, 100GB for $1.99/month, 200GB for $3.99/month, and 1TB for $6.99/month (which includes Office 365).

Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "storage is now unlimited" ?


Microsoft gives Office 365 users free, unlimited OneDrive storage - wired.co.uk
 

jennyp

macrumors 6502a
Oct 27, 2007
632
274

xoAnna

macrumors member
Jul 2, 2013
62
17
Planet Earth…
I just sent an email outlining my issues to tcook@apple.com. As I note in the email, I tried to send it using the feedback tool but it barely allows any text in the form at all:

Good Afternoon Mr. Cook and Staff,

I tried to use the online Feedback site to send this, sir, but it wouldn’t even fit the first paragraph into the form. I hope that your staff reads this and will send it to the right people.

I signed up for iCloud Drive as soon as it was available; it's a service I've been looking forward to for some time now, and now that it's here I have to say that it's been an incredible disappointment that does not live up the standards that I've come to expect from Apple products. I would like to share some of my experiences with iCloud Drive since its public release, and thoughts on why I will be using another cloud storage service for the time being:


- iCloud Drive is unreliable. On at least two occasions while using Pages and storing Pages documents on iCloud Drive, I have saved a document only to come back to it later and find that it had reverted to an earlier state, erasing potentially hours of work and leaving me with no recourse for recovering it. When you’re advancing this as part of the file system, users should be able to expect a certain level of reliability without the risk of losing data.


- For some reason, iCloud Drive insists on constantly restoring folders and files that I have deleted or, sometimes, that I have not deleted which creates a copy of those folders. For example, I keep an archive of old school documents that I’ve created over the years in a folder called “School Archive”. On more than one occasion, I’ve gone into iCloud Drive to find a second folder called “School Archive 1” there, inexplicably. Sometimes the original folder has the actual files, sometimes the copy does. If you go into my Drive right now, in the Pages folder (which I emptied along with the rest of the drive yesterday), there are several folders, many of which are copies of each other. It’s utterly bizarre behavior which adds the unreliability of the product.


- Speaking of Pages, the application folders are annoying. I don’t use most of the applications that you’re forcing me to have folders for, and it makes my drive feel cluttered and is visually unappealing. I want to manage my storage my way, not the way you think I should. This is tantamount to forcing me to store the files on my hard drive in a certain way; I have a very particular methodology for storing my files, and I don’t want to be beholden to your idea of how I should do it. The fact that I can’t have multiple nested folders in them only heightens the lack of intuitive design and pointlessness of these folders.


- Why is it that I can access all my raw files on Google Drive on my iOS devices, but not my iCloud Drive files? Doesn’t it seem odd that a rival company is offering me better access to my files than Apple is? There needs to be an iCloud Drive app that allows me to manage/open/upload files from my devices; without it, iCloud Drive is not a drive at all but just a fancier version of Documents in the Cloud, which I find to be too limiting.


- The iCloud Drive web app’s behavior is unintuitive. Let me explain: if I drag-and-drop a Word document into the Pages web app, I can then open it in that app and make edits to it. If I try to open a Word document from the iCloud Drive web app, it tries to open it in Word or downloads the file, but doesn’t give me any options for editing in the Pages web app, even when the Word document is stored in the Pages folder. Why such a huge disconnect between two web applications on the same platform? Combined with the new Photos app, it becomes clear that these apps were not designed to work together, giving iCloud.com a hugely disjointed feeling.


- Kind of beside the point, but the change to the background of iCloud.com recently to a blue and orange gradient is ugly in my opinion. I’m not sure what was wrong with the old dynamic wallpaper background, but if you had to change it the choice you made was a bad one from my perspective.


Frankly, this feels like something that was rushed out the door to meet a deadline rather than a quality Apple experience designed to “just work”. I can assure you from personal experience that it doesn’t work, and I will not be using it for the foreseeable future.


Respectfully,

Pete ****

I wholeheartedly hope that he reads your thorough and important email and takes everything you so clearly stated into full account, and then some! The doubter in me says that he likely won’t but one can only cross their fingers, hope, and then, maybe, spam the hell out of him! :p I mean, what other options other than emailing him directly is there left for us as consumers to do other than putting our money where our mouths are by ceasing to buy future :apple: products? Good on you for taking time to at least try! It’d be in his best interest if he does get around to reading it…

As an aside, this is the first time I've ever been too legit scared to update to the new Apple versions (Yosemite and/or iOS 8). I thought I left all of that trepidation behind when I decidedly switched from Microsoft/Windows stuff a few years back after coming close to flinging my 2 month old plastic-y Dell craptop out of my 8th storey window, sending it off to die with the death of XP MS. Switching back to Apple again (I’d used mostly used Macintosh in the ’90s, thanks to it being my family’s computer) turned out to be one of my better decisions in life and haven’t regretted it whatsoever. I know there’s a lot of people out there who’ve done the same as I.

The conundrum that gets me a bit hot under the collar, though, is that we pay at least twice the cost for supposedly superior quality and performance, which :apple: and :apple: fans often like to tout, but as of late this presentation of itself as such is really beginning to falter in its own ability to live up to that notion and, in all actuality, is looking more and more like a preconceived misconception based on its past (*cough* when Steve Jobs was alive and controlling things *cough*). Quite sad, really. (I know many here will likely wave me away and consider my sentiments as ’bleak and overly alarmist’ :rolleyes:). I sincerely do hope :apple: will prove me wrong and are able to find their footing once again, I really do … but they seriously better hurry it up.

Anyway, thank you, ZombiePete, for sharing your email to Tim Cooke with us here. :)
 

Mak47

macrumors 6502a
Mar 27, 2011
751
32
Harrisburg, PA
For my rather pricey plan I get 5 users :)

BUT, even if you don't have multiple users, anyone with a single login can share all photos, from anywhere. Anyone can share 1Password keychains. You can put whatever you want on the drive.

Dropbox works like what you expect from a cloud drive. iCloud Drive does not.

I'm sorry, but your expectations were simply wrong. Nowhere does Apple indicate, imply or otherwise allude to the ability to share a drive with multiple users. You say that it's a common feature with competing products, but it's not--unless you subscribe to a much more expensive plan with multiple users.

Yes, on other services like Dropbox or Google Drive multiple users can log in using the same credentials--iCloud is no different. Share your Apple ID & password and anybody you want can sign in on any device they choose. Or they can go to iCloud.com and sign in there.

You won't want to do that though, because then all of your data in iCloud will be accessible by everyone you share with. iCloud serves a much bigger purpose than Dropbox or Google Drive. It keeps all of your stuff in sync across all of your Apple devices. If you're living entirely in the Apple ecosystem it works wonderfully. If you're not, then it probably isn't going to do anything for you. If you want a simple cloud based drive to share files that are isolated from the rest of your stuff, then Dropbox, Skydrive, Box or Google Drive are great solutions.

iCloud--even iCloud Drive--isn't the same thing.

I'm sorry that you want the product to be something that it's not. That's not Apple's fault.
 

macUser2007

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 30, 2007
1,506
203
I'm sorry, but your expectations were simply wrong. Nowhere does Apple indicate, imply or otherwise allude to the ability to share a drive with multiple users. ...

Nice spin, but still doesn't answer the simple question: why isn't the space shareable among users, if they so desire? It can certainly track what access to allow to secure content by your separate login, so your Safari history will remain yours....

Apple certainly implies that you can in its description and I am sure it will get slapped either by regulatory action, like in the EU, or by a class action in the US.

Other services which allow multi-user shared space accounts can deal with it, why can't Apple?
 

macUser2007

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 30, 2007
1,506
203
I upgraded to the 20 gb option just for backing up my iPhone and iPad. :p

Except that my girlfriend has the 64GB version, so 20GB is woefully inadequate.

I have no idea what Apple is thinking, but their advertising is misleading, the tiering is all wrong for their own hardware and the iCloud service is shoddy....
 

xmlninja

macrumors regular
Aug 10, 2010
161
156
I assume you're kidding, but I honestly tried to make the best of iCloud Drive and it just isn't cutting it. I had a Pages document revert an essay I had written to an earlier version that was essentially blank, had folders duplicate randomly and inconsistently (e.g. sometimes the data was in the original folder, sometimes it was in the duplicate folder, etc.), lack of control over the folders in the drive (at least on the web), and general inability to access raw files from iOS just makes it an inferior solution.

I don't want to use Google Drive, but it's the only cloud storage I can get access to at work outside of iCloud so those are my choices.

No im not kidding.
 

iamMacPerson

macrumors 68040
Jun 12, 2011
3,488
1,927
AZ/10.0.1.1
Except that my girlfriend has the 64GB version, so 20GB is woefully inadequate.

I have no idea what Apple is thinking, but their advertising is misleading, the tiering is all wrong for their own hardware and the iCloud service is shoddy....

Well actually backups don't take that much space. All the things that take up considerable amount of space (music, apps, etc) are all redownloaded from the iTunes server. I know this because one day I forgot to backup my iPhone 5 before getting a replacement so before I arrived at the store I started an iCloud backup and it took about 20 minutes to complete. When I got the new one I started the restore and it all came back. I went to delete the backup from iCloud and the entire file only took about 2.5GB, most of which I think was my Camera Roll (since I hate Photos in the Cloud all together, no matter if its my entire library or just Photo Stream it doesn't work well for me).

Mind you, I had the 32GB iPhone but the free 5GB iCloud account.

Personally, I was willing to fork over the $1 a month to get 20GB. If Dropbox offered a similar plan I would have jumped on that since the the free account (which I have expanded to 4.25GB since I invited people) has limited space.

Since you can't view the PDFs in Pages for iOS its quite pointless to use iCloud Drive. Its really more like a re-incartation of iDisk where it can't be accessed on iOS but it can be on OS X. Until that long-rumored Preview app for iOS comes out, I'll stick to Dropbox. While I don't have many files, the ones I have in there are important for one reason or another and come in handy quite often.
 

jadot

macrumors 6502a
Apr 6, 2010
532
503
UK
Nope.

I'm downgrading my plan with iCloud.

What happened? It's just not anywhere near intuitive. No Preview?! WTF?
I'm even finding it close to impossible to get photo stream to work in any meaningful way. Totally can't trust it.

When DropBox hit it home with their 1TB plan Apple should have taken a view on iCloud and sorted it out, because right now it's a mess and an expensive subscription model when compared to the competition.

I know DropBox isn't perfect, but it should tell you something when I say it wipes the floor with iCloud.

iCloud is a joke.
 

macUser2007

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 30, 2007
1,506
203
Microsoft gives Office 365 users free, unlimited OneDrive storage - wired.co.uk

Yes, it's a great deal and OneDrive is definitely better than iCloud. I subscribed for a year to try it out, based on the posts here.

But OneDrive has, in a rather old Microsoft way, a fatal flow I just discovered:

OneDrive cannot sync any files or folders containing characters like :,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*

This is a throwback to the dawn of cloud storage and I am simply amazed that Microsoft has not figured it out, the way Dropbox and Google Drive have. :mad:
 

BostonIT

macrumors newbie
Oct 30, 2014
16
0
I use OneDrive now...30GB free if you back up your photos on an iOS Device, no 365 subscription needed.
 

Mike Boreham

macrumors 68040
Aug 10, 2006
3,726
1,738
UK
Yes, it's a great deal and OneDrive is definitely better than iCloud. I subscribed for a year to try it out, based on the posts here.

But OneDrive has, in a rather old Microsoft way, a fatal flow I just discovered:

OneDrive cannot sync any files or folders containing characters like :,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*

This is a throwback to the dawn of cloud storage and I am simply amazed that Microsoft has not figured it out, the way Dropbox and Google Drive have. :mad:

I was all enthusiastic about Onedrive as well, and set it up including renaming all files with the rejected :,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*.

Then I found it doesn't sync OS X meta data like tags, and aliases and symlinks, so I have gone back to Dropbox.
 
Last edited:

Fox8J

macrumors newbie
Nov 1, 2012
11
3
iCloud Drive Bites

Can't believe Apple, the big kahuna, would put forth and iCloud service as pathetic as Drive. Oh great, I can access all my documents, Word, pdf, and other non Apple created docs on my Mac, but what if I need access to and Excel spreadsheet or .docx file on my iPad in a business meeting? I can't with this ridiculous excuse for a Cloud storage solution. Glad I didn't dump my Dropbox account like I was planning to when iCloud Drive was announced. But I sure the heck cancelled my iCloud Drive subscription. We've sure had some half-baked productions come out since Jobs (RIP) is gone.
 

Thalesian

macrumors member
May 12, 2009
73
15
Albuquerque, NM
I'm sorry, but your expectations were simply wrong. Nowhere does Apple indicate, imply or otherwise allude to the ability to share a drive with multiple users. You say that it's a common feature with competing products, but it's not--unless you subscribe to a much more expensive plan with multiple users.

Yes, on other services like Dropbox or Google Drive multiple users can log in using the same credentials--iCloud is no different. Share your Apple ID & password and anybody you want can sign in on any device they choose. Or they can go to iCloud.com and sign in there.

You won't want to do that though, because then all of your data in iCloud will be accessible by everyone you share with. iCloud serves a much bigger purpose than Dropbox or Google Drive. It keeps all of your stuff in sync across all of your Apple devices. If you're living entirely in the Apple ecosystem it works wonderfully. If you're not, then it probably isn't going to do anything for you. If you want a simple cloud based drive to share files that are isolated from the rest of your stuff, then Dropbox, Skydrive, Box or Google Drive are great solutions.

iCloud--even iCloud Drive--isn't the same thing.

I'm sorry that you want the product to be something that it's not. That's not Apple's fault.

If you are living in the Apple system it is still unreliable. Documents are deleted, syncing gets stuck for weeks and you end up having to copy a document manually over a cable if you have to do work.

Apple is not transferring its hardware excellence to the cloud. I am beginning to wonder if the cloud for Apple is what viruses were for Microsoft. I am entirely in the Apple system, and I am fed up with iCloud Drive/iCloud/Mobile Me/iDisk or whatever other name they give the lemon. If they were proud of it, they wouldn't be rebranding it every two years. It just doesn't work.
 

robgendreau

macrumors 68040
Jul 13, 2008
3,465
329
Yeah. It's MobileMe Part II.

Apple just doesn't get the cloud. Meanwhile, others are filling the gaps. Maybe they should just hit the petty cash drawer and buy someone who knows how to make a useful cloud storage product.
 
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