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If it was an exception to Microsoft's norm then it would probably be a bad product. Microsoft of late only seems to make really great products. Look at Office 2013, Outlook.com, Xbox 360, Windows 8 - all really great and reliable.

As for Skydrive, it's awesome and Microsoft introduced the automatic photo uploads to that from Windows Phone long before Apple added them to iCloud.

Windows 8 is trash so is Office since they went to the ribbon interface. No experience with clouds.
 
Surprised more people haven't started using Skydrive. It includes Office Web Apps and whilst they're cut down versions they're fine for basic editing, plus they work on iPads. More and more apps are supporting Skydrive as well.

I got rid of Dropbox - find it hard to see them competing with Skydrive long term as Microsoft integrate it more and more with their other products.
 
Surprised more people haven't started using Skydrive. It includes Office Web Apps and whilst they're cut down versions they're fine for basic editing, plus they work on iPads. More and more apps are supporting Skydrive as well.

I like Skydrive, but right now I'm mostly using it as backup storage. Since I'm bouncing between iOS and Windows all the time, I lean more heavily on Dropbox, since it works as a better link between the two and has better app integration.

Like I get a new notebook or word processor app for my iPad, it might support Skydrive. Might. It will support Dropbox. If MS can get more developer support, I'd be torn between the two.

...specially since I have 25GB free on Skydrive.
 
Why should Apple make it easier for a competitor to make money off their system/store? When you buy an ebook through Amazon Apple loses money from their iBook store.

Because it's anti-competitive behavior, and thus wrong?

Everyone knows WHY Apple charges 30%... it's to make money! Duh.

However, I don't think they SHOULD. It's somewhat monopolistic of them. They should compete fairly in the marketplace. Of course companies rarely do what they should.
 
Because it's anti-competitive behavior, and thus wrong?

Everyone knows WHY Apple charges 30%... it's to make money! Duh.

However, I don't think they SHOULD. It's somewhat monopolistic of them. They should compete fairly in the marketplace. Of course companies rarely do what they should.

Markup in retail can easily be 40%.
 
Not brave enough to try this update yet. The change list in App Store showed up in spanish on my very non-spanish phone... :eek:
 
Is this as good as Dropbox? I have intense doubts because it's Microsoft, but a friend told me that it's an exception.

All the MS hate.. It gets old. Dropbox is great.. But Skydrive is pretty damn good as well.
 
If it was an exception to Microsoft's norm then it would probably be a bad product. Microsoft of late only seems to make really great products. Look at Office 2013, Outlook.com, Xbox 360, Windows 8 - all really great and reliable.

Nope. Especially not the XBOX 360 (still better than PS3 because of games and controller though) and outlook.com.

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All the MS hate.. It gets old. Dropbox is great.. But Skydrive is pretty damn good as well.

So which is better? I'm going to use one or the other, not both. I don't hate MS, just most of their products because, well, they suck and break all the time.

EDIT: I tried SkyDrive. It looks better than Google Drive, but it requires Lion or later, so it's a no-go :(. Also, it doesn't have the whole publicly-accessible URL thing that Dropbox has. Seems like the only real advantage is more storage, which isn't really useful for me if I can't send public links.

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However, I don't think they SHOULD. It's somewhat monopolistic of them. They should compete fairly in the marketplace. Of course companies rarely do what they should.

Every company that manages a store has to make money somehow. With retail, it's markups. With eBay, it's commission.

You could make the case that what Apple's doing wrong is forcing people to use their App Store unless they jailbreak or use web apps. I don't find anything wrong with that, but I do have a problem with Apple forbidding developers to make any money through the app that doesn't go through Apple. Doesn't eBay do that with the iOS app anyway? In the end, it's still worth it for the developer, but it does look a little too much like horizontal integration.
 
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Windows 8 is trash so is Office since they went to the ribbon interface. No experience with clouds.

The ribbon interface doesn't exist in the Mac edition, right? I use the newer Office in Windows sometimes... not sure which, but the interface is enraging. But Office for Mac is nice except for a fatal flaw: crashes.
 
SkyDrive is awesome for photos!

Neither Dropbox nor Google Drive come close.
 
The ribbon interface doesn't exist in the Mac edition, right? I use the newer Office in Windows sometimes... not sure which, but the interface is enraging. But Office for Mac is nice except for a fatal flaw: crashes.

Mac version is kinda weird, has the ribbon but also the older menus.

Don't get why people still moan about the ribbons, it's far better interface.

The MS hate is boring and plain wrong, a few years ago it was relevant but not anymore.

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If MS can get more developer support, I'd be torn between the two.

It will happen sooner rather than later. MS will be building in Skydrive support everywhere they can, on top of Windows you've got Xbox, Office 365, Skype, mobiles and so on - the kind of integration that Dropbox can only dream about.
 

The layout and photo/file management is just so much better than any other cloud service. It looks much cleaner, more organized, the content gets the centre stage. And all the file management tools you need are on top, in the ribbon UI.

It reminds me of Windows explorer a lot, lots of options. On the side bar you also get all the information about the file or a folder, size, how many items, shares, permissions, etc...

And the thing is, I HATE Windows 8 Metro UI and SkyDrive and other apps in Windows 8, they are terrible, no functionality and bad layout. However the web apps are a complete opposite, I love them, I love the Ribbon UI menu, etc. Microsoft's web apps are amazing.

Let me show you couple of screenshots.







Here, you can see folders are neatly on top with the amount of files within them displayed on the small blue strip. What's in them is also displayed/previewed(live tile), and those images are cycled.

The photo thumbnails are on the bottom. And the tools are on top, the blue bar.

As you can see you get maximum content, no space is wasted and the thumbnails are appropriately sized too.



One more picture of thumbnails.




Folder options: You can move, share, copy, rename, view file/folder metadata, download the complete folder, quickly share, sort by date modified, date created, name, size and custom sort.

You can have a thumbnail view, list view.

You get neat breadcrumb style address, you can see next to where it says "Villages" below the blue bar, you get the folder structure.



File selection is done super easy and quick. Plus you get extra options in the ribbon bar.



Viewing an actual photo, you get a nice black background, a thumbnail strip on the bottom that is scrollable with a mouse wheel, on the right you get a photo info, metadata, sharing options, and if the photo has a location, you also get a map.



If you click the image, you get a bigger view(and you can click through images in the folder). You can also add captions to images. You can also view an original file... i.e. a direct link to the image file.



Now let's move to iOS,

You get the same beautiful layout. It looks a lot like iOS' photo app, you get nice thumbnail view. Folders on top like the website, images below.

Thumbnails get cached. So when you start the app the next time, you won't have to wait for thumbnails to load again.

Also, you start from last position you closed the app. I was in the "Villages" folder and the next time I start SkyDrive, it'll start from that position.



You can have a "list" view too if you want more information. Again, you get folder sizes, file amount in them, file info, etc...



Finally the viewer.

You can of course swipe through images, pinch zoom, if you tap once, the menus hide, etc... you can share and set permissions to images/files, delete, move, copy, download, etc... everything.





So, I hope this answered your question. Neither Dropbox, nor Google Drive or any other cloud service offer the same beautiful, streamlined, seamless, yet highly functional experience like SkyDrive. I also like the name too.
 
SkyDrive is good. I still prefer Dropbox due to camera uploads and I have 50GB of storage.
 
SkyDrive is good. I still prefer Dropbox due to camera uploads and I have 50GB of storage.

Dropbox is great, I use it a lot, in fact, I use Dropbox for quick photo uploads and transfers, etc... but for photo storage and viewing, I use SkyDrive. I have pretty much my whole photo collection in there.



Also, jJust a little warning. When Dropbox auto uploads images(if you have it on), it modifies them. So the final image is not the exact binary duplicate of the images you transfer manually or upload manually using Dropbox.
 
Dropbox is great, I use it a lot, in fact, I use Dropbox for quick photo uploads and transfers, etc... but for photo storage and viewing, I use SkyDrive. I have pretty much my whole photo collection in there.



Also, jJust a little warning. When Dropbox auto uploads images(if you have it on), it modifies them. So the final image is not the exact binary duplicate of the images you transfer manually or upload manually using Dropbox.
So far the only difference I spot is the file name. Otherwise, they are the exact duplicate of the photo I took.

Well, I could be wrong.
 
I have way too much free space.
 

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Great that they fixed it but forcing devs to just make people buy stuff through their site instead of the actual app kinds gets away from the whole "it just works" aspect of ios to me.

Apple isn't forcing anything. You can totally have the payment via the app. If you are okay with the money share. Microsoft is greedy and doesn't want to give up the 30%. And it seems they were egotistical enough to think they could get to play by other rules on the link issue. They were wrong.

I've only worked on in house apps at this point but I applaud that they are making everyone play by the same rules no matter who it is

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Glad MS didn't cave to paying Apple insane amounts of money for their stupid 30% rule, its just insane that Apple can get away with it. 30% for doing nothing. I could see maybe 5-10% for transaction fees and hosting.. but no more for sure!!

Its their store, their rules. Totally legal.

What's insane is that little mom and pop shops writing free games that only make scant money via totally non required IAP have no issue with sharing this cut even though they are the folks that generally need every penny but the big multimillion and multibillion dollar companies cry foul. And folks side with them
 
Apple should be brought up on anti-trust charges in my opinion.

Folks have tried it. It's been rejected. Anti-trust claims require leveraging dominance in one market to try to improve standing in another. The notion that anything related to the App Store is crossing markets failed because the store was created solely for iOS devices. Courts rejected it as anti-trust.
 
Markup in retail can easily be 40%.

The real argument for most is that Apple isn't selling physical items so they don't have any overhead for shipping, warehousing etc so it should be illegal for them to have anything more than perhaps a 15% markup. Then when you point out server costs they come back with 'well X isn't using their server so they should only be allowed to ask for 5%'

But ultimately it's their store, they get to make the rules and they are known when you signed up. Play by them or lose.
 
Folks have tried it. It's been rejected. Anti-trust claims require leveraging dominance in one market to try to improve standing in another. The notion that anything related to the App Store is crossing markets failed because the store was created solely for iOS devices. Courts rejected it as anti-trust.

I don't mind that, but making Safari have access to API that no other browser can. Or being able to have an app with another music store for purchasing music.

If that's not anti-trust, I don't know what is.
 
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