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iCloud Drive vs Dropbox vs Google Drive vs etc

Woodcrest64

Woodcrest64

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 14, 2006
1,332
570
Does iOS 8 and iCloud Drive offer anything different compared to having Dropbox or Google Drive on your iPhone?

I know one of the complaints with iOS compared to android was not having access to store files locally in central location that was accessible to all applications. The Apps and files were Sandboxed. But I thought Dropbox and Google Drive technically solved this issue... Or am I missing something?
 
Better integration for their apps. So if you're fully into apple this makes synchronizing your data so much easier.
 
Woodcrest64 said:
Does iOS 8 and iCloud Drive offer anything different compared to having Dropbox or Google Drive on your iPhone?

I know one of the complaints with iOS compared to android was not having access to store files locally in central location that was accessible to all applications. The Apps and files were Sandboxed. But I thought Dropbox and Google Drive technically solved this issue... Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

aside from being similar to the examples you gave iCloud drive also has the ability to store app specific documents/files automatically that you can access from any other idevice with that app installed.

For example many games save your game to iCloud. Now technically you should be able to access those files directly with iCloud drive i.e. more visibility.

What I'm hoping for is the ability to access your photo stream directly from iCloud.com so we'll see.
 
iCloud now shows up as a Folder in Finder (OSX 10.10) and all copy/paste functions work which in turn sync to the cloud ...

What I am thinking how to access these "generic" files which dont belong to any app on an iphone/ipad ... I think devs will need to incorporate this in their updates ...
 
I use an iMac and a MacBook Air, so file syncing is important. Currently I use dropbox because iCloud only syncs Pages, Numbers, Textedit, etc. M$ Word, Excel, etc. I must use Dropbox. Google Drive is only really useful for Google docs and shared docs with on the fly changes with multiple users on both Windows and OS X. It is not a good place for plain storage IMHO.

I currently use Dropbox for not just docs, but also app specific stuff like 1Password for Mac and iOS, DevonThink databases, and Quicken files so that all up to date files are accessible from desktop and notebook alike. However, Dropbox is limited to 2GB and iCloud Drive is marketed as 5GB. Question is whether any photo/video/mail/iWork files count towards 5GB. Currently Photo Stream is last 1000 pics or 30 days. But they are now saying entire photo libraries? Still a lot of details to know.

I sure would like the option in OS X to have a double space end a sentence with a period and auto capitalize the next word.

And I would like to see iOS 8 get support for auto correction/auto completion with 3rd party BT keyboards.
 
Menel said:
Why not? Keynote demo'd oneDrive working with the new API.
Click to expand...

Must admit I reckon MS will also keep Office as OneDrive only (hope this ain't the case but sure it will be). One Drive is so damn sluggish compared to DropBox
 
Menel said:
Why not? Keynote demo'd oneDrive working with the new API.
Click to expand...

Because they're not embracing Dropbox right now and why allow people to use a competing service when OneDrive is provided.
 
Does anybody think you'll be able to share MP3s this way and have them be added into the music app on the phone? with the open with command. In this day and age it still really sucks is the only way to add music through iTunes
 
iCloud Drive can make me go over till 100% Apple storage solution. Using Google Drive now for documents and files. Pictures is already on iCloud aswell as contacts, mail and so on.

For a person with an Mac and iOS-units I think iCloud Drive are going to be awsome.
 
Google and Dropbox will probably be more platform agnostic and integrate with more services. But if you're heavily into apple and won't ever change platforms, you might as well just go with iCloud.
 
Anijake said:
Does anybody think you'll be able to share MP3s this way and have them be added into the music app on the phone? with the open with command. In this day and age it still really sucks is the only way to add music through iTunes
Click to expand...

You can also add any purchases straight from the cloud and you can enroll in match.
 
The killer functionality for Dropbox to me is the ability to do local network sync when the files you are syncing already exist on a device on the local network. Unless iClod Drive has this I can't completely move to it. Stupid data caps.

Block matching to save bandwidth is also helpful on Dropbox.
 
crsh1976 said:
It's the same 5 GB, iCloud storage = iCloud Drive.
Click to expand...
That's what I don't like since my iCloud storage is used up with email and backups. I'd have to go and buy more storage which makes no sense to me, since I have a 145GB of online storage with OneDrive (25 free, 20 with my Office 365 subscription and 100 thanks to bing rewards).
 
since its alot cheaper than dropbox, i might switch to icloud in the future.

but will have to test it first and see how good the windows client is.
and also how good the sharing features are.

but then again i could still use dropbox for sharing, since i got 14GB for free.
 
I'm interested in iCloud Drive, but as a Dropbox user with 10GB of free storage, it will be a challenge for me to make a total change.

I'm sure I'll try it out but the outcome is uncertain for my case.
 
Does the iCloud drive store documents on your local drive like Dropbox or is it cloud only?
 
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