“Speaking at Mobile World Congress last week, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston said users should be wary of using cloud storage solutions that are provided by a single manufacturer of a smartphone,” Michael Grothaus reports for TUAW.
“Houston called out iCloud’s ‘bizarre limitations,’ saying that no iPhone or iPad user can easily share iCloud documents with an Android device,” Grothaus reports. “Houston specifically pointed to Samsung, which, like Apple, originally created its own proprietary cloud storage solution for its mobile devices. However, Samsung quickly came around and decided to partner with Dropbox, which works on almost every major mobile and desktop platform.”
Grothaus reports, “Interestingly Apple tried to buy Dropbox in 2009 but CEO Drew Houston turn down the offer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Anyone wishing to go beyond iCloud’s “Bizzare limitations” can simply download the Dropbox app for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and iPad mini which provides 2 GB of free space when you sign up and allows you to share files easily.
There’s no need for Apple to add Dropbox-like capabilities to iCloud or partner with Dropbox when the Dropbox app sitting right in the App Store for the taking.
i use both and they all have crazy limitations
dropbox you can’t keep a local copy of a file on a mobile device and then just sync it. its against their current API. Pages can do this.
but then icloud the documents can only be opened by the program that created it, which is bizarre
“dropbox you can’t keep a local copy of a file on a mobile device and then just sync it. its against their current API”
Not having used Dropbox, I had no idea. I always took it as a given that you have access to your files at all times, just changes get uploaded. I’d much rather deal with iCloud’s not sharing (as copy paste can work in some situations).
they have a new API to fix this, but haven’t seen it in any apps yet
nice thing about dropbox is you can restore previous versions of files. if you delete on by accident or make some crazy changes, you go to the website and restore from a previous save in the last 30 days
The dropbox app is useless but you can access and sync folders with great apps like GoodReader.
the strength of dropbox is in the API. lots of apps in the app store support dropbox for storage. i scan receipts in, upload to dropbox and use my laptop to put in claims to ADP. Dropbox syncs a copy to my laptop for it. impossible with icloud which is just dumb storage.
icloud has its strengths and does things like photo sharing well, but its not dropbox which is multi-platform
iCloud does have multi-platform support. Open your web browser and go to iCloud.com login. Upload/convert documents between iWork and Office formats. I know for a fact this works on Windows.
i do this, but it doesn’t work with CamScanner+ which is what i use to scan stuff in with my iphone. i save to dropbox and put in my FSA claims online and use the dropbox folder on my computer to get the file to upload.
the old way i had to write out everything myself on the claim form and fax it with the receipt
As if the Dropbox CEO is going to compliment a potential competitor.
I guess he doesn’t understand the point behind iCloud. It’s not simply “cloud storage”. It is more of a syncing service than anything else. And you don’t have to be connected to access your iCloud documents as a local copy is kept on your device(s).
Sounds like he’s taking a private conversation public.
Maybe Apple isn’t answering his questions on their plans for iCloud? Or he’s nervous that Apple is coming out with their own file transferring/storage solution that will closely mimic Dropbox?
Apple should just buy Dropbox already and build that functionality right into iCloud. iCloud could be so much more than just a syncing service and Dropbox augmentation could be a serious beachhead into the corporate and enterprise market.
Again, unless the CEO is willing to sell, it doesn’t make a difference how much Apple offers. Dropbox still has a solid business plan that is supplemental to what Apple provides. Besides, if Apple bought Dropbox, they’d likely shut it down for the talent rather than simply implement it into iOS. That’s fine, but I still prefer Dropbox for certain things and iCloud for others. They’re two separate products and I prefer it that way.
I don’t get why Apple would have been looking to buy Dropbox, when Apple HAD its own solution. Which, I might add, was far simpler and easier-to-use than Dropbox.
Because Dropbox has developed brand recognition and a fully worked out solution that works across all platforms, Windows and Android included.
Apple could develop its own solution but it would be faster and less damaging to its reputation (see mapgate) to have a working solution that is ready for integration with iOS and OS X with tweaks for security and free storage size developed by Apple.
“Apple should just buy Dropbox already …”
Did you get an education BLN? Your poor grammar, spelling, obnoxious remarks about women, homophobia and pretty much everything else you comment on makes you appear to be the fat fuck masturbator that you are.
You nasty little fat man.
iCloud is the worst of the bunch, offering almost no usability.
This, to me, speaks more to a misunderstanding of iCloud. It’s not a document-storage-and-sharing service like Dropbox. It is simply a data-synchronization service. iCloud’s advantages are in the ability to sync data between Macs and iOS devices. Apple’s implementation of saving docs in iCloud started this confusing mess and, honestly, shouldn’t have been released until they figured out how to get around the sandboxing that occurs.
The true advantage of iCloud is the ability for documents to sync even when the app isn’t open. That’s a huge benefit when you don’t open an app regularly and suddenly find yourself off-network when you need something and Dropbox hasn’t synced it yet.
Each has its place and pros and cons. There’s no reason to eliminate one or the other. I want both to survive and work in their respectively different ways so that I can choose the one that better fits each need I have.
I agree with the DropBox CEO. While iDisk had its issues, it was fully functional “cloud” storage. iCloud is a joke that is so severely limited that it serves no functional purpose except for some severely limited applications. While I use Keynote extensively, Pages is not a substitute for Word in the field of scientific writing.
There is NO file structure that is ESSENTIAL if you are managing hundreds or thousands of documents.
I paid for extra iDisk storage but I will not pay for extra iCloud storage and actually don’t use it unless I’m trying to present from my iPad.
iCloud is SO limited it is useless for most academics and researchers.
+1K
Mr. Scientist,
A dot point makes a big difference:
There is NO file structure that is ESSENTIAL …
vs.
There is NO file structure. That is ESSENTIAL …
If that latter, I agree.
Maybe because Apple is thinking a couple years ahead for iCloud instead of being yet another me-too service where you dump files into folders, like dozens of other existing services.
“Focus Is About Saying No” often applies.
While that is one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes, Apple/Tim Cook has been misdirectedly taking this to the extreme, allowing most of their offerings to wither, half-baked, on the vine, victims of neglect. It’s sad, really.
Maybe I do not like navigating my file system or figuring out which app opens which file. I just want it to do this for me. Enter iCloud.
iCloud is for “amateurs” and DropBox is for “Pros”.
You have just described the limitation of iCloud. It can do no more than that. This is why it is NOT suitable for people that expect more from “cloud” storage. By Apple catering to the low end consumer, it is forgetting the higher end consumer.
This is what I hate about iCloud. Maybe this system makes sense to people whose first computer was an iPhone.
iCloud is more poorly implemented than MobileMe was. iCloud is useless as a collaboration tool. I was given free extra storage for being a MobileMe user. I haven’t used it and never will, as it is sandboxed from other devices.
Craptastic.
the best dropbox can do is be a poor copy of the apple finder. the ceo should be careful of what he wishes for. mega.co.nz will bury dropbox on the low end and apple iCloud on the high end.
well. let’s see: a few free gigabytes here, a few free gigabytes there. isn’t that AWSOME?
…well, no. one doesn’t have a #$%^& clue where his data is, nor how secure it is, and it’s only free until the server switches on the monthly billing. you know, just like your cell phone service provider charges you one way or another for data flow.
all these server “cloud” services have limitations. that is the point. they are there to extract money from unsuspecting customers who are dumb enough to sign up for a life of terminal computing.
iCloud sucks just like all the rest.
Is this blabbering fool and his bullshit files and folders still in business?
iCould is far from bizarre. Its functionality is the way of the future, no doubt. The problem is, that future is not quite here yet, and people don’t understand it. Even, apparently, a tech CEO like Drew Houston. For now, until that future arrives, Apple should release OS X and iOS iCloud apps so users can access and manage their data in a more familiar way.
…..well……so it’s settled
I use both – iCloud and Dropbox. I have used Apple’s “cloud” service since it was .Mac. I stuck with with through the MobileMe days. And now, it’s iCloud. Perhaps I’m one of those who don’t see the future just yet, but iCloud is cumbersome and not very intuitive. I want to make it my primary cloud solution, but it doesn’t work well enough. Here’s an example.
The other day I pulled an old Keynote presentation from a backup drive. When I opened it, that presentation was not automatically saved to iCloud. As expected, it saved changes to where the original file was saved. Wanting to add it to iCloud for distribution to my Mac OS X and my iOS devices, I logged on to the iCloud web site. Once I got to iCloud, I tried to drop the file, but it wouldn’t accept it. Then I remembered, I had to go to a specific folder that accepts only Keynote and PowerPoint slides. So much for sheer simplicity.
I think Apple needs to figure out what exactly it is doing with the cloud solution. Are they there yet? Perhaps. But if they are, this ordinary user isn’t there with them.
David F.
Open the Keynote presentation, click the name at the top choose Move To, choose iCloud. Bam, it saves to the Keynote in iCloud. Then from there each time you make changes it automatically saves to iCloud.
Another option is to click the file name choose to Duplicate, with that duplicate chose Move, again chose iCloud. Your original file stays on the backup drive while the duplicate stays in iCloud Keynote.
It may sound complicated yet it is easy-peazy, lemon-squeezy.
Now, the above works for me hope it works for you.
iCloud is plain cloud storage while Dropbox provides features, API as well as integration with other solutions like GroupDocs. So, Dropbox works for me way better than iCloud would do. Moreover, the usability is quite simple and anyone in the company can store and change docs with Dropbox integration.
http://groupdocs.com/blog/groupdocs-document-management/archive/2012/08/15/announcing-dropbox-integration-with-groupdocs-apps-suite.html