Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop

Re:Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop by rdl on Sunday January 15, 2012 @03:47PM (#3468186)

Right conclusion (iCloud is DOA), but wrong reasoning.

Lots of people are 100% Apple ecosystem (I use Linux and FreeBSD servers, but all my desktops/phones/laptops/etc. are Apple). I have only ever used Dropbox from Apple platforms, too.

Yet, I still use Dropbox, and not iCloud. Why? Because so far, iCloud has been totally useless. iTunes Match is marginally useful, but it was done internally by Apple as a first-party thing (and really, iTunes and all online Apple services are an embarrassment to a company which is so good at design; even the online Apple Store is crap compared to their physical retail presence. Some people should hate each other for every Apple Internet service.)

Basically no non-Apple first-party apps support iCloud in any meaningful way. 1Password, Chrome, ... Plenty of third-party apps support Dropbox API.

Dropbox may have three main things going for it (simple initial "put stuff in a folder", cross-platform, and great API), but any ONE of those is sufficient. Cross-platformness is the easiest one to discount (since even Dropbox isn't cross-platform to the platforms I really care about, like Audi RNS-E, various fitness tracking devices, people who aren't currently dropbox users, ...).

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Re:Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop by YooLi on Sunday January 15, 2012 @04:50PM (#3468368)

"Basically no non-Apple first-party apps support iCloud in any meaningful way. 1Password, Chrome, ... Plenty of third-party apps support Dropbox API.".

I can't wait for this to change (and I'm pretty confident it will). 1Password's Dropbox support really is terrible. My 1Password DB is not something I want to see, so I can hide it away in a folder in my Dropbox, but then a dot file is saved in my Dropbox root so 1Password can find it. The alternative would be for 1Password to force a hard coded path. Both are inelegant solutions to using a filesystem for app data syncing.

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Re:Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop by Zev on Sunday January 15, 2012 @03:51PM (#3468199)

…simple initial "put stuff in a folder…"

Apple's goal with iCloud (and iOS) is to eliminate the concept of a folder in the filesystem. Of course it won't work well for you. You want folders and files.

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Re:Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop by rdl on Sunday January 15, 2012 @04:04PM (#3468245)

I'd be fine with syncing "data" vs. files, too, but no apps I use or care about support iCloud.

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Re:Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop by flyt on Sunday January 15, 2012 @10:07PM (#3469171)

iCloud has been available to end users for three months. Give it time to accrete features, just like iOS.

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Re:Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop by jiggy2011 on Sunday January 15, 2012 @07:25PM (#3468784)

I think the point is that even people who are 100% apple are likely to need (or at least anticipate needing) to swap files with people who are not apple users.

I think being cross platform as it stands means being compatible with at minimum: Windows , Mac , iOS , android + possibly web?

I can't imagine there are many people desperate for a file sharing solution for their car or heart rate monitor, if one was developed it would probably be a niche solution possibly using dropbox as a platform.

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Re:Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop by CountSessine on Monday January 16, 2012 @01:20AM (#3469611)

Basically no non-Apple first-party apps support iCloud in any meaningful way. 1Password, Chrome, ... Plenty of third-party apps support Dropbox API.

GoodReader has great iCloud support. And iCloud has only been available to the general public for all of three months. GoodReader's support for iCloud is way more meaningful to me than Dropbox support in any other application has been, except perhaps 1Password's.

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